VOLUME XII, NUMBER 1, WINTER 2011/12

A Journal of Political Thought and Statesmanship

Algis David Valiunas: Pryce-Jones: David Foster Christopher Wallace Hitchens, RIP Colin Dueck: Michael How Nelson: Wars End Soldiers & Citizens Martha Bayles: Edward China Targets Feser: Hollywood Scientism’s Folly Robert P. George: Bradley Conservative C.S. Blitz Watson: e Law Diana School Racket Schaub: Malcolm X In Memoriam: Harold W. Rood

PRICE: $6.95 IN CANADA: $6.95 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

Essay by Michael Nelson Soldiers and Citizens

his year marks the 50th anniversa- Truman’s removal of Douglas MacArthur (a government, MacArthur pressed Truman for ry of two best-selling Cold War thrillers, real-life charismatic general) from command of permission to invade. In March 1951, after the Teach playing on growing public concern allied forces in the Korean War—and the ensu- president refused, the general wrote a letter to that civilian authorities would lose control ing political firestorm—were barely a decade old. House Republican leader Joe Martin praising a of the military. In Fail-Safe, Eugene Burdick In hindsight, everything about the contro- speech in which Martin argued that Chiang’s and based their fictional versy, which has received its best treatment in army should be unleashed to create “a second president’s loss of control on a combination of Michael D. Pearlman’s Truman and MacAr- front on China’s mainland.” Martin released technical failure and military Standard Oper- thur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor the letter and Truman fired MacArthur, a ating Procedures (SOP). The technical failure and Renown (2008), seems unlikely. Truman’s wildly unpopular decision that helped make the occurred when an attack order was mistak- intense study of history had disposed him to general the most admired man in the country. enly sent to an American bomber armed with defer to generals, not confront them. “Of all MacArthur did his best to translate the nuclear weapons and bound for Moscow; the the military heroes Hannibal and Lee were admiration of his countrymen into a presi- SOP required the pilot to ignore a presiden- to my mind the best,” he wrote in his diary in dential candidacy in 1952, but with little tial order to turn back, counterfeit commands 1934. “They won every battle [but] lost the war success. As Pearlman, a former professor of being just the sort of trick the Soviets would due to crazy politicians.” As head of the Senate history at the United States Army Command employ. Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bai- Special Committee to Investigate the National and General Staff College, Fort Leavenworth, ley II’s Seven Days in May offered an equally Defense Program during World War II, Tru- points out, there’s a reason some generals suc- nightmarish account, describing a plot by a man had focused on contractors rather than ceed in politics while others don’t. “Zachary charismatic air force general in league with generals, lest his legislative colleagues adopt Taylor, Ulysses Grant, and [Dwight] Eisen- the Joint Chiefs of Staff to seize power from the kibitzing style of the Civil War-era Joint hower were known for informality in dress the president, who had just negotiated a nu- Committee on the Conduct of the War. For his and manner along the lines of citizen-soldiers,” clear disarmament agreement with the Soviet part, MacArthur had little interest in defend- he writes. “They stood in stark contrast to Union. In 1964 the two novels were made ing South Korea. Seventeen months before generals not selected: Winfield Scott (“Old into well-crafted motion pictures, but both of North Korea invaded in June 1950, he wrote Fuss and Feathers”), George McClellan (“the them were overshadowed by yet another film that such an invasion would “force abandon- Young Napoleon”), or Douglas MacArthur, released that year: Dr. Strangelove, or How I ment of any pretense of military support.” The apparently too daunting to carry a national Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. general’s main interest was in protecting the nickname.” People admired MacArthur, but Dr. Strangelove had it all—the runaway bomb- Chinese island of Formosa against the main- nobody called him “Mac,” or even “Doug.” In er, the irreversible SOP, the out-of-control land’s new Communist regime, and in helping contrast, “GIs felt no qualms waving ‘Hi, Ike’ general—and was darkly funny to boot. the deposed government of Chiang Kai-Shek to a grinning five-star general waving back.” use Formosa as a base to regain power. Truman and MacArthur Ordered by the president to save South Military-Industrial Complex Korea from defeat, MacArthur engineered t’s hardly coincidence that these sto- the daring Inchon landing behind enemy lines isenhower’s two terms as president ries appeared and flourished when they did. and, with a green light from Truman, drove (he was elected in 1952 and reelected IAfter the Second World War, the new nucle- through North Korea toward China, provok- Ein 1956) should have allayed the ar age and the newly permanent standing army ing a massive Chinese counterattack. Seeing an worries about excessive military power that had made citizens nervous. President Harry S. opportunity to overthrow China’s Communist MacArthur’s popular defiance of Truman

