#supreme command

Part of the United States Marine Corps professional reading program, I've been collecting the titles for a few years now, acquiring them as I can. I estimate my collection of books (not counting electronic copies) to be in excess of 500, and the number that I've read to be.... far less than that. It's nice to finish reading something and have a choice of things to read next. For example, upon completing "Supreme Command", I think I'll read "Essence of Decision" on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but I have waiting to be finished "Know No Fear" and to be started "The Primarchs" from Black Library's Horus Heresy series; also recently acquired "Why Nations Fight", which promises an alternate look at the causes of war. I still have not read all of Richard Dawkins' books that I own (in fact, I think I've read two); it's not lack of interest in the topics, I don't usually buy things just to support a cause. As much as I enjoy reading Hitchens, it's unlikely I'll get many more of his books. I do have, for the record: "Arguably", "Love, Poverty and War" and "A Long Short War". All read, but I'll be honest since all three are anthologies of his articles I skipped some articles that couldn't hold my interest. Hitchens may have been an extraordinarily powerful writer, to me, but there are some topics that cause even my eyes to glaze over.

I also recently finished Neil DeGrasse Tyson's "Death by Black Hole", which was a solid read and I recommend highly. Interesting that he continues to insist not using the atheist label, but as he has said it's not because he believes in a God so much as he doesn't want a label with such baggage attached to him. As I have argued previously, I agree with Penn - agnostic isn't a state of belief.

"Supreme Command" is an interesting and a valuable read for anyone looking at statesmanship in modern war. It looks at four "great" statesmen - Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill and David Ben-Gurion - in the wars that defined them; respectively, the American Civil War, the First World War, the Second World War, and Israel's War of Independence. I won't go too far in to details at this time, just to say that it presents an interesting perspective on those conflicts and the leadership driving them. In particular the thesis of the book is that what Cohen calls the "normal" theory of civil-military relations, essentially that the civilian leadership sets the grand strategy and lets the military conduct the war without interference, did not apply to these great statesmen, who saw it as necessary the need to interfere in the conduct of the war to secure the desired outcome.

On Clemenceau, I just want to say that I consider myself to be "above-average" read on the First World War, compared with the general populace, and as it turns out I had no idea how little I knew about the French side of the war. Military history is consumed with discussion of battles, and most people familiar with this war will know of the Miracle on the Marne, Verdun, the mutinies (vastly overreported, as it turns out), and such. Where works like this become valuable is looking at the battles that went on behind the scenes, for example Clemenceau dealing with both Foch and Petain, the war alliance with Britain and later the Americans, that ultimately drove and won the war.

I found the section on Lincoln to again be revealing, but some of the information wasn't new (having read "Grant Takes Command", another book on the USMC reading list, in particular, and "Lincoln and His Generals") just presented in a new light. Churchill and Ben-Gurion's sections were similarly informative.

What motivated this review was some of the sections later in the book dealing with wars where the "normal" civil-military relationship stood out; namely, Vietnam and the first Gulf War. Before tearing in to one of my favourite pet peeves (Vietnam) I want to say that Cohen's book highlighted some things for me, helped clarify some ideas, and so I'm not completely against what he has to say on the Vietnam war. It has caused me to realize I really need to go back and restart H.R. McMaster's "Dereliction of Duty", itself another title on the USMC reading list. It is certainly true that the military was allowed a relatively free reign over its conduct of the war with comparatively little oversight, at least for the most part. Did you, however, catch the number of qualifiers? As Cohen admits, while arguing for the most part the civilian leadership left the military to do what it liked, the Johnson Administration still retained tight control over some things like the bombing campaign in North Vietnam.

Where I strongly disagree with Cohen is the argument that Vietnam was unwinnable; where I think we find common ground is that, due to a lack of effective civilian oversight, the military was never forced to adopt winning strategies. Cohen laments that American forces were used extensively to engage North Vietnamese units instead of building up the South Vietnamese military, and that the Army of the Republic of Vietnam was trained to fight conventional battles. In this, Cohen, like so many other people that seem to take up the popular view of Vietnam, seems to think that it was an insurgency that toppled the South Vietnamese government, when in fact it was a conventional invasion spear headed by tanks. The image of the popular revolutionary, the peasant in the field taking up arms to resist a corrupt government - doesn't quite fit the reality of Soviet tanks, does it? This is a case of the popular view of history not being built on enough facts, instead being built upon the fantasies that people want it to look like.

Another area that has dismayed me is the laser-precise focus on a handful of actors in a handful of wars. George H. W . Bush's leadership during the first Gulf War, a successful war by most standards, comes under criticism for again letting the military have its day. This, the "normal" theory, is thoroughly denounced, and while at one time I was a firm believer in this "normal" theory, I can comfortably say my views had shifted even before reading Cohen's book. To his credit, however, I would not have been able to tell you they had shifted without reading his book and realizing the fact. What I would have liked is a broader focus, to take in to account those situations where civilian leadership took a much more active role and did so with negative consequences, in this sense I'm advocating for a more rigorously scientific treatment of the humanities. I think, if one is trying to prove a point, one should have to at least acknowledge counterfactual data.

Why, for example, is Hitler or Stalin never discussed? Both leaders were not content to merely set strategy and let the military go at it. Hitler's intervention was responsible for von Manstein's plan to throw an armoured force through the Ardennes in 1940, as opposed to rehashing 1914's plan that the leadership of the Wehrmacht were originally planning to go with. In this sense, Hitler seemingly intervened in exactly the way Cohen advocates, with the important exception that the four great statesmen Cohen describes never issued orders so directly, instead they suggested or advocated. During the June 1944 Soviet offensive against Army Group Centre, Hitler intervened to sack Field Marshal Busch and replace him with a general that could get the job done, Field Marshal Model - again, precisely what the other great statesmen had done at varying points. We find however that Hitler made demands the military could not carry out. I suspect it is for this reason (and the fact that he lost in the end) that Cohen provides no treatment of Hitler. How, however, do we explain the lack of discussion on Stalin? Stalin maintained firm civilian control over the military, famously purging the officer corps. Yet as the war went on, while still maintaining control over the military, Stalin seemed to take a step back and let them run their jobs (so long as they ran it to Stalin's satisfaction). Again, in this view we find parallels to Cohen's ideals. So was Stalin's crime that finds his relationship removed from these his evident peers that he was a "bad guy"?

The last couple sections of the book deal with (in an afterword) Rumsfeld's War and (in an appendix) a close look at the "normal" theory. Perhaps I'll find some answers to the concerns I raise there. The book however was published in 2002; it would be interesting to see what Cohen has to say about Rumsfeld's handling of the 2003 Iraq War. Rumsfeld tightly controlled the military in that, so a cursory glance would suggest, going so far as to relieving General Shinseki for failing to support the Adminsitration's goals, by which I mean Rumsfeld's demand to use less than 150,000 soldiers and Shinseki's suggestion requiring at least 300,000. It would be interesting.

Edit: Formatting issues causing underlines to not appear under book titles, have removed and replaced with quotation marks.

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