Diplomatic and Military History Book Reviews (and weekly Rowbot Radio)

Rowbot Radio 34

2010-11-02T04:53:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 34

Rowbot Radio 33

2010-10-25T05:39:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 33

Rowbot Radio 32

2010-10-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 32

Rowbot Radio 31

2010-10-11T05:35:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 31

Rowbot Radio 30

2010-10-04T05:38:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 30

Rowbot Radio 29

2010-09-27T05:50:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 29

Rowbot Radio 28

2010-09-20T05:33:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 28

Rowbot Radio 27

2010-09-13T05:49:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 27

Rowbot Radio 26

2010-09-06T05:51:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 26

Rowbot Radio 25

2010-08-30T05:28:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 25. You can actually hear me talk, as I guest host this episode.

Rowbot Radio Episode 24

2010-08-16T05:55:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 24.

Rowbot Radio 23

2010-08-02T05:41:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 23

Reaction to Dan Haren Trade

2010-07-26T05:42:00.001-07:00

Reaction to Dan Haren Trade

Rowbot Radio 22

2010-07-26T05:41:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 22

Rowbot Radio 21

2010-07-19T05:28:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 21

Rowbot Radio 20

2010-07-12T05:39:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 20

Rowbot Radio 19

2010-06-29T08:58:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 19

Rowbot Radio 18

2010-06-21T06:05:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 18

Rowbot Radio 17

2010-06-14T05:38:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 17

Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

2010-06-07T06:27:00.000-07:00

Hell to Pay: Operation DOWNFALL and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 by D.M. Giangreco (Naval Institute Press, 2009).

Was the invasion of Japan a viable alternative to the use of the atomic bomb? Both The Invasion of Japan and Hell to Pay seek to answer this question.

While Skates believed that an invasion would have resulted in acceptable casualty levels, Giangreco comes to a much different conclusion. Giangreco charges most revisionist historians with only taking a cursory look at the plans and statements of those involved with the invasion.

Operations Olympic and Coronet would have been costly endeavors had the United States undertaken them. Giangreco comes to this conclusion by looking at the full scope of sources available on the planned invasion. Most historians, Giangreco charges, tend to believe that Army Chief of Staff George Marshall had an accurate idea as to how many casualties to expect. Those numbers were low, which is what allows Skates to conclude that the invasion was reasonable. However, Giangreco concentrates on a 1945 note from former President Hoover to Harry Truman over how many casualties to expect in an invasion of Japan: as high as one million. As Giangreco notes, Hoover had sources inside the Pentagon who likely fed the numbers to him on an invasion sometime in the previous two years.

Giangreco also covers the Japanese Ketsu-go plans to defend the Home Islands. The Japanese planned to defend their home to the last person. The terrain also proved advantageous to the Japanese because of the caves, cliffs, and mountains that would have been hell on the Allies. The kamikaze planes would have severely hurt the Allied landings as there would have been no Allied picket ships to take the brunt of the attacks. The supposed lack of Japanese oil was a myth as reports demonstrate that reserves were ample.

Giangreco details how the invasion of Kyushu and Honshu would go as planned, which is one of the greatest strengths of this work. If you want to know how the invasion was planned, the chapters on this offer a great deal of information for war gamers and what-if questions. Expected casualties were appallingly high in these invasion plans.

The atomic bomb, then, was necessary because the United States and Japan were on a course of annihilation. Pondering Giangreco’s work, the reader gains the sense that Marshall’s conservative estimates were too low and that the numbers Hoover had were much more likely. The Japanese would have fought to the bitter end. Ultimately, the atomic bomb (which men such as Marshall eventually viewed as a possible tactical weapon during the invasion) brought an end to the war because the Japanese emperor Hirohito understood that if the war persisted the literal annihilation of his people would come as a result. There would be hell to pay for both sides.

Rowbot Radio 16

2010-05-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 16

Rowbot Radio #15

2010-05-24T06:27:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 15

Rowbot Radio 14

2010-05-17T05:48:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 14

Rowbot Radio 13

2010-05-10T04:02:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 13

Rowbot Radio 12

2010-05-09T12:39:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 12

Rowbot Radio Episode 11

2010-04-26T05:15:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio Episode 11

Rowbot Radio No-hitter Reaction

2010-04-19T05:49:00.002-07:00

No-hitter reaction

Rowbot Radio 10

2010-04-19T05:49:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 10

Rowbot Radio 9

2010-04-12T05:25:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 9

Rowbot Radio 8

2010-03-29T06:20:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 8.