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Books mentioned in this essay:

Fail-Safe, by Eugene Burdick and Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Known and Unknown: A Memoir, Harvey Wheeler. Harper Perennial, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs by Donald Rumsfeld. Sentinel, 288 pages, $14 (paper) of Staff, and the Lies That Led to 832 pages, $36 Vietnam, by H. R. McMaster. Seven Days in May, by Fletcher Harper Perennial, US Civil-Military Relations: Renegotiating Knebel and Charles W. Bailey II. 480 pages, $16.99 (paper) the Civil-Military Bargain, by Mackubin HarperCollins, 341 pages, out-of-print Thomas Owens. Continuum, 224 pages, America’s Army: Making the $95 (cloth), $22.95 (paper) Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, All-Volunteer Force, by Beth Bailey. and the Hunger for Honor and Renown, Harvard University Press, Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military by Michael D. Pearlman. Indiana 352 pages, $29.95 Politics of Strategic Assessment, by Risa A. University Press, 376 pages, $29.95 Brooks. Princeton University Press, Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil- 320 pages, $31.95 Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Military Gap and American Eisenhower and the Military-Industrial National Security, edited by Supreme Command: Soldiers, Complex, by James Ledbetter. Yale Peter D. Feaver and Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, University Press, 280 pages, $17 (paper) Richard H. Kohn. by Eliot A. Cohen. Anchor Books, MIT Press, 550 pages, $38 320 pages, $16 (paper) American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, Bridging the Military-Civilian Divide: Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the edited by Suzanne C. Nielsen and What Each Side Must Know about Privatized Military Industry, Don M. Snider. Johns Hopkins the Other—and about Itself, by by P.W. Singer. Cornell University Press, 432 pages, Bruce Fleming. Potomac Books, University Press, $67 (cloth), $36.95 (paper) 296 pages, $27.50 360 pages, $19.95 (paper)

had aroused. In addition to ending the war farewell address to warning “against the ac- military would almost feel that it was in Korea, Ike’s main goal as president was to quisition of unwarranted influence…by the their patriotic obligation to stand ready shrink defense spending, which comprised military-industrial complex,” an influence he to preserve the integrity of the nation 60% of the federal budget at the time he claimed “is felt in every city, every statehouse, and only God knows just what kind of took office. Congress’s seemingly uncritical every office of the federal government” and, segment of democracy they would be acceptance of every new proposed weapons consequently, may “endanger our liberties or defending…. Then, if there were a third system “distresses me greatly,” Eisenhower democratic processes.” Eisenhower was ex- Bay of Pigs, it could happen. said in 1949, while serving as president of pressing his ongoing frustration with waste- Columbia University, because it will “damage ful spending on expensive new armaments Second-Guessing the country financially and without adding that he thought did nothing to keep the na- to its defensive strength.” During his tenure tion secure. But his rhetoric far outstripped oncerns about too little civilian in the White House, Ike resisted pressure his intended meaning, calling to mind the control of the military ebbed during from his generals to intervene on behalf of specter of a military that, in combination Cthe 1960s presidencies of Kennedy France in Indochina, and from Democrats to with major corporations, might seize control and his successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, but only close what he knew was an imaginary “missile of the government. temporarily. Kennedy brought in Robert Mc- gap” with the . He fumed at In 1962 the founders of the newly formed Namara as secretary of defense to microman- aviation companies like Boeing and General Students for a Democratic Society joined the age the armed services, adopting