Americans, too, must keep in mind that our foes are always “going to school” on us and are developing and running their own covert-action playbooks. Riedel reminds readers that Russian president Vladimir Putin notoriously lamented in his 2005 state-of-the-nation address that the fall of the Soviet Union was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.” Putin today is running his own hybrid covert-action playbook against the West, wielding Russian paramilitary, military and intelligence operatives in Ukraine. These alarming developments should be a siren call for students, scholars, practitioners and informed citizens to think anew about covert action as an instrument of American statecraft. They would be well rewarded by turning the pages of Bruce Riedel’s fine book What We Won.

Richard L. Russell is Non-Resident Senior Fellow for Strategic Studies at the Center for the National Interest.

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