Rowbot Radio 7

2010-03-22T05:16:00.000-07:00

Rowbot Radio 7.

Rowbot Radio 6

2010-03-15T05:52:00.001-07:00

Rowbot Radio 6

Rowbot Radio 5

2010-03-08T06:05:00.000-08:00

Rowbot Radio 5

Two books reviews for the price of one entry

2010-03-05T07:20:00.000-08:00

The Long Road to Baghdad: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970s to the Present by Lloyd C. Gardner (The New Press, 2008).

Writing current history is often a hard task because we have yet to have enough distance from events and the proper sources to figure out what really happened. Lloyd C. Gardner tackles the recent history of United States foreign relations in The Long Road to Baghdad. Gardner finds that events in Iraq began with the end of Vietnam. Since Vietnam was a traumatic experience for America, there were to be no more Vietnams. With Vietnam at an end, America’s focus shifted toward what Zbigniew Brzezinski termed the “arc of crisis,” the Middle East. The oil resources there could help bring an end to the Cold War.

But more than anything, Gardner seeks to demonstrate that events in the Persian Gulf resulted as a way for American influence to continue after the 1979 Iranian revolution. Gardner relies mostly on press accounts for events over the last decade, so if much will not be new to the reader. There is also a large portion of events not examined. As I suggest in my thesis, Waging Diplomacy, events in Bosnia and Kosovo impacted how the United States acted in Afghanistan and Iraq. Gardner barely mentions these events. Overall, The Long Road to Baghdad is a decent work, but offers little new information on our current situation.

The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam by C. Dale Walton (Frank Cass, 2002).

In The Myth of Inevitable U.S. Defeat in Vietnam C. Dale Walton breaks down many of the myths that the United States was preordained to lose in Vietnam. First, it is a myth that the United States intervened in a lost conflict. Policymakers could have chosen other options that may have worked out better, but the middle of the road course led to defeat. Second, American public support did not tie the hands of policymakers. It was fear of Chinese intervention that made policymakers fight the way they did. Another myth is that the ground war was a losing battle from the start. Walton argues that it was politically restrained, and therefore ineffective. The United States also should have looked past the neutrality of Laos and Cambodia and looked at Indochina as one strategic area. Another myth concerns Chinese intervention, but China could not intervene because of the weakness it experienced over the previous twenty years. Air power was used ineffectively due to it being an individual option and not part of a larger strategic plan. The final myth Walton examines is Nixon’s peace and his resignation. Had Watergate not occurred, Nixon likely would have continued to prosecute the war for far longer.

Rowbot Radio 4

2010-03-01T06:10:00.000-08:00

Rowbot Radio 4.

Uses of Force and Wilsonian Forein Policy

2010-02-23T07:09:00.000-08:00

Uses of Force and Wilsonian Foreign Policy by Frederick S. Calhoun (The Kent State University Press, 1993)

Uses of Force and Wilsonian Foreign Policy is Frederick S. Calhoun’s second volume on Wilsonian foreign policy, or more correctly the Wilsonian Way of War. Building on his previous work in Power and Principle, Calhoun defines how Wilson used force in each of his interventions during his presidency.

Calhoun develops five categories: protection, retribution, solution, introduction, and association. Using force for protection can clearly be seen in the interventions in Haiti and the Dominican Republic. But it wasn’t protection for the United States. Wilson used force to protect the Haitians and Dominicans from themselves, part of Wilson’s ethnocentric humanitarianism. Force for retribution can be found in Wilson’s Mexican interventions and American entry into the First World War. Wilson used for force solution mostly in his Caribbean interventions in order to Americanize the Dominican Republic and Haiti, though ultimately those efforts failed. The Veracruz intervention and World War I acted as events for Wilson to use force to introduce himself into a solution: the former to establish a sound, democratic government and the latter to help settle a world crisis. Wilson used force for association to help bring the Allies together during the First World War and the twin interventions in Russia. The Wilsonian uses of force changed as each situation evolved.

