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Tim Hamlett

A Soldier's Way by Colin Powell with Joseph Persico, Hutchison $240.

WHEN General Colin Powell was writing this book he was a potential presidential candidate. After he finished it he decided not to run. From the reader's point of view this is the wrong order.

  Even in its publishing details this book is designed to appeal to the largest possible crowd. The American edition was called My American Journey. My review copy is of the English edition, designed to appeal to military buffs and adorned with the author in full war paint; the Hong Kong version has a different cover.

  A similar delicacy extends to matters of race and politics. There is an evident desire to be all things to all men. I beg your pardon, all people. Powell sees both sides of every issue. If there is a fence available, he will sit on it.

  Readers hoping for a personal glimpse of the Man Who Would Not Be President will be daunted by the acknowledgements.

  Besides 'Joe', who did the actual writing, we have an editor, 11 people who 'read the book and provided comments', several political and military heavyweights among them, plus the immediate Powell family who did the same. Numerous people who 'helped with the research' seem from a rough count to number 90.

  The result of their united labours was then edited again (lap-top, deck-chair, Jamaican beach) by Harold Evans. They do look after you at Random House.

  The result is in many ways an admirable book: nice design, crisp and accurate prose style, thoughtful pictures. But this is an approach suited to the production of defence White Papers or European farm policies. Somewhere amid all the industry the voice of an individual, identifiable author gets largely lost.

  Powell is a man of acute observation and ready wit. He might have written a better book if he had done it for the pleasure of the thing.

  That does not mean in any way that this effort is without interest. The basic outline of the story is well-known: Powell was brought up in New York - his parents were immigrants from Jamaica - and joined the ranks unfashionably through the ROTC at the City College of New York.

  After progressing briskly through the military foothills, he was picked out by the post-Vietnam War military reformers. A spell as a White House fellow provided a grounding in politics, and led to long spells in Washington, in increasingly senior posts, culminating in service as National Security Adviser and later as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this last capacity he featured strongly in coverage of the Gulf War.

  Powell became a sort of combination of the soldiers' politician and the politician's soldier. He had a close-up view of late Carter, the whole of Reagan, most of Bush and the early months of Clinton.

  None of his conclusions are tremendously new and some of them are distinctly time-worn. No doubt the invasion of Grenada had its good points but was it really motivated by a desire to rescue a group of medical students?   Still, there are plenty of fascinating details here. Readers familiar with the British, or Hong Kong, systems of government, where institutions continue more or less unchanged through successions of changing faces, will be amazed at the amount of administrative structure which is re-invented by each new American president and his team.

  Powell's career itself is something of an oddity. The personal policies of modern armies tend to look strange to civilian eyes because they are dominated by the need to get men qualified and in command of armoured divisions while they are still young enough for the mental and physical rigours of this demanding form of warfare.

  This may justify a certain haste, but all Powell's active postings still look extremely short. As a result his combat credentials are actually quite skimpy.

  He did seven months as an 'adviser' in South Vietnam, cut short by a minor wound, and a 12-month tour later in staff job. This may be sufficient to justify the claim to have 'paid my dues' but it leaves you wondering later in the book when arguments break out about the dangers of using American forces abroad.

  This is a man who never actually had to order Americans to go out and die on his instructions. The way of the warrior, as Musashi did not write, is the resolute acceptance of desk.

  One must in fairness add that Powell frequently recalls with evident sincerity his remembered desire to spend more time in real soldiering and his fears that excessive time in political circles would discredit him with the military.

  Clearly one of his strengths as a Washington operator was the fact that he was doing with some reluctance a job he had been asked to do, not one he had connived and schemed to get.

  Another, I suppose, is that he is black, a rare commodity in Republican administrations with few faces to show for their supposed commitment to colour-blindness.

  This is a delicate topic on which outsiders tread at their peril but Powell's position is interesting. Growing up in a part of New York populated entirely by 'minorities' of one persuasion or another he did not encounter hard-core racism until quite late.

  He reiterates a sensible determination to ensure that this was a problem for other people, not for him, and takes evident pride in the fact that the US Army - still a segregated force 50 years ago - offers a career open to talent.

  He maintains a politic refusal to express any preferences between different strategies for black advancement. And one name which does not appear at all in this book is that of Clarence Thomas.

  There is an evident anxiety, though, about how he is considered by fellow blacks, as one who accepted the salt of Republican administrations not noted for their commitment to minority rights.

  And we step delicately round the question whether it is possible simultaneously to say that we cherish our differences but expect them to be ignored by others.

  Another question left unexplored is raised quite early in the book, by a long list of Jamaican relatives who have 'made good' in American society.

  It seems that second-generation Jamaican immigrants move onward and upward much like their predecessors from other origins.

  But if this is possible, it seems to imply that the problem for other African-Americans is not white resistance to people with the wrong skin colour. If that is not the problem, what is?   Connoisseurs of military policy will find Powell articulate, though not perhaps terribly profound. This is not a criticism: as Wavell said the principles of warfare are simple; the execution is the problem. Clausewitz is quoted four times, Sun Tzu (currently considered a bit unscrupulous) not at all.

  The nearest thing to a strongly-expressed opinion is Powell's distaste for politically-flavoured, limited operations involving 'a presence on the ground' or other such ill-formed notions. No doubt this is a well-earned rebuke to White House amateurs.

  His enthusiasm for the 'Weinberger guidelines', or something like them, may be overdone. It is all very well to say that war should only be made when everyone agrees, when vital interests are at stake, when overwhelming force can be applied and so on.

  This amounts to saying that war should only be made in ideal circumstances for generals. History suggests that this may be a bit more than the real world can regularly supply.

  Readers will like General Powell, and will find this a happy book. Its basic theme is a life well-spent by a man doing what he wanted to do and doing it well.

  The book does not shed much light on the 'to run or not to run' question. Apparently Mrs Powell has strong views on the matter but there is nothing of them here.

  You can't help suspecting that someone made a realistic calculation that the number of Americans who would vote for a black candidate because of his colour was a good deal smaller, post-OJ, than the number who would vote against him for the same reason.

  A narrow escape. We could have had as the most powerful man in the English-speaking world someone who cannot pronounce 'Colin' properly.



Soldier of good fortune