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Title: Supreme Command : Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime by Eliot Cohen ISBN: 0-7432-3049-3 Publisher: Free Press Pub. Date: June, 1902 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.38 (21 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: True Brilliance Begets an Unanswerable Question
Comment: Those interested in military and civilian affairs, as we have all become to some degree as of late, should be enormously appreciative for Cohen's having looked beyond the water's edge for examples of leadership - this is rare in too much of American scholarship. The book gives full and equal chapter space to describe and evaluate Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion - all powerful, and determined leaders regardless of whether one subscribes to their politics or not. As Clausewitz wrote in 1834: "War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means." Yet, in many industrialized democracies we face a seeming wane of confidence in our civilian leaders' abilities to guide the "dogs of war" to a proper and honorable victory. Cohen addresses the nature of these leaders, in their capacity to achieve victory as civilian commanders; however, we take for granted their capabilities and uniqueness as individuals - could we expect the same from George W. Bush as was demonstrated by Clemenceau or Churchill?
The study seems flawed in some minor, but irritating aspect as a result of this. We do not create the rule, merely because it has proven successful in four remarkable instances.
I digress though, and would make the potential reader aware that the book ought to be read (should your interests be piqued by the intricacies of diplomacy, government and war), to gain a greater understanding of true leaders, and the manner in which they face the high-stakes challenges that ultimately test their lives' preparedness, guile, and determination. When one knows little of military affairs, and much of politics, it takes a dogged individual to tell those who know much of military affairs, and little of politics that they will go so far and no further upon the battlefield. It takes a lucky individual to be successful in such affairs. The text loses a star for this singular, but ultimately profound flaw, and garners four for its adept and lucid explanations of these four courageous and politically clear-minded men.
Rating: 5
Summary: What Makes a War Leader Great
Comment: The true genius of leadership is found in the proper management of subordinates. In this excellent book, Eliot Cohen examines the actions of four democratic leaders and how they led their nations through four different kinds of total war. The four leaders are Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and Ben-Gurion. Each had differing styles and different concerns but each had one thing in particular in common, a determination that the strategic conduct of the war should be managed by civilian, not military leadership. Cohen agrees with the four that such civilian control is absolutely essential not only to the winning of a war but to the preservation of a democracy. In his chapter on Lincoln, Cohen describes how Lincoln formulated a political strategy for winning the Civil War which included complicated and sometimes contradictory goals: To name two of them, Lincoln needed to retain the loyalty of the slave holding border states that stayed in the Union while also refusing to compromise on the issue which led to the secession in the first place, the refusal to allow the expansion of slavery. He also had to ensure that the Confederacy received no diplomatic legitimacy. The political impacted on the military strategy. Much of this was beyond the grasp of the military generals and Lincoln had to lead aggressively. By contrast, Jefferson Davis, graduate of West Point, seemed completely oblivious to the need to formulate a larger political strategy.
In discussing Clemenceau's leadership in the waning years of WWI when the French faced catastrophe, Cohen shows how Clemenceau played two military commanders Foch, with his offensive tendency and Petain, promoter of the doctrine of "defense in depth", off against each other. He reconciled the differences in tactics and doctrines and ultimately helped ensure the success of the French army. He educated himself with frequent trips to the front to see the situation first hand. Churchill, was known for his intense micro-management, not of individual battle tactics but of military strategy. Churchill, having seen the debacles of the first world war was determined that no decisions would be made on the basis of faulty assumptions. As such he questioned his officers and generals intensively and constantly. The officers resented this but such a management style enabled Churchill to base decisions on facts not on conjecture. Churchill's supple mind, much like Lincoln's enabled him at all times to reconcile distant and sometimes competing goals, including the political management of a difficult alliance. WWII was an intensely political war and considerations of state pervaded almost every strategic decision taken. Churchill's genius as a war leader was his ability to bring each disparate element together into a cohesive whole.
