Practicing History_ Selected Essays - Barbara W. Tuchman [162]
The significance of this development for the military man is bound to be disturbing because, as the British General Sir John Winthrop Hackett recently said in a talk to our Air Force Academy, “Limited wars for political ends are far more likely to be productive of moral strains … than the great wars of the past.” The United States, it is hardly necessary to remark, is already suffering from the truth of that principle.
The change has been taking place over the past twenty years while we lived through it without really noticing—at least I as a civilian didn’t notice. One needs to step outside a phenomenon in order to see its shape, and one needs perspective to be able to look back and say, “There was the turning point.” As you can now see, Korea was our first political war. The train of events since then indicates that the role of the military is coming to be, as exhibited by the Russians in Egypt and ourselves in Southeast Asia, one of intervention in underdeveloped countries on a so-called “advisory” or “assistance” level with the object of molding the affairs of the client country to suit the adviser’s purpose. The role has already developed its task force and training program in the Military Assistance Officers Program at Fort Bragg. According to its formulation, the task is to “assist foreign countries with internal security problems”—a nice euphemism for counter-insurgency—“and perform functions having sociopolitical impact on military operations.”
In short, the mission of the military in this sociopolitical era is to be counter-revolution, otherwise the thwarting of communism or, if euphemism is preferred, nation-building, Vietnamizing, or perhaps Pakistanizing or Africanizing some willing or unwilling client. This is quite a change from defense of the continental United States which the founders intended should be our military function.
What does the change imply for generalship? “Has the Army seen the last of its great combat leaders of senior rank?” I quote that question from the recent book Military Men by Ward Just, correspondent of the Washington Post. Will there still be scope for those qualities of personal leadership that once made the difference? In the past it was the man who counted: Clive, who conquered India with eleven hundred men; Cortez, who took Mexico with fewer; Charles Martel, who turned back the Moslems at Tours; Nelson, who turned back Napoleon at Trafalgar (and incidentally evaluated one source of his prowess when he said, “If there were more Lady Hamiltons, there would be more Nelsons.” Though that might be thought to please the Women’s Lib people, who are down on me already, I am afraid it won’t because from their point of view it’s the wrong kind of influence. Anyway, that factor too may vanish, for I doubt if love or amorous triumph will play much role in inspiring generals to greater feats on the advisory or Vietnamizing level).
Above all, among the men of character who as individuals made a historic difference, there was Washington. When on his white horse he plunged into the midst of panicked men and with the “terrific eloquence of unprintable scorn” stopped the retreat from Monmouth, he evoked from Lafayette the tribute, “Never have I seen so superb a man.”
Is he needed in the new army of today whose most desired postgraduate course, after this one, it has been said, is a term at the Harvard Business School? To fill today’s needs the general must be part diplomat, part personnel manager, part weapons analyst, part sales and purchasing agent. Already General Creighton Abrams has been described by a reporter as two generals: one a “hell-for-leather, jut-jawed battlefield commander and the other a subtle and infinitely patient diplomat.” For his successors the second role is likely soon to outweigh the first.
Out of that total human activity, physical, intellectual,