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The Last Warrior: Andrew Marshall and the Shaping of Modern American Defense Strategy

Andrew F. Krepinevich,

Barry D. Watts

3.86 · Rating details · 195 ratings · 26 reviews

Andrew Marshall is a Pentagon legend. For more than four decades he has served as Director of the Office of Net Assessment, the Pentagon's internal think tank, under twelve defense secretaries and eight administrations. Yet Marshall has been on the cutting edge of strategic thinking even longer than that. At the RAND Corporation during its golden age in the 1950s and early ...more

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Hardcover, 336 pages

Published January 6th 2015 by Basic Books

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Lists with This Book

Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

The Last Warrior by Andrew F. Krepinevich

The Guns of August by Barbara W. Tuchman

AY17 SAASS Reading List 1

100 books — 4 voters

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· 195 ratings · 26 reviews

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Jun 22, 2017 Maria rated it liked it

Shelves: us-cno-reading-roadmap-2017, overdrive-navy, audio-books, biography, history, military, non-fiction, us-cno-reading-roadmap-2018

Andrew Marshall worked for years at the Rand Think Tank, doing strategic assessments for the Air Force before doing the same thing at the Pentagon. During the Cold War he was the one trying to figure out, how powerful the USSR was and how powerful the USSR thought that the USA was.

Why I started this book: I wanted a non-fiction audio and as a bonus this was on the new Navy Professional Reading list.

Why I finished it: Fascinating to learn about a man who focused on the long term threats to the Un ...more

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Apr 15, 2018 YourManJeff rated it it was amazing

Shelves: military

Excellent insight into the minds and actions that shaped the world we see, the struggles that were had, the number of time we lost focus despite having been handed insight years ahead of time. I'm glad the ONA exists, hopefully they are incorporating the lessons and guidance of Marshall and his students to provide us with a clear picture of the risks we face in the future so true planning and mitigation can occur.

The book itself is potentially too in depth for even an average lover of history, ...more

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Feb 25, 2021 Wilson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: decision-making, history, innovation, military-strategy, nonfiction, biography, favorites, national-strategy

One of my new favorites. I only stumbled upon this book and since I’m at the Pentagon, I might as well learn a bit about “Yoda”. His prescient analysis was literally 50 years ahead of its time, and went unnoticed for about 30 of those years once he completed his “Military Technological Revolution” (MTR) assessment in 1992.

I literally can’t go a day without someone stating one of his concepts, whether they know it or not.

If anyone wishes to understand our strategic direction, look at this man.

Sho ...more

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Aug 22, 2015 Erwin rated it did not like it

This book was very boring, and not particularly enlightening. If you work inside the US government and your job directly deals with foreign relations, perhaps this book will have some practical tips that you can take away.

Personally, I just found the entire thing too long, too dry, and frankly not very important. The book is about a bureaucrat that writes a report every year for the DOD. He's been around for ages, and apparently is quite well respected in Washington.

It seems to me that if these ...more

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Nov 09, 2017 George rated it really liked it

Enjoyed hearing about the creation and evolution of analytics in the Pentagon via ONA

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Nov 10, 2015 Rachel rated it liked it

Shelves: 2015-challenge, real-history, pentagon

Hagiographic, for sure. But an interesting look at ONA. Have I become an Andy Marshall fangirl? Not yet, but I could still be convinced.

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Jan 19, 2019 Chris Esposo rated it really liked it · review of another edition

An important story of an important individual, with a curious title, as the subject of this biography Andrew Marshall was neither a warrior nor could be conceived of as the last of any type of one. I suspect the name was chosen cause it sounded cool, and they needed some way to convey the uniqueness of his career.

Less a true biography than a professional biography/very detailed highlight reel, this book covers the span of his career from his brief stint at Wright State in UG and a briefer/interr An important story of an important individual, with a curious title, as the subject of this biography Andrew Marshall was neither a warrior nor could be conceived of as the last of any type of one. I suspect the name was chosen cause it sounded cool, and they needed some way to convey the uniqueness of his career.

Less a true biography than a professional biography/very detailed highlight reel, this book covers the span of his career from his brief stint at Wright State in UG and a briefer/interrupted stint at Chicago for an M.S./PhD, to his first job at RAND, and his landing as director of the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which would be his permanent position till his retirement in 2015.

