Shadow Warfare: The History of America's Undeclared Wars

by Larry Hancock, Stuart Wexler

Contrary to its contemporary image, deniable covert operations are not something new. Such activities have been ordered by every president and every administration since the Second World War. In many instances covert operations have relied on surrogates, with American personnel involved only at a distance, insulated by layers of deniability.

Shadow Warfare traces the evolution of these covert operations, detailing the tactics and tools used from the Truman era through those of the contemporary Obama Administrations. It also explores the personalities and careers of many of the most noted shadow warriors of the past sixty years, tracing the decade-long relationship between the CIA and the military.

Shadow Warfare presents a balanced, non-polemic exploration of American secret warfare, detailing its patterns, consequences and collateral damage and presenting its successes as well as failures. Shadow Wars explores why every president from Franklin Roosevelt on, felt compelled to turn to secret, deniable military action. It also delves into the political dynamic of the president’s relationship with Congress and the fact that despite decades of combat, the U.S. Congress has chosen not to exercise its responsibility to declare a single state of war - even for extended and highly visible combat.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, American History, Military Fiction

368 pages, Hardcover

First published February 24, 2014

About the author

Larry is a graduate of the University of New Mexico with a BA in Education and majors in Anthropology, History and Education. Following service in the United States Air Force, he worked in the telecommunications and computer communications fields with Continental Telecom and later Hayes Microcomputer and Zoom Technologies.

During that his career he held the positions of Instructional Systems Design Manager and Engineering Training Manager at Continental Telecom, Vice President of Human Resource Dimensions (specialized in strategic business planning, disaster recovery planning and computer system conversions) and Training Manager, Marketing Manager and Marketing Director at Hayes Microcomputer and Zoom Technologies.

Reviews

[Sigit]

..if we, the CIA are going to try something like this again, we must be absolutely sure that the people and the Army [in the targeted country] want what we want. If not, you had better give the job to the Marines...
CIA Middle Eastern Div. / Operation Ajax 1954.

[Linda]

Interesting subject and info, very poorly edited in parts.

[Stephen Boiko · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exploration of America's conduct of surrogate warfare before, during, and after the Cold War.

[Al Lock · Rating 2 out of 5]

An overview of Covert operations in the last half of the 20th century. Not especially stunning and not much new. A lot of factual errors. Not recommended.

[Stingray · Rating 5 out of 5]

With „Shadow Warfare“ Larry Hancock and Stuart Wexler provide a comprehensive, well-researched and conclusive history of U.S. covert operations since the Second World War, showing largely unknown connections and providing a compelling distinction of tactics.
This work is designed to be a comprehensive history of U.S. covert operations and thus largely provides well-researched if short descriptions of covert operations in chronological order. The authors tried to actually put operations into the historical, organizational and political framework and also describe presidential views of covert operations, evolving oversight and control procedures. While the actual details of operations necessarily are not described in much detail, it is especially useful to follow the names of individuals involved, who regularly make repeated appearances in various conflict zones.
Besides providing a chronology of operations and a host of reference material to go deeper into specific operations, the authors also provide an interesting framework on the evolution of operations. They describe how the CIA started out covert operations utilizing its own officers, then utilizing proxy groups or advising local security forces, utilizing a growing sphere of civilian contractors and since 9/11 increasingly teaming up with military special operations forces to conduct global operations instantaneously with little to no oversight.
While opinions may differ on the interpretation of certain details, this work is well-researched, comprehensive in scope and describes and analyses the established facts without moral outrage but also without trying to justify or glorify. It is this objective realism, which is most appreciable here, as many investigative works today subjectively decry illegal or immoral operations.
In summary this is a very readable and interesting overview of U.S. covert operations appealing to the well informed expert as well as to the interested layman. While here the authors focused on covert operations mainly of a paramilitary nature, this book is well supplemented by Hancock’s “Creating Chaos” focusing on covert information operations.