Calhoun concludes that after Wilson’s era the uses of force still existed, but with new technology, such as the atomic bomb, things changed. While the bomb was not a viable weapon, it allowed policy makers to wage wars of limited scope. However, Vietnam represented the abuse of force because, unlike Wilson, those who waged the war had no clear idea on how to use force.

Taken alone, this work is an excellent study on how to define the Wilsonian use of force. Taken with his other work, Power and Principle, Uses of Force will not offer much new information on Wilson other than Calhoun’s vocabulary on Wilsonian force.

Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy

2010-02-17T07:50:00.000-08:00

Power and Principle: Armed Intervention in Wilsonian Foreign Policy by Frederick Calhoun (The Kent State UP, 1986)

Is force an end unto itself, or does the reason force is used change as the situation evolves? In Power and Principle, Frederick S. Calhoun examines why Woodrow Wilson resorted to the use of force more than any other president before or after him and ultimately discovers the limits of force. While acknowledging Wilson's idealism, Calhoun offers a realist interpretation of Wilsonian foreign policy, which is defined as "the principled applications of power in relations between nations" (x).

In the introductory power, "The Power of Ideals" Calhoun examines Wilson's concepts of being a leader, a president, an administrator, a diplomat, a warrior, and an adviser. Calhoun concludes this examination by terming Wilson an "ethnocentric humanitarian" (33). Wilson believed in helping the world to a better place, but through a racist viewpoint. We see this emerge over the next several chapters that detail Wilson's interventions.

The occupation of Veracruz, Mexico in 1914 and the Punitive Expedition in 1916 demonstrated that Wilson believed he could help Mexico become a stable, democratic state by using force to effect a desirable outcome. Ultimately, the two interventions in Mexico showed that Wilson was able to limit the use of force by controlling the military and his advisers. The army was left to deal with tactical issues, not political ones.

Wilson's interventions in Haiti and Santo Domingo are best represented by Calhoun's closing statements on Santo Domingo: "Wilson's motives were humanitarian, his methods shrouded in legality, but his aims were ethnocentric. He ignored the Dominican Republic's traditions and historical experiences in his efforts to make it over into a small United States" (112). Wilson's Progressive ideology led him to unsuccessfully reconstruct the Dominican Republic and Haiti in the image of the United States.'

In two chapters covering World War I, Calhoun finds that Wilson, before the United States entered the conflict, believed that America could act as a disinterested arbiter over the source of the conflict and as the guarantor of international law. However, as the United States moved into a wartime setting, Wilson became convinced of the need for an international organization to keep the peace. Wilson sought cooperation with the Allied Powers in order to foster the growth of a post-war international peace organization.

Covering the two interventions in Russia (Murmansk and Archangel in the north and Siberia), cooperation turned into collective security. However, intervention in Siberia was the one instance when Wilson never had a clear purpose for acting there. Yes, Wilson believed Bolshevism and the eventual Communist takeover of Russia would be a threat to world peace, but armed force was not the answer. Force would only make the undesirable more likely and fan the flames of the movement.

By 1918 Wilson understood the limits of force. As Calhoun writes: "In a violent world, he [Wilson] at least strove for a better, less selfish cause than other leaders before and after him. His example teaches the appropriate--and inappropriate--applications of armed power, that force can defend an idea better than it can promote one" (266). Providing a lesson, Calhoun concludes, "Wilson understood what later generations have tended to forget: it is only through the limitations on force that civilization survives" (267).

Realist critiques of Wilsonian foreign policy aren't in vogue any more, but Calhoun does an excellent job of doing a realist study. In my next review, I will look at Calhoun's other work on Wilson, Uses of Force and Wilsonian Foreign Policy, in which he comes up with a vocabulary to describe how force is used.

Rowbot Radio Episode 3

2010-02-15T06:20:00.000-08:00

Episode 3

Currently Reading

2010-02-05T09:35:00.000-08:00

I got backlogged the last month for reviews. What I'm currently reading:

Bitter Victory: The Battle for Sicily, 1943 by Carlo D'Este - Retired Lieutenant Colonel Carlo D'Este's work covers one of the least studied aspects of World War II: Operation Husky, the invasion of Sicily.