Marshall is an autodidact that learned what he needed, be it mathematical formalism, the then frontier subject of Monte Carlo statistical modelling, human anthropology, national account economics, or HUMINT to get the job done. An admirable trait, reading his path just accentuates the point that often in life, skilling up quickly gets you where you want to go far more efficiently than degree collecting or gaming internal workplace politics, something Marshall learned both at Chicago and within the DoD.

The book outlines Marshall's impact on the subject matter of "net assessment" which a set of still ill-defined techniques designed to replace accounting approaches to analyzing comparative advantages/power within the domain of military science and phenomena. At first these included simple things like assigning weights to unit type pieces (armor, artillery, air etc) and making a linear combination of these with a corresponding vector of quantities to compute a battle groups score, and quickly evolved into more sophisticated techniques involving every mathematical and computational apparatus available to yield the problem of building a prescriptive and predictive model of comparative power in theater.

Some interesting conclusions Marshall made with these studies was that subjects like game theory or systems analysis were largely useless for this domain or the relatively simpler domain of nuclear weapons. What did prove useful was wargaming and simulations, and these largely as a prescriptive tool as opposed to a predictive tool.

It was in this context that I had the pleasure of very briefly meeting Marshall, who sponsored a simulations course on warfare while at school. As the book mentions, Marshall was interested in detecting why comparative advantage is lost, and thus, commissioned work to simulate/mathematically analyze historical conflict to see if anything could be discerned from results of these activities.

Marshall's scope wasn't limited to computational activity and the book focuses heavily on Marshall's studies of organizations and how they actually function, he also jettisoned the rational actor model of analysis as a by-in-large useless construct to understanding organizational or adversarial decision making, especially in the context of nuclear weapons, where it became clear that the propensity to deploy such weapons was much higher than any rational actor model would suggest, and the ability to stop exchange of such weapons once started, much harder from live wargaming than theory.

It's a curious note to the relevance of this book to 2018 that the current NSC adviser McMaster is a sceptic of both the Revolution of Military Affairs concept from Marshall and some of his more precision/information oriented approaches, while it seems Jim Mattis might be a believer.

The book is very interesting, but given the sensitive nature of the subject lacks a lot of information about Marshall's true impact, which will probably only come a few decades from now. Recommended ...more

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Jun 18, 2019 Andrew Carr rated it really liked it

While virtually every bookshop has a large section on military history, it is surprisingly rare to find books on Defence. This is especially true of the ideas and people who shape policy. The Last Warrior is an enjoyable, insightful intellectual biography of an iconoclastic influential figure in US defence policy and strategy over the last half-century.

Andrew Marshall, who passed away in March this year, led the US Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment from 1973 to 2015. This office did not exist While virtually every bookshop has a large section on military history, it is surprisingly rare to find books on Defence. This is especially true of the ideas and people who shape policy. The Last Warrior is an enjoyable, insightful intellectual biography of an iconoclastic influential figure in US defence policy and strategy over the last half-century.

Andrew Marshall, who passed away in March this year, led the US Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment from 1973 to 2015. This office did not exist when he joined the government, indeed the whole idea of Net Assessment was defined and given life by Marshall. From this position he helped drive the US government to think seriously about the strategies it pursued against the Soviets in the Cold War, the changing impact of military technology in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of China at the turn of the century.

While Marshall's legacy is vast, on my reading of American strategic culture, he remains in a distinct minority. He was deeply sceptical of quantitative models based on presumably rational people. He was willing to directly challenge conventional wisdom and stand apart even alone on big issues. And he insisted on finding good, creative questions, rather than barrelling towards an answer to the first question that seems viable. In these regards, as well as his humility and willingness to let others propose and seek credit, he is an admirable role model.

Written by two astute scholars, (especially Krepinevich) who worked with Marshall, this is a soft and sympathetic biography, but this is -rightly - an intellectual biography. There is no tawdry effort to find scandals or regal long personal anecdotes. It is the ideas, debates and bureaucratic infighting around those ideas which is the central focus of this book.

The Last Warrior (I'm not entirely sure why that title was chosen) is worthwhile reading as an insight into how to think about defence strategy, the way defence intellectuals can make their mark, and US defence strategy from the 1950s to mid-2000s. I listened via audio book, but I'll be ordering a copy for the bookshelves to keep, share and return to again. ...more

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Aug 13, 2019 Hj Reichen rated it really liked it

Great professional biography of a man who influenced American strategy during forty years. Can be bit a dry read, without prior knowledge of the second half of world history. It recalls the importance to consider economics, technological innovation and human behavior in developing future strategic trends. Marshall foremost underlined the importance of asking the right questions before finding the answers to the many people he mentored. Several of the latter have contributed by essential books. M ...more

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Dec 10, 2020 David rated it really liked it

This is an interesting Book for a variety of reasons as a cover so much of the formative years of the United States as a global power. It is a useful book in the history I'll be it from one perspective but it's also useful to discern various strategic decisions made in the government over the past 6 decades. ...more

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Jun 27, 2019 Brian Thorson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2019

Extraordinary insight into US defense strategy formation from post WWII to present. More importantly, the book informs the reader’s understanding of how to frame problems, think critically, and formulate proper questions instead of focusing on ‘solutions’. Informative and interesting read.

