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The Pentagon and the Presidency: Civil-Military Relations from FDR to George W. Bush |
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reviewed by Mehmet Yegin |
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Author: Dale R. Herspring |
ISBN:
978-0700614912 |
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Publisher:
University Press of Kansas |
Page:
490 |
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Type:
Paperback |
Price:
$ 19.95 |
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Place of Publication:
Kansas |
Published in:
2005 |
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Review: |
Civil-military relations are primarily important in the third world countries since military intervention in politics is more frequent. In some countries, the society acquiesces to military interventions and even internalizes their frequency. The reasons underlying this phenomenon are generally proposed to be a weak governmental structure, an undigested democracy in society or high concerns on the security of the country. However, having a strong government and consolidated democracy does not eliminate all the tensions between civil authorities and the military. The military and civil authorities do not have a coherent relationship even in some prominent democratic countries.
The conflicting roles of the military and civilians is the primary reason for the tension rather than the governmental structure. The other units in the bureaucracy do not face as many problems as the military. The function that the military performs and the way it performs distinguish this unit from the others. The military fights for the country through a special service culture that cements certain characteristics such as orderliness, loyalty and honor. This characterization fosters a perception of superiority through putting their lives on the line for the country. This understanding brings an increased expectation of respect from the civilian authorities. On the other hand, the civilian authorities regard the military as any other unit in the bureaucracy and disregard the service culture of military. Moreover, they sometimes exaggerate the civil control idea and turn it into suppression and micromanagement. This distinction of evaluations on military by insiders and outsiders establishes the base of tensions.
The differentiation also affects the literature about civil-military relations. The literature on this issue is dominated by studies written by civilians. The civilian scholars scrutinize the issue from the civilian's perspective and their studies are more about civilian control of military rather than a harmonious relationship between the two. This problem may be alleviated if more scholars from the military contribute to the literature to present the other side of the story. Dale R. Herspring's book is one of these studies written by a scholar that has experience in both the military and civilian units. The author has previous works such as: 'Kremlin and High Command' and 'East German Civil-Military Relations.' These are civil-military relations in other countries that the author has a comparative information advantage on the issue. Herspring's book 'the Pentagon and the Presidency' examines civil-military relations in the US. Although the author has experience in both civilian and military units the book is written from more of military point of view than of a civilian. Herspring, according to his eclectic theoretical guideline, narrates and interprets the major military incidents during twelve president's terms.
The author mentions one of the goals of the book as portraying the misunderstandings of the civilian side and giving the military point of view of the relations. Therefore, this research provides important clues about how military personnel determine and interpret the issues and what their expectations are from the civilian leaders. Nonetheless, as his civilian colleagues, Herspring's work may not be determined to be purely objective both about the issues he examines and the personal evaluations of the presidents. The main sources of the study are the personal memoirs of the key individuals of the related time, especially the military chiefs and other high ranked military personnel. Personal memoirs are subject to be biased as the author himself recognizes at the beginning of the book. He gives the details of the relations between army chiefs and presidents along with their cabinets according to these personal memories with citations of historical works. Thus, the study can be seen as an informal history of military incidents since Franklin D. Roosevelt and details of how the people in charge dealt with these issues.
The book consists of three parts. In the first part the author examines the theoretical background of his study. The book begins with the major works and general theories about civil-military relations and the author makes evaluations and presents his eclectic theory drawn from the appropriate ideas from these sources. The second part of the book is about the detailed characterization of each presidential term. The terms of twelve presidents from Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) to George W. Bush are explained in details. The author mentions the presidential leadership style, major concerns and outstanding changes in the military, the violations of service culture and detailed narration of the incidents in which the military were involved in each term. In the third and final part of the book, there is a summary of the book with the author's additional findings and comments on the issue.
The theoretical background of Herspring's work refers to the studies of several scholars in the field of civil-military relations. Carl Clausewitz was one of the early scholars to emphasize the changing nature of warfare and its effects on the nature of the civil-military relations. He states that wars are more and more fought for political purposes in recent centuries, which increased the civil involvement in the warfare and sophisticated war objectives than in previous centuries. Samuel P. Huntington, as one of the prominent scholars that contribute to the field, underlines professionalism. He develops the idea of 'objective control' that the military should be autonomous on tactical matters and about leading the battles for the success of the operations. Huntington's model has merits but is hard to implement because of the difficulty distinguishing between military and civilian duties. This lack of boundaries and the cautious moves of these actors are later named by Peter Feaver as the 'game of strategic interaction' between civilians and military personnel. He suggests a reward-punishment model for the civilian authorities in order to control the military officers. Eliot Cohen is the last scholar the author references. His contribution is on the personal qualities of the civil authority to get the respect of the military officers. He suggests that the great leaders that are able to use their military effectively have enough knowledge about military issues and quality of leadership to provide military chiefs when they are insufficient to decide. This theoretical review in the book may be useful for the sophomore researchers on the issue and outstanding figures that contributed to field. In addition the author's evaluations on these works clarify his position and his study's niche in the literature.
