The Generals' War: The Inside Story of the Conflict in the Gulf

by Michael R. Gordon

Taking readers behind the scenes, the chief Pentagon correspondent for the New York Times and a retired three-star general explain the allied coalition's military strategy and analyze what went right and wrong. 30,000 first printing.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Military Fiction, Middle East, War, Military History, Leadership

551 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1995

About the author

MICHAEL R. GORDON is the chief military correspondent for The New York Times, where he has worked since 1985. He is the coauthor, with Bernard E. Trainor, of The Generals' War and Cobra II.

Reviews

[Simon Mee · Rating 4 out of 5]

You heard about this war?



The one that ended like this?



Well, you’ve been had, you gullible fool. Because this:



…was bad.

The Generals' War is a contrarian’s book. A very detailed and carefully researched contrarian’s book, and one where most of my disagreements are a matter of opinion and speculation. Those disagreements are even a strength, mostly (with some exceptions below) because a contrarian’s book should provoke disagreement.

I’m sure they did better next time

CENTCOM had opted to have the Marine amphibious force in the Gulf execute a giant deception plan. Schwarzkopf later took full credit as an example of his military brilliance. In fact, it was deception by default.

So to briefly explain what went wrong, the US made mistakes with:

Deterrence
Rapid deployment of troops to defend Saudi Arabia
Strategic goal
Operational planning by the Air Force
Operational planning by the Army
Operational planning by the Marines
Putting the three operational plans together in a coherent way
Intelligence
Operational Flexibility
Personnel control
Surrender Negotiations

And as a reminder, the US led coalition’s ground offensive won the war in about five days.

The Generals' War lays the fault primarily at the feet of the Generals, from Powell downwards. The causes tend towards communication issues and doctrinal clashes. It is interesting stuff. The Generals' War presents an image of poor interaction between US military commanders, which is a fair interpretation. However, such friction during the decision-making process between members of a hierarchy used to commanding others could be viewed as normal and even healthy. It was the largest commitment of US forces since Vietnam and the largest offensive operation since World War II. It won the ground war in five days.

There is a good summary at the end that contains lessons worth considering. It is fair to point out American errors, and how Iraqi weaknesses papered these over. The criticisms of the “Powell Doctrine” are well backed up and have stood the test of time. Despite this, The Generals' War is a contrarian’s book and should not be your sole source. In focusing on the titular generals, politicians like Wolfowitz and Cheney, with his customary discretion, get a free pass or even outright praise at times. The authors are unlikely to have nefarious motives but the asymmetry in those portrayals is a noticeable flaw in the book.

On my soapbox

More important, if war is an extension of politics, it should have achieved a political success comparable to the military one, defeating Saddam Hussein as well as his army. The air-war planners aimed at winning the war by destroying Iraq’s governing infrastructure and causing Saddam Hussein’s overthrow.

The Generals' War was published in 1995 and certain criticisms within it have arguably not aged well since the Invasion of Iraq in 2003 or even the Russo-Ukraine war from 2022 onwards, with the emphasis on “arguably”. It would however be fairer to judge some of its contrarianism at the time, particularly the “failure” of Coalition forces to destroy the Iraqi Republican Guard. I take issue with how the book thinks that would have been good, and how it could have been done.

The Generals' War, is a little loose as to whether the destruction of the Republican Guard was a strategic goal, or an operational goal in furtherance of a wider strategic one. If simply a strategic goal, the job is done once the Republican Guard is destroyed with little thought as to the consequences. If just an operational goal, then what was the strategic goal being served?

When The Generals' War treats it as an operational goal, it is a little mealy mouthed as to what the strategic purpose was. Was the overthrow of Saddam by a more amenable leader, or was it the success of Shi’ite rebellion in the south and the Kurdish rebellion in the north? Those are two vastly different endgoals and I would argue the The Generals' War: (a) does not pick between the two; and (b) certainly does not follow through in explaining why destruction of the Republican Guard would be sufficient for achieving either.