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Mar 22, 2021 Harv Rettberg rated it liked it · review of another edition

This is a good read for those who have a keen interest in the history of the Cold War. Andrew Marshall played a critical behind-the-scenes role in shaping the successful U.S. defense policy. This book is a slog to get through because it's loaded with information. ...more

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Jun 25, 2020 Timothy S Stone rated it really liked it

Deep thinking about strategic thinking. Andrew Marshall was 2 steps ahead.

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Dec 15, 2018 Max Rudolph rated it it was amazing

One of the best books I have read in the past couple of years.

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Mar 19, 2019 Pete Zilla rated it it was amazing

Shelves: america, artificial-intelligence-technology, geopolitics, iwc

A really phenomenal book on the brilliant mind and hidden hand behind US defense strategy who informed (and was sometimes ignored by) every president since Nixon.

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Sep 04, 2019 Ted Smith rated it liked it

A good look at some of the analytical issues involved with cold nuclear war, but I found myself frequently wanting more.

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Dec 19, 2020 Jeff rated it really liked it

A fascinating intellectual history of one of the most influential people almost no one has heard of. I look forward to an even more robust history after more of Mr. Marshall’s work has been declassified. I knocked a star off for some obvious editing errors.

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Sep 26, 2016 Chase Metcalf rated it it was amazing

Exceptional book recounting the important contribution of Mr Andrew Marshall and the development of NET Asessments. The story of a quiet but important strategist.

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Oct 26, 2015 Dave rated it liked it

Recommends it for: history nerds

This is a very weighty tome, and definitely not for the faint of heart. I was interested in this book, as it tracks many of the developments in the military-industrial complex, and think-tanks which carried America through the Cold War and into modernity.

I will admit having never heard of Andrew Marshall before - and this seems to be due to the nature of the man himself, rather than any failing on my part - and to be honest I had him slightly confused with George C Marshall of WW2 fame when I fi ...more

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Apr 21, 2016 Casey rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A good book about one of the preeminent "cold warriors." Though written by two of his 'acolytes,' which means repeated references to assessments Marshall got right when other institutions were wrong and few in the opposite direction, it does give a good overview of the intellectual basis of the latter years of strategic thinking in the Cold War as well as the genesis of the concept of a Revolution in Military Affairs. Though a bit cavalier on the inherent processes of National Security Decision ...more

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Oct 09, 2016 Yasuo Itoh rated it really liked it · review of another edition

米国がいかに戦争を勝ってきたか、その影の立役者の人物について語られる。戦争に勝つための多大な調査や分析、技術開発などを紹介している。人類というのは、生き残ることにかけては必死で、戦争を通じてさまざまな技術を産んできた。核技術だけではなく、組織の運営、オペレーション・リサーチ、統計学の発展など、昨今のビジネス書で解説されるものが、戦争のために産まれ、戦争のために利用されていることが分かる。冷戦中に、爆撃機を配備して、ソ連に高コストの防空体制を構築させたこと。米国は低予算で相手に大きな負担をさせることを目論むところなど、攻撃兵器を防衛手段にしたり、SDI構想（いわゆるスターウォーズ計画）が自国を守るというよりソ連に多大なお金を使わせる攻撃手段だったことなど、米国の当時の手の内を解説してくれる。確かに、ソ連は内部崩壊したが、それが米国の軍事戦略が成功した結果だったとは驚きである。本書で語られる話は、あくまでも公開できる範囲に留まる。現在の米国がパワーバランスについて考えている内容を知りたい。当然機密事項であるが、本書で公開されている内容から鑑みると、とてつもないことを考えていることだろう。何 ...more

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Jan 24, 2015 Lloyd Fassett marked it as to-read

Shelves: biography-and-memoir

1/24/14 The author looks like a powerhouse and most like carefully chose this subject. It sounds like it covers how large government institutions don't get along and try to harm each other. ...more

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