quantitative Dynamics that lobbied for expensive new authors of Fail Safe and Seven Days in May in techniques borrowed from his work in the air weapons, at retired officers for joining their reading Ike’s speech this way. As Ledbetter force during World War II and subsequently ranks, and at Congress for succumbing to shows, SDS’s founding manifesto, the Port at the Ford Motor Company. As Columbia their blandishments. “Increasingly,” writes Huron Statement, invoked Eisenhower as professor Richard K. Betts James Ledbetter, editor of Reuters.com, in a prophet foretelling “cataclysm, the general writes in his chapter in Suzanne C. Nielsen Unwarranted Influence: Dwight D. Eisenhower militarization of American society.” And in and Don M. Snider’s well-crafted anthology and the Military-Industrial Complex (2011), summer 1962, President John F. Kennedy, American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier “in 1958 and 1959, he became frustrated who had read Seven Days in May, speculated and the State in a New Era (2009), “Tensions and annoyed at the incompetence, disloyalty, to his friend Red Fay that a military takeover simmered close to the boiling point…when a and outright insubordination he perceived “is possible”: youthful president, a technocratic secretary of among military officials ostensibly under his defense, and a brashly confident clique of de- command.” If there were another Bay of Pigs, the fense intellectuals came to manage a military It was in this context that Eisenhower reaction of the country would be, “Is establishment led by officers who had already chose to devote much of his January 17, 1961, he too young and inexperienced?” The been generals in World War II.” When the

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Vietnam War—a civilian initiative—heated During his two terms in office pay and ben- services. This was partly because of their dis- up in mid-decade, McNamara and Lyndon efits rose dramatically, the army launched its respect for Clinton—“the pot-smoking, draft- Johnson famously leaned over the generals’ brilliant “Be All You Can Be” campaign (“one dodging, skirt-chasing commander-in-chief,” shoulders to second-guess their choice of ap- of the great advertising slogans of the twenti- in the intemperate words of one air force propriate bombing targets. In Dereliction of eth century,” writes Bailey), and by 1992 only general—and their fury when one of his first Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the 2% of enlistees lacked high school degrees. acts as president was to order, without con- Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to “The army offered more opportunity to racial sultation, the integration of gays and lesbians Vietnam (1997), H.R. McMaster, an award- minorities and to women than almost any seg- into the military. Powell, backed by Congress, winning teacher at West Point, blasted Mc- ment of civilian society”—not, Bailey notes, stared down the president, delaying integra- Namara and Johnson for bullying the Joint because of “notions of social good,” but rather tion for nearly two decades, and even then Chiefs of Staff and, even more severely, took in pursuit of “its primary mission…national only after intense discussion up and down the chiefs to task for allowing themselves to defense.” Contemporary liberal critics like the ranks. be bullied. Representative Charles Rangel of New York Clinton was a Democrat, too, and the of- Apprehensions about the dangers of un- get it wrong, she shows, when they argue that ficer corps was becoming increasingly Repub- accountable military power revived in a new wars are now fought on the backs of the poor lican. As Betts points out in his chapter in form with the election of Richard Nixon in and members of minority groups. Because the Nielsen-Snider volume, the military has 1968. Less than three weeks before Election most poor people can’t meet the army’s quali- long been disproportionately Southern and Day, Nixon proposed abolishing the draft fication standards, “America’s army—even its conservative. What changed during the late that had prevailed since the eve of World War enlisted ranks—is fairly solidly middle class.” 