Lincoln and the Decision for War: The Northern Response to Secession by Russell McClintock - McClintock writes a political history of the Secession Winter, looking mostly at the political writing from Illinois, Massachusetts, and New York.

Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan and Wilson and His Peacemakers: American Diplomacy at the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 by Arthur Walworth - Two studies on the 1919 Paris Peace Conference.

Waiting for them to come in the mail:

The Blue Eagle at Work: Reclaiming Democratic Rights in the American Workplace by Charles J. Morris

Secrets of State: The State Department and the Struggle Over U.S. Foreign Policy by Barry Rubin

A Preponderance of Power by Melvyn Leffler

2010-01-20T16:17:00.000-08:00

Here's a review I wrote on Melvyn Leffler's A Preponderance of Power for my History of American Foreign Relations back in the Fall of 2007. It was only supposed to be four to five pages, but I had to make the margins very small and use 11.5-point to have it fit on the first quarter of a sixth page:

Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

At the conclusion of the Second World War the United States was the lone superpower in a devastated world. The only possible rival that stood in the way of the United States’ supremacy throughout the world was the Soviet Union. In his A Preponderance of Power, Melvyn Leffler examines the crucial years of the Truman presidency and how the United States viewed her national security through domestic pressures, geopolitical concerns, and Western economic superiority.[1] In his essay “National Security,” Leffler defines this national security approach as one that involves core values, the “[fusion of] material self-interest with more fundamental goals like the defense of the state’s organizing ideology, such as liberal capitalism, the protection of its political institutions, and the safeguarding of its physical base or territorial integrity.”[2] These core values would play a large part in America’s role in starting the Cold War.

On 12 April 1945, Harry S. Truman became the President of the United States and he lacked a full understanding of Roosevelt’s policies, especially on war and diplomatic issues. Truman inherited Roosevelt’s advisers and leaned heavily on them throughout his years in office. His advisers, however, offered conflicting viewpoints and often the State Department would be in conflict with the War and Navy departments. Truman’s three Secretaries of State, James Byrnes, George C. Marshall, and Dean Acheson all took leading roles in foreign affairs as Truman focused more on domestic affairs. During the last months of the war, Truman developed his thoughts on the Soviets by listening to his advisers. In the words on Admiral William Leahy, Truman decided it was time “to take a strong American attitude toward the Soviets.”[3] However, this “strong American attitude” was not meant to open a rift between the two sides; the Soviets were to be co-opted into a system that benefited America first and foremost.[4]

The first real test Truman faced was the fate of Eastern Europe. While free elections and self-determination for the people were important to America, a free Eastern European economy would help balance world markets and stimulate American economic growth. The fear was that, if the Soviets gained power in Eastern Europe, the economy in Europe would be split into British and Soviet zones, thus undermining American economic growth and possibly leading to future Soviet challenges to American power. The question over Eastern Europe became James Byrnes’ issue after the war in the Pacific officially ended in September 1945. Byrnes looked towards the creation of an Open Door policy in Eastern Europe in order to allay fears of Soviet power in the area. But as early postwar negotiations took place, departmental rivalries intensified. The War Department, while determining their future plans along strict military guidelines, was unable to ascertain the State Department and White House’s plans for national goals and interests. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal wanted to create a more cohesive policy coordination plan, but the departments of War and State and the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) were none too interested in losing decision-making powers they already had. With a lack of consensus, Byrnes made as much progress as he could in early negotiations with the Soviets, but Truman was under great domestic pressure to extract more from the Soviets. According to Leffler, it was “fear and power” that shaped American policy early on.[5] Fear that the Soviets might one day emerge to challenge American superiority if not faced forcefully early on.

While George F. Kennan is considered the father of the containment theory, Leffler notes that containment was the policy of the government before 1946. This can be seen as early as 1943 when the United States determined that overseas bases were crucial to project American power after the Allies won the war. These bases were to provide places where America could face the threat of Communism anywhere in the world. In May 1945, William J. Donovan, though not calling it containment nor laying out plans for the future policy, sent an analysis to Truman that described the conjunction of geopolitics and American interests in the postwar world. Germany and Western Europe became the center stage for American preponderant power. The stabilization of Germany was the top priority in Europe because the survivability of Europe depended on the revival of the German coal industry. If that industry did not prosper, Europe might fall into chaos and be open to Soviet takeover. The situation was similar in Japan; the United States excluded outside influence, especially Soviet power, in order to stabilize other areas in Asia which would become part of the periphery in the struggle against the Soviet Union.

