House of War

Anyone attempting to understand American diplomatic and military policy in these early years of the 21st Century should read House of War by James Carroll. This magnum opus (512 pages, over 1600 footnotes) surveys six decades of Pentagon dominance over American foreign policy. Carroll’s thesis is that since its dedication in January 1943, the Pentagon has served as the primary driver of American policy in the world. From the Dresden firebombing to the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the arms race with the Soviet Union to the war on terror, the military-industrial establishment centered in the Pentagon has driven America’s toward war and militarism. Carroll describes this seemingly inexorable force as a Niagara, heading toward the abyss.

Carroll is no disinterested observer. His father, Lieutenant General Joseph Carroll was the first head of the Air Force Office of Special Investigations in 1947 and later became the longest serving head of the Defense Intelligence Agency. The son roamed the marbled halls of the Pentagon (sliding in his stocking feet, actually) as the American military grew in the wake of World War II and the Soviet Scare. Duck and cover drills in school gave way to his father’s dramatic assignment that in the event of a nuclear attack on Washington, James should drive his mother and brothers south to Richmond. Only then did the full force of America’s precarious position dawn on him.

But that precariousness was always far less than imagined. Since the end of World War II, generals, admirals and their supporters have issued dire warnings of impending peril, always insisting that America develop and deploy more lethal weapons to counter a growing threat from the Soviet Union and monolithic Communism. Fear has always been their ultimate weapon, according to Carroll.

Despite these warnings, America’s Cold War adversary was nowhere nearly as dangerous as predicted. The “missile gap” that helped elect John Kennedy president turned out to be non-existent. When the new Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, pushed the various services on their estimates of Soviet ICBM’s he got estimates in the hundreds from the Air Force. When he demanded that the Air Force prove their estimates, they could not. He soon discovered that the Soviet Union had a total of four deployed ICBM’s.

What McNamara was seeing was the third-generation effect of intelligence entities whose missions were defined so emphatically by the individual services that their ability to serve a broader national interest was almost entirely destroyed. He was confronted with a deeply embedded organizational corruption, the kind of morass that would drive an exacting manager like him crazy.

By 1961 the arms race and militarism had taken the forefront in American policy. The shift was from the State Department (preventing war) to the Defense Department (preparing for war). Carroll is careful to note that countervailing forces always stood in opposition but never prevailed. Secretary of War Henry Stimson proposed in 1945 to share nuclear technology with the Soviets in order to avoid “a secret armament race of a rather desperate character”. President Truman’s failure to take this step away from war set the pattern that continues to this day, a pattern which Carroll notes has largely set the military free from virtually all civilian control. Sure, the president makes the final decision but the structures of command, control, communication and intelligence–the C3I systems–are under military control. The civilians have virtually no role until the situation is almost too late.

Not always. John Kennedy rejected advice to attack Cuba with nuclear weapons in 1962 and in the following year secured passage of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. But the resistance was sporadic, still the juggernaut ran on with more and ever more powerful weapons, even beyond the end of the Cold War. Regarding the September 11 attacks, Carroll writes,

September 11 remains the defining event of the young American century, yet if the long history recounted in this book reveals anything, it is that the US responses to 9/11, while immediately defined by the administration of President George W. Bush, were prepared for by all that had been unfolding in one presidential administration afer another since 1943.

That Hell’s Bottom in Virginia [site of the Pentagon] should have instantly formed the center of the government’s reactions, instead of Foggy Bottom in Washington [State Department], was the result of five decades of Pentagon ascendance of over the State Department.... That war dominated America’s post-9/11 responses echoed what the United States had been doing since the end of the Cold War, when it refused to dismantle the huge military establishment it had created to oppose the now dissolved Soviet Union.

What keeps House of War from being completely hopeless is Carroll’s recognition that popular forces and individuals have managed to keep America and the world from plunging over that abyss. Carroll cites John Kennedy, Mikhail Gorbachev, anti-Vietnam War protesters, the Nuclear Freeze, the Sanctuary Movement and Phillip Berrigan, among others, as counterweights to the seemingly inevitable militarization of America. These forces offer hope for change. Carroll dreams of a different future.