20th century was that the Democratic Party II and replacing it with an all-volunteer army. And of those dying in Iraq, “a disproportion- became an uncongenial home to Southern Nixon’s purpose was political—public sup- ate majority, 2,106 [out of 2,825 by April conservatives, and uniformed officers fled to port for the draft had waned as both cause 2008], were white.” the GOP as part of the general migration. On and consequence of declining support for the Even as the all-volunteer army took solid top of that, officers bitterly associated anti- war in Vietnam—but as Beth Bailey, a pro- root in the 1980s, the stage was being set for a war protests with the failure in Vietnam, and fessor of history at Temple University, shows new wave of concern about the adequacy of ci- anti-war protesters with the Democrats. in her excellent America’s Army: Making the vilian control of the military. This concern per- Even when Democratic politicians learned All-Volunteer Force (2009), the idea had deep vades Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn’s their lesson and started praising the military, intellectual roots among free-market econo- Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap they did so with a tin ear, which is one reason mists like Milton Friedman and Martin An- and American National Security (2001). The why a recent survey of 4,000 army officers by derson. Their argument, which Anderson October 1983 terrorist slaughter of 241 Ma- Major Heidi Urben found that self-identified brought into the White House as a young rines and naval personnel, camped on the tar- Republicans outnumber Democrats in the of- Nixon aide, was that the government should mac of the airport in Beirut, Lebanon, as part ficer corps by 60% to 18%. “When liberals try build an army not by forcing young people to of an ill-conceived peacekeeping deployment, to ‘defend the troops’ by insisting that troops serve, but by making pay and benefits so at- revived all of the military’s post-Vietnam re- not be sent in harm’s way,” argues Bruce Flem- tractive that they would want to. One power- sentment of vague civilian-imposed missions ing, a professor in the U.S. Naval Academy's ful fear that advocates had to overcome was with inadequate resources. The result was the English Department, in his sparkling Bridging that “an all-volunteer force would be alienated 1984 Weinberger Doctrine (after Reagan’s the Military-Civilian Divide: What Each Side from civilian society, thus undermining civil- secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger) Must Know about the Other—and about Itself ian control of the military and increasing the which held that the United States should only (2010), “they’re almost always surprised by the likelihood of a coup d’etat.” But so deep was commit force, in overwhelming numbers, to troops’ apparent insistence that they want to the unpopularity of the draft on the antiwar carry out clearly defined missions in which be in harm’s way. That’s what they trained for, Left, the libertarian Right, and, in Nixon’s vital national interests are at stake and for after all. At least they don’t want to be defend- case, the rough political center, that it yielded which there is “reasonable assurance” of pub- ed by liberals. It makes them seem weak.” In rather easily to the new All-Volunteer Force lic and congressional support—the opposite, 1999, an extensive survey of military officers (AVF) in 1973. in every particular, of the Beirut deployment. by the Triangle Institute for Security Stud- Colin Powell, when serving as Joint Chiefs’ ies (the basis for much of the Feaver-Kohn The All-Volunteer Era chairman in the early 1990s, added “clear exit collection and generally confirmed by Major strategy” to Weinberger’s criteria, and jour- Urben’s more recent survey) found that a ma- he avf has turned out to be a great nalists called it the Powell Doctrine. jority of officers believed that it had become success, so much so that no one calls it Reagan generally respected the Wein- the duty of senior military leaders to “insist”— Tthe AVF anymore; it’s just “the army.” berger-Powell restraints, and President Bush not just “advise” or “advocate,” much less “be But it took a while to get on its feet. By the end followed them to the letter when sending neutral”—that civilian leaders defer to them of the 1970s, Bailey writes, “Quality, as mea- half a million troops to drive the Iraqi army on matters like “setting rules of engagement,” sured by test scores and high school gradua- out of Kuwait (and no more) in 1991, win- “developing an ‘exit strategy,’” “ensuring that tion rates, was plummeting…. Re-enlistment ning kudos from the military. In planning clear political and military goals exist,” and rates were poor,” and more than one third of Operation Desert Storm, Bush later wrote, “deciding what kinds of military units (air ver- enlistees did not even complete their initial “I did not want to repeat the problems of the sus naval, heavy versus light) will be used to three-year commitment. In 1980 army chief (or numerous wars through- accomplish all tasks.” of staff Edward “Shy” Meyer publicly lament- out history), where the political leaderships But the tension between Clinton and the ed that the United States had a “hollow army.” meddled with military operations.” armed services wasn’t all personal and parti- It took President Ronald Reagan, elected Bill Clinton’s election in 1992, in contrast, san. The end of the Cold War in 1990, by re- later that year, to turn the situation around. was highly unpopular among the uniformed moving the military’s sole, near-half century-

