March 13, 2003
DISMAL PERFORMANCE:
Command Performances: The civilian-military conflict over the conduct of war: a review of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen (Michael Young, April 2003, Reason)Cohen is right that sensible societies shouldn't trust generals to navigate the myriad curvatures of war without civilian oversight. But since he provides no absolute canon to guide ordinary leaders (nor can such a canon really exist), his argument in favor of civilian dominance can easily backfire when politicians fail to grasp their limitations. Cohen effectively leaves his readers with one of two approaches when assessing the wartime legacy of civilian leaders. Readers can either assume that the outcome of a war justified the means used or argue, as Tolstoy did in War and Peace, that since war is a game of infinite variables, leaders are mere cogs in an unfathomable machine. The utilitarian argument is hopelessly biased in favor of the victors; the Tolstoyan outlook explains why strict guidelines of behavior are impossible.Nor does one get much illumination in a chapter titled "Leadership Without Genius." Cohen uses the sorry outcome in Vietnam to conclude that the Johnson administration's management of that war was an example of how civilian leadership shouldn't have acted. He concludes that the problem in Vietnam was not that the civilians tied the military down -- a spurious indictment resurrected by conservatives to rationalize America's defeat -- but that they didn't tie the military down enough to provide the bewildered armed forces with a clear sense of direction and priorities.
This assessment raises a question: If leaders err when failing adequately to counterbalance their military establishments, might not an uninspired leader's excessive prying also bring a military venture to disaster? It is not just the manner of overseeing war that a leader must consider but also the tactical excellence of his oversight. Despite brief involvement in the Blackhawk War, Lincoln wasn't a military man. But he intuitively grasped that the Union’s priority was the destruction of the Confederate army, not the capture of Richmond. In contrast, Hitler's rerouting of two Panzer groups around Moscow in July 1941 delayed a German attack against the Soviet capital, allowing the Red Army to regroup. Cohen provides no overarching rule allowing us to say why Lincoln was right and Hitler wrong, except that one won and the other lost his war. [...]
To be fair, Cohen never assumes infallibility in his subjects. But once one evokes the potential for fallibility, an obvious question arises: How will the book's lessons be applied in the martial age of George W. Bush? In a jacket blurb, William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard, recommends the president read Cohen's book. What the neocons want Bush to learn is that it’s up to him and his civilian aides, not the brass hats, to set the pace in the Middle East, particularly Iraq.
Fair enough. But the successful civilian wartime leader is the one who has a clear sense of his political objectives. With Bush, the only certainty is his yearning to fight. It's hard to tell what the administration's long-term aims in Iraq might be. Indeed, it is apparent that a possible Iraq war is different things to different officials. Some see it solely as a means of getting rid of Saddam, while others ponder reshaping the entire Middle East. Bush has united his advisers through his vagueness, while also allowing them diverse readings of what should come next in the Gulf, ignoring his own role as the paramount unifier of purpose.
Cohen probably would not accept this abdication as an example of suitable leadership. Bush, in his inability to define persuasive and coherent aims in Iraq for the American public and, perhaps more important, for his own armed forces (who are preparing to elect Tommy Franks as a successor to Saddam), has failed to do what even leaders without genius must.
One is reminded of Ravi Shankar's retort at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh when the public applauded what they thought was a sitar improvisation: "Thank you. If you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you'll enjoy the playing more." Many are applauding Bush's tuning, confusing it with the performance. Yet nothing indicates he really knows the tune in Iraq.
Mr. Young better not give up his day job, because this bit of military analysis is fatuous He seems to have no comprehension of the difference between fighting an internal insurrection and a war with a sovereign nation. Lincoln had to defeat the Confederate army so that they couldn't fight a continuing guerilla war. Hitler could have dealt a death blow to the Soviets by capturing or destroying their capital and their political leadership (as could America have later in the war). America dispatched the Viet Cong rather decisively, but our political leaders failed to finish off the victory by carrying the war to the North Vietnamese and the Soviets. You have to beat rebels in detail, but you can defeat a nation just by effecting regime change--what's so complicated?
So we turn to Iraq and what is Mr. Bush's goal: regime change. What uncertainty and confusion is Mr. Young talking about?
Posted by Orrin Judd at March 13, 2003 4:18 PMHe also smears Bush: "With Bush, the only certainty is his yearning to fight." He could also tell the administrations long-term aims in Iraq just by listening to them -- democracy, freedom, an end to the sponsorship of terrorism and destruction of WMD.