I have written the book about the great Building into which my father took me as a child, before I could see anything but greatness. I have written this book as a way of honoring my parents, and loving them. Once my father warned me of the danger of a coming war, and he commissioned me to do something about it. So I have written this book. Like every other person who lives long enought to bury his father, I learned from him the ultimate lesson of my own mortality. How briefly on the earth we are. Too briefly, I insist, not to find another way to live than by killing. More than for my parents, I have written this book, in love, for my children. And for everyone’s. Let us cherish their future.

Carroll’s personal odyssey through the Pentagon's history demonstrates that more is required than simply changing the party in power. Real change will come only when America is able to look at the world realistically, without fear.

History Lesson

A review of An Artist in Treason: the Extraordinary Double Life of General James Wilkinson in the New York Review of Books tells a tale of a highly self-serving man. A paid Spanish agent even as he served in America's highest military offices at a time the US was contending with Spain for control of the continental heartland, Wilkinson is described as "maybe the most unscrupulous character in all of American history". His extraordinary career included facing "...three military tribunals and four congressional investigations into allegations of misdeeds. Yet he was never found guilty. No wonder it was said of him that although he had never won a battle, he had never lost an inquiry."

Not exactly a figure of worthy regard. Except for his opposition to a standing army. As Jefferson's commander-in-chief, Wilkinson was the only officer supporting Jefferson's efforts to reform the army, with preference for state militias over a standing army. By dint of a scoundrel supporting a president with an agenda, the US was spared a standing army for its first eight score and ten years.

Most Americans would be surprised to learn that the Constitution does not establish or require an army. Article 1, section 8 requires Congress to provide and maintain a Navy but simply authorizes Congress to raise and support armies. The framers were certainly conscious of the need to provide for a common defense but were well aware of the dangers of standing army.

That circumspection ended after World War II. America has had a substantial standing army throughout my lifetime. Like any well well entrenched institution, the US military/national security establishment has its own perspectives and interests. If you have any doubt that those interests do not necessarily serve the nation's interests, look at the military budgets that include weapons systems that either do not work or are irrelevant to the international threats this nation faces. Read James Carroll's House of War. Or ask yourself why America's foreign policy is discussed largely in terms of military action.

Only one president in my lifetime actually saw through the veil of military obfuscation and self-interest: John Kennedy. And even he didn't have the nerve to fully act on that knowledge until after he was safely re-elected. Too bad he did not live to act on his knowledge.

America is unlikely to give up its standing army under any circumstances. We could probably live with that if we really believed and acted with serious attention to civilian control of that standing army.

General Orders

Two Washington Post articles and one in Asia Times last week present a disturbing picture of military-civilian relations in America. We all know, of course, that the president is commander-in-chief of the armed forces; he is senior every general and admiral. What is less well understood is that the military leadership is not fully under his command, that the generals and admirals have their own bases of support which give them leverage that can challenge even a president’s authority or convince him that they have the answer he needs. The military brass are as adept at fighting for bureaucratic turf and influence as their front line subordinates are in real combat.

Exactly how the influence flows depends on the president. A fearful president like Lyndon Johnson will accede to the military demands lest he be seen as weak on national defense. He will not want to look like he is letting “our boys” down even as he does just that. A clever president like Richard Nixon or Dick Cheney will play to the military’s ambition and self-interest. No post-WWII president ever really challenged his military. Carter and Clinton made some isolated attempts but soon quickly surrendered to the combined forces of Congressional patrons, retired officers and bureaucratic warriors

James Carroll has thoroughly and eloquently documented the dominance of the American military in the American Constitutional system since WWII. The generals may not always win overseas but they’ve certainly done well in the corridors of power in Washington. All this was well-known when I was a political science major in the 60’s and nothing I’ve seen since gives me any reason to think otherwise.