Claremont Review of Books w Winter 2011/12 Page 52 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm long mission of deterring Soviet aggression, mass on the battlefield.” The president and plan was developed before February 2003 gave presidents a freer hand both to deploy defense secretary’s “vision,” writes Risa A. and not completed until April, a full month troops in local or regional conflicts (as Bush Brooks, assistant professor of political science after the war began and even then it was only did in Panama and Somalia and Clinton did at Northwestern University, in Shaping Strat- ‘power point deep.’” Why? Because the mili- in Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo) and to assign egy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic As- tary prefers fighting wars to peacekeeping and them a wider variety of peacekeeping and sessment (2008), “posed a direct challenge to nation-building, and because Rumsfeld, like humanitarian assignments. In place of the the army’s organizational concept of how war the rest of the Bush Administration, assumed Weinberger-Powell doctrine, the army was should be fought: with lighter forces more re- that when Saddam was gone, Iraq would sort charged with multiple MOOTWs—Mili- liant on technology than boots on the ground, itself out. tary Operations Other Than War—a term versus with heavy reliance on ground forces In November 2006, after nearly four years that by itself reflects the military’s dislike of and mass armies.” of insurrectionary chaos in Baghdad and its them. “Between 1991 and 1999 alone,” Darrel Rumsfeld and Bush appeared to be vindi- environs, Bush fired Rumsfeld and launched W. Driver, a fellow at the Council on Foreign cated after 9/11, when they brushed aside Joint the “surge”: 20,000 additional troops on a Relations, observes in his chapter in American Chiefs’ chairman Hugh Shelton’s claim that it newly-defined counterinsurgency mission Civil-Military Relations, “the United States would take months to ramp up an invasion of to “clear and secure neighborhoods” and undertook fifty-four operations for such pur- Afghanistan. Instead they worked with Gen. then “protect the population.” “To an extent poses as drug interdiction, restoring domestic Tommy Franks, the head of the U.S. Central unmatched since Abraham Lincoln issued order, peacekeeping, infrastructure develop- Command (CENTCOM), and Central In- the Emancipation Proclamation during the ment, disaster relief, and rescuing foreign na- telligence Agency director George Tenet to Civil War,” Owens writes, “President Bush tionals, along with traditional combat opera- insert a small number of CIA and military assumed responsibility for the strategy and tions.” Meanwhile, the collapse of the evil em- special forces operatives backed by precision conduct of the war.” Bush found his Grant in pire was leading Congress to shrink the army air power—and lots of cash to buy support counterinsurgency maestro David Petraeus, from 785,000 to 480,000—more missions; as would President Barack Obama later when fewer soldiers to execute them. he charged the general to bring order to Af- A recent survey of army ghanistan, which had grown equally chaotic. The War on Terror officers found that self- A Careful Balance vidence that civil-military tensions identified Republicans were more than a matter of hostility to ivil-military relations is one of EClinton in particular and Democrats outnumber Democrats those things that a country has to get in general came after the election of George in the officer corps by Cright. Too strong a military creates at W. Bush in 2000. To be sure, Bush had cam- least a potential threat to the regime, and too paigned on the theme that the military was 60% to 18%. weak a military exposes the nation to invasion. underfunded and stretched too thin. Officers Without meaning to, Brooks’s book shows listened to this general expression of sympa- how hard getting the relationship right can thy rather than to his September 1999 speech from local warlords. Their approach to the be. Focusing just on “strategic assessment”— at the Citadel: “Our military is still organized spring 2003 war in Iraq, similar in spirit, ap- “the process through which relations between more for Cold War threats than for the chal- peared equally successful at first. Bush asked a state’s political goals/strategies and military lenges of the