Calling the Shots: Should Politicians or Generals Run Our Wars?

Cohen has little time for these critics, marking them down as unable to appreciate what Churchill's leadership really meant and too ready to discount the value of his ability to inspire and take charge. Certainly the great man often got things wrong. But with so much uncertainty and confusion, that was inevitable. The real question, Cohen notes, is whether Churchill got the most important things right more often than those around him, and here the evidence supports the quality of the prime minister's vision. Churchill did give his generals a torrid time, but his purpose was not to harangue them into submission or take over their responsibilities. Rather, it was to prod them into actions that might carry higher risks but also more chance of victory. Given the current debates on casualty aversion, it is noteworthy that none of Cohen's four cases ever made low casualties the highest priority. Churchill saw his role as countering the military's tendency to stick with an established line rather than confront awkward facts. "The whole habit of mind of a military staff is based on subordination of opinion," he observed; challenging received opinions might put the military under pressure, but that was just part of the nature of war, which was "a business of terrible pressures."

The moral of Cohen's story for a wartime leader is to pick your generals wisely, treat none as indispensable, and immerse yourself in the details of their trade. Learn about new technologies and logistical problems, follow debates on tactics, read intelligence reports, and reflect on past military experience. The point is not to second-guess your generals or to plan campaigns yourself, but to be able to engage them in dialogue, keep them on their toes, and deny them opportunities to blind you with science or avoid oversight by arrogantly asserting a superior professionalism. And then there are some decisions, Cohen reminds us -- often involving your own side and not the enemy's -- that are so difficult that only a politician can make them. No purely military analysis could have led Ben Gurion to order the attack on the arms ship Altalena, for example, because his reason for doing so was to deny the Irgun the ability to wage war autonomously from the main Israel Defense Forces. And although the British military understood the need to destroy the French fleet at Oran after France's surrender to Germany in 1940, only a politician such as Churchill could have given such a fateful order.

From Cohen's perspective, then, a civilian vow of noninterference in military affairs is tantamount to a dereliction of duty. War management is political through and through, not only in setting objectives but also in handling allies, isolating enemies, tapping national resources, and setting conditions for peace. It is a political responsibility to assess the burdens a society can accept and the harm it can legitimately impose on others, and where necessary, to lead a people up to these limits or away from them. And even when it comes to the conduct of operations, situations change and generals and admirals often disagree among themselves. A single, constant military consensus is the exception rather than the rule, and the reasons for preferring one course to another are often at least as political as they are technocratic.

Cohen has chosen to focus on heroic war leaders who meddled to great effect. He does not, unfortunately, discuss for the sake of comparison civilian leaders who meddled disastrously, or note the fine line between success and failure. In his new history of the Six-Day War, for example, Michael Oren gives high marks to Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol for putting off the first Israeli strike until the international conditions were right -- but at the time, this tactic appeared to his general staff as dangerous dithering that might allow the Arabs to seize the initiative. Had Eshkol got the timing wrong he would have left office under an even greater cloud than did his successor, Golda Meir, who assessed Arab intentions and capabilities reasonably but wrongly in 1973.

The true lesson of Cohen's analysis, therefore, is not that good political leaders always meddle to good effect and militaries should appreciate their decisive contributions. Rather, the point is that war's fundamentally political character requires meddling even though its quality and impact cannot be guaranteed. As useful as professional wisdom may be, it can never answer the most important questions or supply a reliable shortcut to success.

FROM KOREA TO VIETNAM

Until recently, the legitimacy of civilian input into military strategy would have seemed so obvious that few would have felt the need to make the case for it at any length. One would be hard put to find many instances in history, after all, when political leaders did no more than set war aims and then stand aside while the military got on with the job. An important question raised by Cohen's book, then, is why the idea that this is what should happen has taken hold in the United States over the past few decades.

The answer begins in Korea. In 1950, President Harry Truman followed his military's advice and allowed U.S. forces to cross the 38th parallel and proceed to the Yalu River -- at which point they were chased all the way back again by large numbers of Chinese troops. Supreme Allied Commander Douglas MacArthur wanted to rectify the situation by taking measures that might have led to a wider war. Unwilling to run such risks or brook such insubordination, Truman sacked him, taking considerable political heat in the process.