In contrast the book also describes the destruction of the Republican Guard as a strategic end in itself, which is not sufficient to show such destruction would have been “better” than what did happen.

The other thing the book breezes through is how exactly the Republican Guard would have been “destroyed”. The Generals' War does say the Coalition could have surrounded Basra and forced the surrender of units, taking their weapons, avoiding a large-scale massacre that would have caused the Arab states in the Coalition to have fallen away. And... ...maybe that would have happened? The problem is that US forces (primarily airpower) did “massacre” Iraqi forces at the Battle of Khafji; the “Highway of Death”; and during the 24th Mechanized Division’s actions after the ceasefire. All of these are described in the book and I tend to believe it would have happened again with the Republican Guard. I am not comfortable the book makes the case that it would have been no big deal to eliminate the Republican Guard, deep in Iraq, while trying to retain Arab support.

These complaints are matters of opinion rather than pointing out errors of fact. Despite this, they are rooted in the book being contrarian in outlook. The central focus of the book is that the Gulf War was an incomplete victory, however what was needed to complete it? Was Saddam staying in power the best result, having regard to the political, diplomatic, and military constraints the Coalition laboured under? No idea, and it feels a bit empty that The Generals' War criticises the end result without putting forward a convincing counterfactual.

In its defence The Generals' War is right to point out (very clearly) that the politicians and generals did not think about the consequences of ending the war after the 100-hour ground offensive. But the book advances a “better” result (destroying the Republican Guard), without really explaining the consequences.

A very good book, but an incomplete thesis.

[Nick Lloyd · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was an excellent book to read for two reasons. First, because the Gulf War occurred when I was a little kid, and I don't remember much of it other than "we won", so it's interesting to actually get the sequence of events and the ideas behind the decisions that were made. Second, it's very interesting to read this book (written in the mid 1990s) now given what we know about the 2003 Iraq War and its aftermath, because it shows how certain policy decisions we once may have thought to be poor actually weren't so bad in the long term.

The figure this book is least charitable toward is Schwarzkopf. He apparently had a very tyrannical style, often belittling subordinates to the point that none of his commanders wished to approach him with issues. John Schofield would have something to say about this style of leadership, but apparently Command Climate Surveys were not a factor in Schwarzkopf's path to Generalship. The real problem for Schwarzkopf was behind his gruff exterior laid a man who was hesitant to initiate conflict of any type. On issues that arose between subordinates, he neglected his job as theater commander with a "they can figure it out" style that often created more problems than if he had just made a decision. Combined with his unwillingness to replace the ineffective 3rd Army commander LTG Yeosock with his CENTCOM Deputy Calvin Waller when he had an opportune moment, his leadership abilities have to be questioned. To this, we could perhaps add his judgment in negotiating the end of the war; an apparent muddied mess which seems to have come about from a lack of planning and determination on the part of the US. When asked if the Iraqis could use armed helicopters because the roads and bridges were out, Schwarzkopf unthinkingly said "sure", without considering the effect it would have on the Shiite and Kurdish groups who were rising against Saddam. The same could be said of his concession to remove all forces from Iraqi territory, giving up the only leverage they had with the regime.

I say apparent because, given what we know about Iraq since 2003, it seems that the Bush administration was actually not terribly off on the actual situation with Iraqi politics. They did not necessarily want to help the Shiite and Kurdish groups, despite their pronouncements, because a fractured Iraq (as we have seen) could cause infinitely more problems. Essentially what they wanted was a military coup that would replace Saddam with a slightly more decent strongman who could continue to hold Iraq together yet wouldn't pursue WMDs or threaten his neighbors. What they instead got with a Saddam who portrayed his defeat in the war as a victory and used it to cement his power and defy the international community until he was ultimately removed a decade later. Whether the problems that have occurred since his ouster could have been entirely avoided with better planning is difficult to say. This book certainly doesn't have those answers. But for a complete history and decent analysis of the Gulf War, this is the place to start.