Ben-Gurion had to fight a very different kind of war. As head of a fledgling state with no genuine army, in 1948 he was not only required to formulate military and political strategy, to enable Israel to survive an onslaught of Arab armies, Ben-Gurion was forced to create a modern disciplined army from scratch. In this he succeeded brilliantly. From Ben-Gurion's standpoint, the key was the imposition of discipline, from subordinate to superior officer and from military to civilian command.
In the last part of the book, Cohen examines and contrasts the military/civilian relationship in the Gulf War and the Vietnam War. Contrary to popular wisdom, civilian leadership did not interfere excessively with the military in Vietnam. As Cohen argues, contrary to the leadership of Churchill, Lincoln et al., the Johnson administration failed to question the assumptions on which the military based its recommendations and strategies. It failed to challenge the military to find a way to comport military tactics with political realties. With the more recent Gulf War, Cohen is critical of the extent to which political generals like Colin Powell were able to substitute their own views for those of the elected civilian leadership. He cites the well-known "Powell Doctrine" on the use of military force as a completely inappropriate usurpation of civilian prerogative by the military.
This is a thought provoking and extremely interesting book which I recommend to all interested in military and political history.
Rating: 4
Summary: supreme
Comment: Civil-military relations have been at the center of recent controversies. During the Iraq War, many talking heads told us that Donald Rumsfeld, the civilian Defense chief, had erred in "watering down" the invasion force, contrary to the advice of the generals. The result, we were told, would be disaster; the mid-war pause was cited as evidence of Rumsfeld's mistakes. From the beginning, criticism has plagued Rumsfeld, who was painted as an icy and arrogant Secretary whom the Pentagon brass despised. The war on terrorism has only slightly diminished that portrait.
Eliot Cohen analyzes Rumsfeld's leadership in the new afterword to the paperback edition of Supreme Command, which is an excellent (despite at least three glaring errors, probably typos, with dates) addition to an excellent book. Of course, the final verdict on Iraqi Freedom remains to be written--and will not be until the passage of time lends greater objectivity and documents are released. Nevertheless, despite lingering difficulties in securing the peace, the war was stunningly successful, the result of a war plan devised largely by Gen. Tommy Franks but also overseen by Rumsfeld, who guided the process and asked difficult questions (which might seem brazen to some). According to Cohen, while the crisis is not as great as those of the past, Rumsfeld's leadership bears comparison to that of Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and Ben-Gurion, the four subjects of his book.
Using those four wartime leaders as case studies, Cohen explores the nature of civil-military relationships, including what has been called the "normal" variety (in which the civil and military exist in mostly separate spheres), and explains how the great statesmen violated the "normal" theory. Indeed, it was such violations that contributed to their successes. They understood, in Clemenceau's now cliched statement, "War is too important to be left to the generals," and actively participated in the conduct of military operations and the formation of strategy. They weren't always right and didn't try to do the jobs of their generals. But they asked difficult, pointed questions, creating a give-and-take between civilian and military leaders, and they demanded results.
Lincoln read telegraphs voraciously and effectively used letters to his generals; he was not afraid to relieve generals of command if they did not pursue his goal of destroying the Southern armies. Clemenceau visited the front every week and sought balance between the conflicting opinions of Petain and Foch. Churchill asked numerous and detailed questions and demanded written, point-by-point explanations of how his orders were carried out. Ben-Gurion mastered the most minute details of war and sought to create an army that was above the politics of the elements that came together to form it. Yet, despite the determination of all of them and a willingness to resort to seemingly extreme measures, the four are linked by a sort of moderation--a moderation, as Cohen explains it, that is not so much a third way pursued on its own as it is the result of leaning in a direction entirely opposite what was currently on the table.
Supreme Command is fascinating reading and fine analytic history. It will surely frame, or at least contribute to, any debate on the proper nature of civil-military relations and, indeed, on current events for some years to come.
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