Those areas on the periphery included Italy, Greece and the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean, the Near and Mid East, Yugoslavia, China, Korea, and Southeast Asia. The Eastern Mediterranean was important, as one report put it, because the seas there were vital for the transport of oil from the Near and Far East. By supporting anti-Communist parties in Italy and Greece the United States hoped to stabilize the region. Similarly, while Tito in Yugoslavia was a concern at first because he was a Communist, he eventually became anti-Stalinist and provided a buffer zone against possible Soviet aggression in the future. The United States followed a policy close to that in China by supporting Chiang Kai-shek and his Nationalist movement against the Communists. While the U.S. looked to combat the Soviets around the globe, it was clear to U.S. officials that war with Russia was unlikely to happen anytime soon.

At the start of 1946, it became clear that the Truman administration looked at the Soviet Union as the sole enemy in the world, creating an easy black and white divide. But none of this helped solve any of Truman’s domestic problems. He still had an administration that was disjointed and locked in fights with each other, and he was concerned with the federal budget and inflation. Truman also had to contend with Republican attacks over the handling of foreign affairs. Senator Arthur Vandenberg was the leading Republican at the time, a staunch anti-Soviet, and wanted Truman to take a tough stance against the Soviets. Against this backdrop, a tougher stand against Stalin began. The creation of Bizonia in Germany between the American and British zones was a way for the United States to combat any chance of a Soviet-German pact. The fight against the Communists in Greece, China and elsewhere in 1946 led the United States to continue the dichotomy between them and the Soviets. Leffler concludes at that particular time, “So long as the Truman administration practiced containment and deterrence, so long as it rejected a policy of reassurance and accommodation, it could do pretty much as it liked.”[6]

Fear and power still played a major role in the Truman administration in 1946 and 1947. The Truman Doctrine of helping those who were under attack by Communists resulted from the fear that if Communists took over Greece, France and Italy would fall to Communist governments, weaken America’s influence in the region, and hurt non-Communist governments throughout Europe. But to implement the Truman Doctrine, as it became known as, Truman and his staff played on the good-bad divide, while their underlying reasons were “geopolitical convictions that defined national self-interest in terms of correlation of power based on the control of critical resources, bases, and industrial infrastructures.”[7] George C. Marshall became the Secretary of State during this period and his famous Marshall Plan soon followed. The Marshall Plan came about over fears that economic depression in Europe would lead to popular Communist governments. By providing aid to Europe, Soviet influence would not infect western Europe. Were that to happen, the United States would need to alter its own economic operations by becoming a state-controlled economy, and as Truman said, “It is not the American way. It is not the way to peace.”[8] The core values of the United States were at stake.

With the advent of the Marshall Plan, new initiatives and risks would be taken. The Soviets, however, feared this plan because it would expose the weak Soviet economy and show that America had the ability to weaken Communism around the world. The French also had misgivings, but those stemmed from the fear that a revived German economy would ruin France’s. But, once again, the fear of preponderant Communist power in Europe overrode any other concerns, and Marshall believed the European balance of power would tilt, creating “a formidable global adversary” for the United States if his plan was not implemented.[9]

In July 1947, Congress passed the National Security Act, which established the National Security Council (NSC) and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The service departments were combined into the Department of Defense. James V. Forrestal, who earlier advocated a better cohesive planning system, became the first defense secretary. By 1948, the CIA was already effectively working overseas by creating rifts in the French political system that helped the Communist stay out of power. Still, even with a better policy-making structure Truman was concerned with budgetary matters during these years. The budget for the military created much debate, mainly centering on the importance and size of the Air Force (an independent service now). Truman’s proposals decreased military spending, limiting the number of air groups the Air Force wanted. Senators such as Robert Taft, a Republican, advocated the necessity of air power in order to protect the United States.[10] This wasn’t the only trouble Truman ran into; his call for a draft and universal military training were met with Republican opposition. The importance of the Air Force arrived when George Kennan’s Policy Planning Staff determined French North Africa was crucial to American preponderant power in the area. The importance of these areas could only be maintained with a correct budget, and Truman wanted a slow increase in military appropriations.

