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William E. Odom is the highest-ranking member of the United States Intelligence community ever to write a book outlining fundamental restructuring of this vast network of agencies, technology, and human agents. In the wake of 9/11, Odom has revised and updated a powerful critique he wrote several years ago for staffs of the U.S. congressional committee overseeing the vast American intelligence bureaucracy. His recommendations for revamping this essential component of American security are now available for general readers as well as for policymakers.While giving an unmatched overview of the world of U.S. intelligence, Odom persuasively shows that the failure of American intelligence on 9/11 had much to do with the complex bureaucratic relationships existing among the various components of the Intelligence Community. The sustained fragmentation within the Intelligence Community since World War II is part of the story; the blurring of security and intelligence duties is another. Odom describes the various components of American intelligence in order to give readers an understanding of how complex they are and what can be done to make them more effective in providing timely intelligence and more efficient in using their large budgets. He shows definitively that they cannot be remedied with quick fixes but require deep study of the entire bureaucracy and the commitment of the U.S. government to implement the necessary reforms

One of the great surprises in modern military history is the collapse of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1991-along with the party-state with which it was inextricably intertwined. In this important book, a distinguished United States Army officer and scholar traces the rise and fall of the Soviet military, arguing that it had a far greater impact on Soviet politics and economic development than was perceived in the West.General William E. Odom asserts that Gorbachev saw that dramatically shrinking the military and the military-industrial sector of the economy was essential for fully implementing perestroika and that his efforts to do this led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Odom enhances his account with interviews with key actors in the Soviet Union before, during, and after the collapse. He describes the condition of the Soviet military during the mid-1980s and explains how it became what it was-its organizational structures, manpower policies, and military-industrial arrangements. He then moves to the dramatic events that led to its destruction, taking us to the most secret circles of Soviet policy making, as well as describing the public debates, factional struggles in the new parliament, and street combat as army units tried to repress the political forces unleashed by glasnost. Odom shows that just as the military was the ultimate source of stability for the multinational Soviet state, the communist ideology justified the military's priority claim on the economy. When Gorbachev tried to shift resources from the military to the civilian sector to overcome economic stagnation, he had to revise the official ideology in order to justify removing the military from its central place. Paralyzed by corruption, mistrust, and public disillusionment, the military was unable and unwilling to intervene against either Gorbachev's perestroika or Yeltsin's dissolution of the Soviet Union

Provides an assessment of the US troop surge in Iraq, labeled here a tactic rather than a strategy, & asserting that it is not succeeding, describing Iraq's continued Balkanization. Three arguments against withdrawal of US forces are refuted. Adapted from the source document.

During the Carter administration the Middle East and Southwest Asia became a third major theater in the Cold War struggle along with Europe and the Far East. Initially, President Jimmy Carter tried to remove this region from the Cold War competition, but the collapse of the shah's regime in Iran prompted Carter to reverse course and to build a "Persian Gulf security framework" that later allowed the United States to deal with three wars and many smaller clashes. The interagency process implementing this dramatic change was rent with clashes of departmental interests. The State Department and the military services resisted the structural changes they would later need to confront not only the Soviet threat but also intraregional conflicts. Moreover, the Reagan administration, after forcing the Joint Chiefs of Staff to make the Central Command formal, actually slowed the process of its growth, leaving it far from ready to embark on the Gulf War in 1990–1991.