[Joseph Stieb · Rating 4 out of 5]

Took me a while to read this rather long and dense account of the military planning and campaigns of the Gulf War. This book is almost exclusively about the officers who planned and led the Gulf War campaigns, but it is quite good at presenting that history. The planning of air and ground operations, as well as the disputes between and within the branches, is extensively covered here. People who aren't military buffs or hate reading about bureaucratic arguments won't enjoy this book.

One thing that really struck me was the parochialism and turf-protection of each branch of the military. The authors rightly question the "jointness" of Desert Storm because to a large extent each branch did their own thing. The Army and Marine ground plans were poorly coordinated, and ended up creating one major problem down the road. The Air Force was pretty convinced they could win the war alone, and they were slow to switch from strategic bombing within Iraq to tactical bombing in support of ground operations (side note: the accounts of air power theorists like James Warden in this book are excellent and utterly fascinating). It seemed that Schwarzkopf and Powell preferred to give the branches a lot of leeway rather than start the bureaucratic arguments that would be necessary to make the plan more well coordinated. There's a lot of evidence here for the bureaucratic model of decision making.

One of the biggest arguments this book makes is that the US missed a major opportunity to weaken the Iraqi regime by letting the Republican Guard slip away. The writers point to crucial question in American policy: Was the purpose of the war to weaken and possibly set up the overthrow of the Baathist regime? If so, the Army and Marines should have coordinated their ground offensive in a way that would have trapped and crushed the RG. If, however, the purpose of the war was truly limited to the stated objective of kicking SH out of Kuwait, then there really wasn't a huge problem letting the RG go. I'm not sure the Bush administration had a clear answer to this question. In order to keep the international coalition together, they had to eschew any public, and even much private discussion of regime change or drastic interference in Iraqi politics. I think the Bush administration hoped for regime change but never really pursued it or infused regime change steps, such as the destruction of the RG, into their planning. Also, hey never really planned for crucial endgame contingencies, such as the possibility of domestic revolts against SH or what to do if there wasn't a coup that ousted SH and put in a more pliable leader. These were really hard decisions and issues to deal with, and it's important to not be too critical of a leadership that basically got the job done in this conflict. Nevertheless, Gordon and Trainor raise some nagging but important points here.

One more thought: The writers duly point out the errors made at the negotiations at Safwan that ended the war. Schwarzkopf gave two crucial concessions. 1. Allowing Saddam to fly helicopters around the country. Absolutely should not have been done. This allowed SH to crush revolts in Shia areas that Bush had already encouraged. This was a poorly coordinated decision that ended up costing thousands of Iraqi lives. 2. Agreeing to withdraw US forces as rapidly as feasible. The US occupying Southern Iraq was one of the best bargaining chips we had. It certainly could have been used to get SH to not massacre his own people in the Kurdish and Shia areas, and might have made him more compliant in the aftermath of the conflict. Safwan was one area where the Powell doctrine's fear of using the military for anything other than crushing the enemy's military forces really screwed us. The military is a tool of foreign policy, and Powell unduly sought to make it otherwise because of his rigid lesson-learning from the Vietnam War. The more I read of this guy, the less I respect his intellect and judgment.

This book came out in the late 1990's, and it really runs against the grain of the popular memory of the war. What I really took away from it is that we showed tremendous superiority on a number of levels in this victory, but we were also pretty lucky. We were lucky that the lack of coordination between the branches didn't create bigger problems. We were lucky that we weren't facing a more competent and determined enemy. This book should induce a little humility into any Desert Storm triumphalist. What good is history, after all, if it doesn't induce a little humility?

[Stefanie Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book took me a while to get into. I don't know if it was the book, or if I was in a reading slump, so I will not say anything negative about the book to that effect. It just took me a while to finish. It contained a lot of information about the Gulf War, which was great since I know virtually nothing about it. This book discusses the military strategy of the United States while they were operating in the Gulf War. I imagine there are conflicts between generals and leaders of strategy and intelligence all of the time, so that was not a shock to me. I did like learning about all of their differences and how their decisions impacted everyone else, especially those on the ground.