So the efforts of Generals Ray Odierno and David Petreaus to work around their chain of command and play to CheneyBush’s desperate wish for a “victory” in Iraq shouldn’t surprise me at all. Like Lyndon Johnson, wanted something that could show success for a mission stalemated and far more chaotic than the “cakewalk” that would liberate Iraq. Odierno and Petreaus gave him what he needed. The conventional wisdom is that the surge succeeded (it’s right there in the 8th paragraph), that the additional troops and change in tactics pulled Iraq from teetering on the brink of civil war.

On its face the claim is plausible. Iraqis are no longer killing each other on a large scale, al Qaeda in Iraq has been marginalized and a nascent political process is slowly emerging. On further investigation, much of the change has more to do with the interests of the various Iraqi factions and the fact that the nation underwent extensive ethnic cleansing in the years prior to the surge—the bloodbath went on right under the noses of American troops that were supposedly in place to prevent a bloodbath. Odierno and Petreaus managed to pull off a tactical victory and laid the basis for continued and extended American involvement in Iraq despite a growing public desire to be done with that war.

What these two articles tell me is that generals will pursue the policies they believe in regardless of larger national interests. I won’t question their motives. They believe in their mission and the capabilities of their men. They are trained in the application of force in the national interest and are capable of employing that force. More than anything, they want to succeed. So it is natural for them to want to use their commands in service to the nation. That’s what they are there for.

What I question is these—and all—generals’ influence in directing national policy. It’s one thing for a president to reject popular will in the name of the greater good (theoretically, the president is directly accountable to the electorate). Abraham Lincoln certainly did that during the American Civil War. It’s quite another, however, for an unelected career officer to challenge that will. And that’s just what Odierno and Petreaus did. When the American people clearly demonstrated in 2006 their interest in ending a poorly-thought out policy that damages this nation both militarily and economically, the generals provided CheneyBush with the means to ignore that interest and to extend America’s deployment in Iraq indefinitely.

The Asia Times article demonstrates that the process is still going on, with Petreaus maneuvering to prevent Obama from keeping his promise to draw down US forces in Iraq. The story attributes Petreaus’ motives to presidential ambitions but it could easily be the general representing his institution. Either motive is dangerous to Constitutional government, which is why ending the 61 year military-corporate stranglehold on government and policy is a critical long-term issue facing this country.

Generals shouldn’t be in a position to direct policy. Advise, yes, but not decide. They are the instruments for policies chosen by elected representatives. The Framers knew that when they established civilian control of the military in the Constitution. A real commander-in-chief would know that.

I hope Obama learned that lesson when he studied Constitutional law and that he is strong enough to do something with it.

Blog Notes

Some not entirely random thoughts about what you read in this space.

The First. Looking at my past few weeks' posts, it's pretty clear to me that I am far more enthralled by local color than the presidential election. That's good as far as I'm concerned. Election Day 2008 is much more of a local affair for me. Washington is an entirely new, seemingly very compatible, political culture for me. We have a dead- even-grudge-rematch governor's race, a whole raft of candidates running for offices I've never had the opportunity to vote for and three serious initiatives. Parsing my way through all this is far more interesting than Obama-McCain but it's not something I feel particularly comfortable writing about just yet. Not that I'm not paying attention to the presidential election; it's just that I have nothing much to say that I've not said already. Check out my posts from October 2004 (yes, I've been doing this for over four years)and you won't see any real difference in the underlying ideas and thought, just different names and circumstances. I guess I could just recast those thoughts in current terms on a more regular basis like the columnists do but then they get paid for their output. I get eight readers.

The Second. My previous post used the terms National Security State and Owning Class more than once and if you read this space regularly, you will certainly have seen the terms before. They are not my own invention, although they clearly summarize my worldview. I found both ideas in Gore Vidal's essays, which I've read in The Nation, other publications and various collections of his work. Most recently, I read Imperial America: Reflections on the United States of Amnesia, a collection of essays from the 1980's published in 2004 with some added commentary. Pretty much everything Vidal said about America 20 years ago holds true today (except the numbers of showing America's economic decline are much much larger; the 1980's figures sound so quaint). If you want further evidence of the National Security State and its consequences for America's economy, then read James Carroll's House of War

End of Blog Notes.