Posted by: pj at March 13, 2003 4:34 PMEasy answer to why Hitler was wrong:
He divided his forces and went after the oil in the Caucasus(sp?) instead of going after the remaining Russian forces or achieving the much lesser objective occupying Moscow.
And Lincoln wanted to defeat the Confederate armies since he realised that mere occupation of cities wouldn't amount to much given the vastness of Southern territory.
And I suppose America lost in Vietnam as their brass never realised the difference between fighting a large-scale guerilla campaign and warfare against an industrial nation. Although why they didn't at least occupy North Vietnamese cities is beyond me.
They should have listened more to the Marines like Krulak.
M. Choudhury;
I'm not sure I agree. I think that Hitler's mistake was actually twofold:
1) He dithered about the war aims. The decision of the Caucaus vs. Moscow was made and unmade. So instead of achieving just one he achieved neither. Had he picked one from the start and stuck with it the Germans may well have succeeded. I don't think that the drive for the oil in the Caucus was fundamentally mistaken. Note that Lincoln did this - his war aim was constant from the start.
2) Hitler's intervention was much more tactical than Lincoln's. A goal of "kill the soldiers" is a fine, strategic goal that should be provided by civilian leadership. "Move these panzer groups here instead of there" is not.
pj:
Those are nice post-war dreams, but they're not how the war will be won.
Ali/AOG:
The Caucasus would have been his for the taking if he dispatched Moscow first.
Ali:
Vietnam was both: we beat the Cong but failed to fight either the North or the Soviets on their own territory.
AOG:
You're right about Hitler wanting both and achieving neither although I kind of alluded to it when I wrote about him dividing his forces.
In retrospect Hitler could have easily gotten the oil he needed by ignoring Turkish neutrality and flinging a few Panzer groups towards the Middle East.
Actually, Hitler could not have done much
better than he did. He simply did not have
enough men to control Russia.
His panzers surrounded millions of Soviet
troops, but a great many simply walked back
east to fight again. There were not enough
infantry to corral them. Infantry is still the
Queen of Battle, as Bush I learned to his
chagrin in 1991.
For the same reason, trumped, the U.S. could
not have successfully invaded the USSR in 1945
or at any other time.
We lost in Vietnam because nobody in S.
Vietnam was interested in what we said we
were interested in. The idea that the US,
stretched to keep its own roads open in the
South, with its 17 million people, could have
conquered the north is fantasy.
We could have, but not with 200 battalions
(the most we committed) or 400. 800 might
have done it, assuming the Chicoms did not
come in. That's a pretty big assumption
By the way, I have just finished Henry Gole's
turgid but interesting little book, "Road to
Rainbow," which explains where the strategic
ideas that won World War II originated.
At the Army War College.
The best review I've seen of this Cohen is the one I blogged here
.
Holy mackeral -- the comments are in the right order! When did this wonderful development take place?
I will now be visiting more often.
Harry:
Hitler didn't need to control Russia, just topple the communists and install a more pliant government then take the oil he wanted. Your point about control though is the reason we could have stayed out of WWII and the Cold War--let the Nazis and or the Soviets overextend themselves and they crumble on their own.
Having entered WWII, we could easily have dispatched the Soviet leadership at the end of the war--destroying Moscow, etc.--then come home. Why control it?
Your S. Vietnam point is, of course, disproved by the fact that even as badly as we botched things the South held out until 1975--after Congress yanked the rug out from under them.
Your understanding of the rest of the war appears no better than this guy's--we could have just done a General Lee and marched North regardless of what the Cong was doing behind us and if the Chicoms came in just juke/nuke it out, which we really should have done in Korea when McArthur wanted to.
Mr. Judd;
I don't think we have space for a serious discussion of WWII German military strategy, but I would like to just touch on a couple of points.
1) The drive on the Caucus was primarily to deny the Soviet oil and only secondarily to acquire oil for Germany. Succes there or
in Moscow might well have stifled the Soviets. Infantry may be king but it can't do much if there are no factories to make bullets nor gas to haul guns to the front.
2) Germany did have enough men to achieve military victory in the East but it was the Nazi's genocidal tendencies that did them in. At one point the Nazis had a million
Russians under arms fighting for them. Had the Nazis aimed for political control instead of Lebensraum they would probably have won. The Nazis through their brutality failed to convince the Russians that Nazi rule would be an improvement over Soviet rule.
AOG:
Agreed, no one can rule that many modern people effectively. The aim should merely have been regime change. But for the same reasons there was really no reason for the U.S. to enter WWII or the Cold War--both the Nazi and Soviet fever dreams of empire would have died of themselves.