[Daniel Fireman · Rating 4 out of 5]

I forgot to mark on here that I finished it, however, very good book! I think as a collection of primary sources it’s very good, of the arguments put forward, i really only disagree with its argument that there was a lost opportunity to destroy the Republican Guard, maybe GWB read this book and decided destabilizing Iraq was a good idea. Doesn’t look like a good idea today!

I really like the discussion about poor communication with Saddam before his invasion of Kuwait though, maybe clarity in communication about redlines would’ve prevented the conflict in the first place?

[Michael Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very detailed, comprehensive examination of the First Gulf War. It provides the reader with a fair assessment of the decisions made, some successful and some not so successful. It provides an interesting account that was not in the mainstream media. It is obvious that if the coalition had taken the war into Iraq and not ended at the political decision to end it at 100 hours, America would not have had to invade and occupy Iraq in 2003.

[Jonathan Z. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found myself getting sucked into a war I thought I knew. The behind the scenes looks at the lead up, the war itself, the difference in political goals and military goals, and the HUGE egos that drove some decisions was revelatory.

[Shawn · Rating 4 out of 5]

“The General’s War” is the definitive history of the Gulf War. Michael R. Gordon and Bernard E. Trainor, primarily for the U.S. perspective, tell the story Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. All the significant strategic, operational, and tactical aspects of the conflicts are covered and backed up with extensive and well documented research. The authors do an outstanding job explaining how while at face value the Gulf War was a great victory for the U.S. lead collation when it came to liberating Kuwait from the Iraqi invaders, but there were many issues and problems right below the surface. As we know today, the unaligned and fluctuating political and military goals of the conflict caused for an unclean closure ending to the conflict, ten years of maintaining no fly zones with multiple small flair-ups, followed up by eight more years of counterinsurgency centric war, which all have served to create the ongoing security issues in the region today. Unfortunately at the 25th anniversary of the conflict, many of the issues the authors reviewed in the book’s epilogue are still issues today.
This book is not only a relevant history of the Gulf War, but it also provides excellent case studies in the conduct of joint and coalition warfare, conflict termination, political and military end state reconciliation, intelligence syntonization, and military budget prioritization. It is well written book that while on the long side, reads easily and quickly. As a military logistician I appreciated the authors acknowledgements about the importance of logistics in the U.S. victory. However, I wish the authors would have covered a bit on all the challenges of redeploying the U.S. and coalition forces from the Gulf.

[Al · Rating 4 out of 5]

This multi-faceted reading provides an opportunity to assess a wide variety of crucial issues. It is particularly provocative in its treatment of civil-military relations and the national command structure, inter-service cooperation and rivalry in war planning and execution, the various strategic alternatives open to decision makers, the strengths and limitations of the high-tech RMA pioneered by the American armed forces, the limits of intelligence in piercing the fog of war, the formation of Joint doctrine and planning after the Goldwater Nichols Act, and finally, the issues it raises about war termination.

[John Weibull · Rating 3 out of 5]

One of the best accounts of the first Gulf War and the liberation of Kuwait. Anyone wanting to understand the second Gulf War should read this book.

[Nikolai · Rating 4 out of 5]

Interesting book, easy to read, gives insight into how modern military operations are planned and carried out.

[Terrence · Rating 3 out of 5]

I thought I would educate myself on recent American history. So far the going is slow but I'll finish it yet.

Finally finished this behemoth. I learned a lot, but it wasn't exactly riveting.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

interesting background and insight into the operational working behind the scenes among the key players in Desert Shield/Storm

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book, which casts light on many myths, stories, and hubris.

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book! One of the best written histories I have read in a while. Slow read - very detailed, but wonderful.

[Tony · Rating 5 out of 5]

Going through it now for the second time while researching the Persian Gulf War for another paper I am writing.

[Matt Danner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Detailed and thorough, but easy to read. The narrative moves along briskly. Overall, this is a good look at both the strategic decision-making as well as the operational details.

[Justin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book of the Year (1995) (Runner Up)

[Packard Mills]

would like this in hard back