new century—for industrial-age for a plan, the generals responded with what strategies/activities are evaluated and decid- operations, rather than information-age bat- Rumsfeld calls “Desert Storm on Steroids,” ed”—she offers eight case studies from the tles…. Our forces in the next century must be and back and forth they went before agree- past century. Brooks rates just one example— agile, lethal, readily deployable, and require ing on an invasion force of about 200,000 that Great Britain from 1902 to 1914—as com- a minimum of logistical support.” Donald was clearly more than sufficient to topple Sad- pletely successful. Even then the success last- Rumsfeld, Bush’s secretary of defense, has dam. When it came to defeating the enemy’s ed only until the outbreak of the Great War been faulted by critics and former colleagues army, the “unequal dialogue”—Eliot Cohen’s and the emergence of cracks in the civilian for selectively recounting events in his Known term—between civilian and military leaders governing coalition, which tipped the balance and Unknown: A Memoir (2011). But Rums- seemed to be working. As rendered in Cohen’s from the civilian-led “unequal dialogue” she feld gets at least one thing right: the “Revo- Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and basically favors to the strategy driven by the lution in Military Affairs” that he launched Leadership in Wartime (2003), unequal dia- generals: a disastrous war of attrition along immediately on taking office in 2001—to the logue is “a dialogue, in that both sides express the western front. “harrumphing, protest, and consternation” of views bluntly, indeed, sometimes offensively, Complicating matters further, especially the military—was Bush’s policy as well as his and not once but repeatedly,” but it’s unequal in the contemporary United States, is the re- own. “in that the final authority of the civilian lead- cent and increasing reliance on civilian con- “Rumsfeld took his marching orders on er is unambiguous and unquestioned.” tractors to perform traditional military tasks, transformation from the president,” Macku- The problem in both Afghanistan and, es- which is the subject of P.W. Singer’s seminal bin Thomas Owens, Professor of National pecially, Iraq was that neither party to this Corporate Warriors: The Rise of the Privatized Security Affairs at the U.S. Naval War Col- dialogue was much interested in discussing Military Industry (2007). Although most of lege, rightly observes in his thoughtful and what would happen after the wars were won. what these contractors do involves the logis- comprehensive US Civil-Military Relations: In Iraq, Owens points out, “while CENT- tics of keeping an army in the field—food, Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain (2011). COM spent eighteen months, beginning in construction, sanitation, transport, electric “A transformed military would substitute in- November 2001, on the war plan for MCOs supply, and the like—the scope of contractor formation, speed, and flexibility of action for [Major Combat Operations], no real postwar assignments in post-occupation Iraq swelled

Claremont Review of Books w Winter 2011/12 Page 53 mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm to include “the training of the post-Saddam ley McChrystal, was fired from command riors with full-time civilian occupations. Even police, paramilitary, and army” and even of coalition forces in Afghanistan because of when deployed, phone calls, e-mails, and nu- shooting assignments like “convoy escort and indiscreet comments some of his aides made merous forms of social media keep soldiers in protection of key bases, offices, and facilities about Vice President Joseph Biden and other closer touch with their civilian lives than any from rebel attack.” administration officials in earshot of a Rolling army in history. These facts alone are reason The consequences of relying on private con- Stone reporter. enough to ignore Time magazine’s alarmist tractors, the National Security Fellow at the That said, the tense relationship between November 21, 2011, “An Army Apart” cover Brookings Institution observes, are political military and civilian authorities during the story, with its dire warning that “the mili- as well as military (and economic: the typi- 1990s and 2000s did not lead to anything tary community” has become “a garrison cul- cal contract employee, whose value is based resembling insubordination—any more than ture” that is “drifting away from mainstream on training received while in uniform, is paid Truman’s firing of MacArthur or Eisenhow- American society.” double or more what the army pays). When er’s warning about the military-industrial Among those officers and soldiers