Army Intelligence Officer's Travels in LOOKING for TROUBLE

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE: ADVENTURES IN A BROKEN WORLD, Ralph Peters, 2008, Stackpole Books, 339pp

After reading a book that collects former Army officer Ralph Peters' insightful columns, I turned to this book of travel stories told from an ex-intelligence officer's point of view and did not regret it.

Looking for Trouble is an account of Peters' travels, and the unusual characters he met while traveling with his buddy in the crumbling Soviet Union during it's final year, negotiating with a Burmese warlord and drug dealer who serenaded his private party as the world's worst Elvis impersonator accompanying his karaoke machine, a first-hand look at Pakistan where the British-trained military is gradually being replaced by unsophisticated, homegrown officers who have an extremely ill-informed view of the way the world works thanks to a gutted education system and a diet of anti-Western rhetoric, a visit to the Kashmir's dangerous no man's land that separates the Pakistani and Indian military.

There are amusing as well as poignant anecdotes from Peters' travels and scattered throughout are Holy Crud Nuggets of information about the countries we find ourselves involved with these days.

He credits Russian women with having kept the Soviet system afloat with her unfailing toil and dedication...from the woman attendant who refused a tip at the Moscow home of Anton Chekhov to the ubiquitous floor matrons keeping watch on the comings of goings at hotels... while her Russian male counterpart is characterized as constantly drunk and indolent. In a similar vein, Peters observes that Pakistan will always be second-rate, despite its ambitions, because it refuses to allow half of its citizens to participate in the economy, demanding that they, instead, stay at home.

There's a touching story about a wordless scenario that played out on the streets of Tashkent in Uzbekistan. A young couple is confronted by a flower peddler. Peters watches as the young man searches his pockets for meager earnings and his girlfriend pulls at him, knowing he can't afford the flowers for her, obviously urging him to let it go, she doesn't need flowers. Nevertheless, he scrounges up some change and presents her a bouquet. She looks up from the blooms with a smile that brings to her plain features, says Peters, "a beauty to break immortal hearts." As the couple walked by, her face was proudly titled back and she was crying.

When Peters and friends drove through the backcountry of the southeastern Soviet Union, they brought back a report gained by first-hand observation of conditions in Ukraine and various small countries south of there with names only a Scrabble player could enjoy.

Back in Washington, Peters finds his report on his latest trip through Gorbachev's Societ Union rejected out-of-hand because the invaluable first-hand information didn't come through satellite, where the Defense Department was sinking all its funds. DoD was uninterested in what in the trade is referred to as Human Intelligence.

There's a lot of wide-ranging stories and observations from the Soviet Union, Pakistan, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, and other hotspots that makes for great reading. Pick it up.