Herspring makes a categorization according to the level of conflict in each presidential term between the civilians and military. He divides presidential terms into three: minimal conflict, moderate conflict and high conflict. He classifies administrations of Johnson, Clinton and Nixon in high conflict category. The author states that Lyndon Johnson's attempts to micromanage the Vietnam War, his defense secretary McNamara and his teams disrespect for the Chiefs and eschewal of their ideas brought the worst relations between the White House and the military. In addition, he points out Clinton's lack of interest and knowledge on the military issues, attempts to break military culture on the role of women and gays in the military, and first himself and his defense secretary's personal disorganization caused another highly conflicting era. He adds Nixon's and Kissinger's attempts to break the chain of order as a violation of military culture. The author makes a deduction from these incidents and presents the major reason for the high conflict in these presidents term as the lack of civilian respect to the chiefs and military culture. This explanation of high conflict seems subjective. The changes in the world could be taken into consideration. Johnson and Nixon held the office in the most tumultuous times of the Cold War and Clinton's term was an unsettled, post-Cold War transition period. Therefore, explaining the actions of these presidents simply according to their character and perspective on the military may be insufficient.
The author places George H. W. Bush, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and FDR's terms in the minimal conflict category. The common reasons for the minimal conflict are the civilian respect for the chiefs, provision of strong leadership that makes respect reciprocal and presidents' treatment of the chiefs as their military advisor. Thus, the author consciously or unconsciously points to the personal relations between the president and the chiefs. Thus, the President and the key figures such as Secretary of Defense and Chairman of Joint Chief of Staff and their delicate attempts to cooperate and show willingness to work together are quite important. Herspring underlines Roosevelt's abstaining from intervention to the problems between chiefs and Colin Powel's maneuvers as chairman contributing to well-being of relations. Moreover, the ideology and party id are other key elements for the reciprocal respect. The author mentions that republican presidents have better relations with the military than the democrats. This situation is related to the presidential attitudes to the military according to their ideology or party id. This is also related to the conservative tendencies of military personnel and their attitudes to the president according to his party id. The author also examines the possible relation between the presidents' military background and the expected lower conflict level. However, except Clinton presidents with a military background do not have better relations with the military than those having no military background.
The rest of the presidents -Harry S. Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush are all placed in the category of moderate conflict. In these president' terms, there were not detrimental disagreements between civilian authorities and military. Nevertheless, there were disagreements on the issues such as modernization, reform and service unification because of the military's highly conservative nature and loyalty not only the service culture but also the existing service practices. Besides, there were personal problems with the Secretaries of Defense or president's aides.
The book, in these parts, gives detailed information about civil-military relations in each president's term. In addition to the focus points, the book also has valuable information about some tangential issues. The book gives detailed information about some specific military issues, problems, and operations that belong to these presidential terms. It may give an idea about the general strategies of the army and the evolution of US military strategies according to the details. Moreover, the book also shows the evolution of the service culture of the US military through the nineteenth century. In addition to these specifics on military, the book also gives some idea about the individual characteristics of the prominent figures of each term, such as the president, the secretary of defense and the presidential aides.. Thus, the readers may get clues about the general leadership style of the presidents, their way of dealing with the problems, and their point of view of the military.
In short the book gives valuable information about the relations between the civilian leaders and the military chiefs in the US for period of nearly a century. The author generally refers to the primary sources such as the memoirs of key decision-makers of the related time period. This gives a great authenticity about how these people who especially consist of the military chiefs evaluate the problems and the issues with their public and private statements. Nevertheless, this authenticity also brings a highly subjective content that may be biased by personal beliefs and attitudes. The book categorizes the presidents according to the conflict level and tries to identify the reasons that make some presidents' relationship with the military more conflicting than others. The author gives the reasons for high conflict from the vantage point of military personnel and makes some attempts to be more objective. However, the author's theory and his detailed examples mainly, if not totally, rely on the 'civilian respect' of the military and civilian avoidance of interference with military battle tactics and military culture. It seems that uniqueness and immutability of the military is taken as a precondition and the arguments made on the civil authorities rely on this idea. The author rejects such a suggestion of civilian conformity to the military; nevertheless, the book in general contradicts this claim and does not elaborate on the problems with the Military Chiefs. Thus, in keeping with its name as 'The Pentagon and the Presidency', the book to some extent prioritizes the Pentagon over the presidency.
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about book: |
While presidents have always kept a watchful eye on the military, our generals have been equally vigilant in assessing the commander-in-chief. Their views, however, have been relatively neglected in the literature on civil-military relations. By taking us inside the military's mind in this matter, Dale Herspring's new book provides a path-breaking, utterly candid, and much-needed reassessment of a key relationship in American government and foreign policymaking.
As Herspring reminds us, that relationship has often been a very tense, even extremely antagonistic one, partly because the military has become a highly organized and very effective bureaucratic interest group. Reevaluating twelve presidents--from Franklin D. Roosevelt to George W. Bush--Herspring shows how the intensity of that conflict depends largely on the military's perception of the president's leadership style. Quite simply, presidents who show genuine respect for military culture are much more likely to develop effective relations with the military than those who don't.
Each chapter focuses on one president and his key administrators-such as Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, and Donald Rumsfeld--and contains case studies showing how the military reacted to the president's leadership. In the final chapter, Herspring ranks the presidents according to their degree of conflict with the military: Lyndon Johnson received exceedingly low marks for being overbearing and dismissive of the armed forces. George H. W. Bush inspired respect for not micromanaging military affairs. And Bill Clinton was savaged by military leaders for having been a "draft dodger," cutting Pentagon spending, and giving the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" tag an unnecessarily high profile.
From World War II to Operation Iraqi Freedom, Herspring clearly shows how the nature of civilian control has changed during the past half century. He also reveals how the military has become a powerful bureaucratic interest group very much like others in Washington--increasingly politicized, media-savvy, and as much accountable to Congress as to the commander-in-chief.
This book is part of the Modern War Studies series.
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