The United States saw the need to create a long-term plan for Europe to defend herself against future Soviet aggression. This came about in the North Atlantic Treaty, which established a community of interest between the United States and several European nations. During the remaining years of the Truman administration there would be questions surrounding the addition of the future West Germany and Greece and Turkey. Years of French concern over a rearmed Germany hampered the effectiveness of this organization, but with the United States placing a permanent mark in Europe by building bases French fears were eased somewhat.[11]

After Truman’s reelection in 1948, Dean Acheson took charge of the State Department and put his brand on America’s foreign policy. He immediately worked on plans to implement a West German government because he believed it was necessary to stabilize Europe, and that German integration into the NAT would dispel French fears over German revanchism. In China, Acheson hoped to drive a wedge between the Communist leadership that was poised to control the country and Stalin. In Japan and the periphery of the Far East, Acheson sought to drive off Soviet influence there. The stabilization of Japan’s economy and the eventual formation of a Japanese government were the foremost matters in the region, but Southeast Asia, in one report, was a question of how to protect the area. While officials worked out how to approach Southeast Asia, it was clear that they would need to stop the Communists from co-opting nationalist movements into Communist movements as well.

The atomic bomb was always built into U.S. strategic planning because of America’s atomic monopoly, but after 1949 that was no longer true. With the Soviet test of an atomic bomb that year, the United States responded by increasing research into the hydrogen bomb as a way to keep the monopoly. A year later in 1950, Paul Nitze wrote NSC 68, one of the most important documents of the early Cold War. It called for a dramatic increase in military expenditure in order to protect Europe, Asia, the Third World, and America. It reinforced the dichotomy between the U.S. and the Soviet Union as a good against evil struggle. The plan also called for preponderant atomic power in order to keep the Soviets from using their own atomic weaponry. While in NSC 68 he called for an increase in spending, Nitze, in Leffler’s analysis, viewed national security “[…], in terms of control of industrial infrastructure, raw materials, and skilled labor.”[12] The Korean War would bring about the full implementation of NSC 68.

The Korean War began on 25 June 1950 when the North Koreans invaded South Korea. Previously, Korea had been on the American periphery and was close to falling off it all together before the invasion. Truman and his advisers viewed this invasion as Stalin’s idea to test the West’s willingness to fight. Acheson firmly believed Stalin was behind this move because he thought the United States would be unwilling to fight over Korea. Recent studies have shown that this conflict was the result of a civil war.[13] With fighting on the Korean Peninsula, the integration of a West Germany into Europe in order to create a shield against Soviet aggression became all the more important, and the periphery, particularly Southeast Asia, was an area in which the United States took more risks from 1950 and on. The formation of Japanese self-government quickened as a result since a stable, independent Japan would provide a check on Communist power. With the Korean War, Leffler concludes, the United States learned that “The price of preponderance—the cost of linking Western Europe, Japan, and their dependencies to a U.S.-led orbit—was an unlimited arms race, indiscriminate commitments, constant anxiety, eternal vigilance, and a protracted cold war.”[14]

In his conclusion, Leffler finds that the men he focused on in this book, Truman, Byrnes, Marshall, Acheson, Nitze, and many others were wise, prudent, and foolish. Wise because the men knew that they were attempting to become powerful in areas where the Soviets also competed in; prudent because their actions were not highly dangerous and, as a result, those situations which were dangerous would provide a long-term benefit; and foolish because the periphery, particularly Southeast Asia, was given too much importance.[15] Leffler finds that the United States deserves as much blame for starting the Cold War as the Soviet Union because the “national security policies of the Truman administration were an attempt to apply the lessons and cope with the legacies of World War II as much they were an effort to contain the Soviet Union.”[16] And as Leffler cautions, we can only make our judgments go so far because Soviet archives have only recently (at the time of his writing) been opened up.

[1] Melvyn Leffler, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992).

[2] Melvyn Leffler, “National Security” in Explaining the History of American Foreign Relations, 2^nd ed. eds. Michael J. Hogan and Thomas G. Paterson (New York, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 126.

[3] Leffler, A Preponderance of Power, 31.

[4] Leffler, 32.

[5] Leffler, 51.

[6] Leffler, 140.