who do Clinton sent troops to the Balkans, contract- complex did. During the Clinton years, an choose the military as their profession, the fi- ing out logistics meant not having to take unpopular president (at least as commander- delity to civilian control is perhaps greatest. Ev- the controversial step of calling up National in-chief) “prevailed most of the time,” writes ery year or so, as a guest speaker in West Point’s Guard and Reserve units. By 2007 in Iraq, Owens, successfully mandating “the involve- introductory American government course (a a defense department study showed, what ment of the military in ‘constabulary’ op- course required of all cadets), I am struck anew seemed like 160,000 American troops— erations (the Balkans and Haiti), substantial by how much more time they spend studying a barely sustainable figure from a political force structure cuts, the loss of several weap- the importance of civilian control of the mili- standpoint—was really 340,000 when con- ons systems, and the opening of many mili- tary than students do in my own intro course at tract employees were counted. When Obama tary specialties to women, all contrary to the Rhodes College. Eventually it occurred to me pulled out the last army unit from Iraq in preferences of the military establishment.” that one of the reasons I and other professors December 2011, about 16,000 Americans re- Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, faced at civilian colleges can pass over this subject so mained: 2,000 from the state department and grumbling from the military over his embrace lightly is that the West Point faculty do not. 14,000 contract employees. As Singer argues, of Rumsfeld’s Revolution in Military Af- And the lesson they impart extends beyond “If an operation cannot deploy without priva- fairs and Iraq war plan. In deciding to hasten the classroom. It is prominently displayed on tized assistance because it lacks both public the pace of withdrawal from Afghanistan in the wall of one of the loveliest and most-traf- and congressional support, then perhaps the June 2011, Obama overruled Petraeus, after ficked spots on post, Constitution Corner. Ti- original rationale deserves further debate.” In which the general gritted his teeth, publicly tled “Loyalty to the Constitution,” the central other words, counting the cost should mean saluted, and even joined the administration plaque on the wall reads: counting the real cost. as CIA director. One could reasonably argue These caveats aside, it’s worth celebrating that the civilians were wrong and the military The United States boldly broke with that no one is writing (or, perhaps more accu- was right about any or all of these decisions. the ancient military custom of swear- rately, reaching the bestseller lists with) Seven But there’s no denying that they were made in ing loyalty to a leader. Article VI re- Days in May- and Fail Safe-style dystopias to- proper constitutional fashion. quired that American officers thereaf- day. Sure, the military has ways of making its ter swear loyalty to our basic law, the occasional unhappiness with civilian control Obeying the Law Constitution. felt, most of them of the passive-aggressive While many nations have suffered variety. Examples that come up in several of n truth, lots of things keep even the military coups, the United States never these books include the army’s deciding not to professional military created by the All- has. Our American code of military teach counterinsurgency warfare after Viet- IVolunteer Force from becoming an aggres- obedience requires that should orders nam, hoping to deny civilian decision-makers sive, invasive tumor within the body politic. In and the law ever conflict, our officers that option; and the 2006 “revolt of the gen- their chapter in the Nielsen-Snider volume, must obey the law. erals” (more precisely, ex-generals channel- David R. Segal and Karen DeAngelis point ing many serving generals’ opinion) calling out that “the average length of service of all Words for civilians to sleep well by. on Rumsfeld to resign for what former gen- American military personnel is only about ten eral Barry McCaffrey describes in American years”—an important chunk of an adult life, Michael Nelson is the Fulmer Professor of Politi- Civil-Military Relations as “arrogance, disin- but not necessarily the dominant one. Nearly cal Science at Rhodes College and a senior fellow genuous behavior, and misjudgments.” More half of the uniformed personnel in Iraq, they at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center of recently, an Obama favorite, General Stan- note, were reservists—that is, part-time war- Public Affairs.

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