Vendor
	Fletcher Agency Melissa Chinchillo
Original language
English
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Reportage & collected journalism Globalization Politics & government

THREE DANGEROUS MEN

Seth Jones

Russia, China, and Iran in the Age of Political Warfare

A fascinating analysis of our fraught global moment, and a stark examination of how the free world’s adversaries are undermining western global power through political warfare.

The book's premise is that western global powers have become so good at conventional warfare that our principal state rivals – China, Russia, and Iran – have adopted political warfare as the means to undermine the broader world order, employing everything from cyber-attacks, to proxy forces, to special operations and intelligence units, to economic subversion, to propaganda and disinformation.

While some of that may be known to an educated readership, much of it is unknown to the West-- including the rate at which China, Russia and Iran are establishing their advantages. Seth Jones proposes a novel way of creating this picture, namely through the principal architects of the strategies pursued by rival powers: Russian Chief of the General Staff General Valery Gerasimov, Iran's Major General Qassim Suleimani, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp-Quds Force, and from China, Chen Zhou of the People’s Liberation Army’s Academy of Military Science.

In three short chapters (bookended by introductory and concluding chapters), Seth will detail the philosophies, ideologies, and experiences underlying the dominant strategic thoughts and actions of the actors committed to undoing the world order.

This will be a short (50,000 words) and highly provocative book, one that injects the author into the news cycle with a powerful indictment of the current foreign policy culture and climate in Trump’s Washington-- and one that hopefully generates a substantial and unique contribution to the 2020 US elections discussion and the global implications it will have.

Seth Jonesis the Harold Brown Chair and Director of the Transnational Threats Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), as well as the author of A Covert Action, In the Graveyard of Empires, and Hunting in the Shadows. He lives outside of Washington, DC.

World English Norton ∙ Japan representation Tuttle-Mori

Available products
Book Published 2021-09-01 by Norton

Comments

"Three Dangerous Men is a brilliantly conceived exposé of modern conflict through the lives of three warrior-innovators. Seth Jones dug deep into Russian, Iranian, and Chinese sources, and breaks new ground by portraying the evolution of irregular warfare, finally, in its proper cultural and historical context. An invaluable book."
--Thomas Rid, Johns Hopkins University, author of Active Measures

"Seth Jones is one of the world’s sharpest defense theorists. This is an invaluable guide to the coming era of geopolitical competition, which will largely take place off the traditional battlefield, and a timely warning that the United States is not doing enough to prevail against determined rivals."
--Hal Brands, Johns Hopkins University and American Enterprise Institute

"Seth Jones makes a compelling, riveting argument in Three Dangerous Men that the United States needs to reconsider significant aspects of the very concept of contemporary warfare…This is a must read for anyone seeking to understand the present-day challenges facing the US and our allies and partners around the world."
--General David Petraeus, US Army (Ret.) and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency

"This impeccably researched book explains how Russia, China, and Iran employ new technologies and irregular warfare tactics to avoid US strengths and exploit weaknesses. Three Dangerous Men is important because US leaders tend to mirror adversaries and define future war as they might prefer it to be. Seth Jones provides recommendations that will appeal to policy makers. General readers will appreciate the author’s use of anecdotes that are as entertaining as they are illuminating."
--H. R. McMaster, author of Dereliction of Duty and Battlegrounds

"Three Dangerous Men provides an unparalleled look at how Beijing, Moscow, and Tehran are competing with the United States—through their eyes. It is a cogently argued, well-researched, and elegantly written book on one of the US’s most important challenges ahead."
--General Michael Hayden, US Air Force (Ret.) and former director of the Central Intelligence Agency

A COVERT ACTION:
Polish / Post Factum

Disturbing accounts of three little-known figures in three rival governments working to make their nations great.

“Their main tools are not fighter jets, battle tanks, or even infantry soldiers,” writes international security expert Jones, “but hackers, spies, special operations forces, and private military companies with clandestine links to state security agencies.” Delving deeply into Russian, Persian, and Mandarin documents (a tactic that U.S. intelligence services largely neglect), the author focuses on Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russian chief of the general staff; Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani (d. 2020); and Gen. Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission. All have acknowledged that a hot war with America—in their minds an aggressive power seeking world domination—would be disastrous, and all learned from the expensive failures of the American strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan. They have also blamed U.S. subversion for the “color” revolutions that overthrew dictators across the Middle East. Gerasimov engineered the annexation of Crimea and crippled the infrastructure of Ukraine with cyberattacks, and he continues to spread turmoil in the U.S. via massive hacking and social media disinformation campaigns. America’s generous gift—invading Iraq—greatly helped Soleimani in his goal of making Iran the Middle East’s dominant power. American leaders heralded the 2020 drone attack that killed him as a great victory, but the U.S. has a long history of announcing victory in the region. Although representing a nation vastly more powerful than Russia or Iran, Zhang Youxia oversees a similarly intense campaign of propaganda, espionage, and economic warfare. An astute analyst of complex global affairs, Jones reminds us that the U.S. won the Cold War when populations in the Soviet Union and its satellites rose up against tyranny—and Americans officials encouraged them. Back then, the government invested in language skills and expertise to better understand the enemies and tempt their often restive citizens with the liberties and prosperity they lacked.

A discomfiting reminder that the brain is often mightier than the sword.
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