BY ALL MEANS AVAILABLE

The former undersecretary of defense for intelligence under Barack Obama reflects on key military campaigns and the lessons and insights he garnered during his many years of service.

From his early training in the Special Forces to the many high-ranking positions he held within the CIA and the Department of Defense, Vickers had a long, distinguished career that often placed him at the center of some of the most significant military and intelligence operations of the past several decades. In this engrossing, densely packed memoir, the author recounts in vivid detail how these events unfolded and the particular role he played in each instance. He chronicles the U.S invasion of Grenada in 1983, the CIA’s secret assistance to Afghan forces fighting the Soviets in the mid-1980s, the capturing of Osama bin Laden in 2011, and counterterrorist efforts to impede al-Qaida and the Islamic State group. Vickers is successful in his plan to write “an analytical memoir” in order “to provide sufficient historical context for the events in which I participated, show how intelligence, special operations, strategy, and warfare evolved during my more than four decades of service, and how policy battles in Washington often decided the outcome of our operations and wars as much as our action in the field did.” Regarding policy battles, the author candidly scrutinizes how and why decisions were occasionally misguided, when he felt the U.S may not have responded quickly enough or accordingly. Like other recent policy analysts, he contends that the U.S. is enmeshed in a new Cold War, which includes China and Russia, with possibly graver consequences at stake. “Competing successfully in this new era will require far more than military strength,” writes the author. “Our military and intelligence power, moreover, must be transformed to reflect new realities, as must our alliances and national security institutions.”

A masterful, fully compelling assessment of key intelligence and special operations missions over recent decades.