[7] Leffler, 146.

[8] Leffler, 162.

[9] Leffler, 191.

[10] Leffler, 224.

[11] For more on the formation of NATO and its growth in NATO Divided, NATO United: The Evolution of an Alliance by Lawrence S. Kaplan.

[12] Leffler, 359.

[13] Leffler, 368-7. Also, see Khrushchev’s quote immediately following that discussion.

[14] Leffler, 445.

[15] Leffler, 502-511.

[16] Leffler, 515.

Books read in 2009

2009-12-21T09:36:00.000-08:00

The following a list of books I have or am currently reading. The latest reads are at the top.

Creating the Secret State: The Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943-1947 by David F. Rudgers
The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention (Texas Pan American Series) by Richard H. Immerman
American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam by Peter S. Kindsvatter
The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present by Anna Kasten Nelson ed.
Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting by Douglas A. Macgregor
Rumsfeld's Wars: The Arrogance of Power (Modern War Studies) by Dale R. Herspring
Crossroads of Decision: The State Department and Foreign Policy, 1933-1937 by Howard Jablon
Quartermaster general of the Union Army;: A biography of M.C. Meigs by Russell Frank Weigley
The Sword of the Republic: The United States Army on the Frontier, 1783-1846 by Francis Paul Prucha
Closing with the Enemy: How GIs Fought the War in Europe, 1944- 1945 by Michael D. Doubler
The Muslim-Croat Civil War in Central Bosnia: A Military History, 1992-1994 by Charles R. Shrader
Secret Agencies: U.S. Intelligence in a Hostile World by Loch K. Johnson
America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force by Beth Bailey
West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace (Civil War America) by Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh
U. S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth (Civil War America) by Joan Waugh
Power and Purpose: U.S. Policy Toward Russian After the Cold War by James M. Goldgeier
The New Military Humanism: Lessons from Kosovo by Noam Chomsky
Armed Progressive: General Leonard Wood by Jack C. Lane
Midnight Diaries by Boris Yeltsin
A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq (Yale Library of Military History) by Mark Moyar
The Road to Independence for Kosovo: A Chronicle of the Ahtisaari Plan by Henry H. Perritt Jr.
Civilian in Peace, Soldier in War: The Army National Guard, 1636-2000 (Modern War Studies) by Michael D. Doubler
Technology and the American Way of War Since 1945 by Thomas G. Mahnken
Russia and the Balkans: Foreign Policy from Yeltsin to Putin (Columbia/Hurst) by James Headley
MADAM SECRETARY: A MEMOIR by Madeleine Albright
Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife: Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam by John A. Nagl
Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by Louis Sell
First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia by David N. Gibbs
Not Whether but When: The U.S. Decision to Enlarge NATO by James M. Goldgeier
Just And Unjust Wars: A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations by Michael Walzer
Kosovo: War and Revenge by Tim Judah
The Lessons and Non-Lessons of the Air and Missile Campaign in Kosovo by Anthony H. Cordesman
Collision Course: NATO, Russia, and Kosovo by John Norris
Soldiers and Scholars: The U.S. Army and the Uses of Military History, 1865-1920 (Modern War Studies) by Carol Reardon
The Eagle and the Lion: The Tragedy of American-Iranian Relations by James A. Bill
In the Trenches at Petersburg: Field Fortifications and Confederate Defeat (Civil War America) by Earl J. Hess
Field Armies and Fortifications in the Civil War: The Eastern Campaigns, 1861-1864 (Civil War America) by Earl J. Hess
Trench Warfare under Grant and Lee: Field Fortifications in the Overland Campaign (Civil War America) by Earl J. Hess
The Antietam Campaign (Military Campaigns of the Civil War) by Gary Gallagher, ed.
NATO's Empty Victory by Ted Galen Carpenter
The Art of Military Coercion: Why the West's Military Superiority Scarcely Matters by Rob de Wijk
Kosovo: How Myths and Truths Started a War by Julie A. Mertus
Peace at Any Price: How the World Failed Kosovo (Crises in World Politics) by Iain King
Second Chance: Three Presidents and the Crisis of American Superpower by Zbigniew Brzezinski
The Foreign Policy Of Russia: Changing Systems, Enduring Interests by Robert H. Donaldson
The Psychological Impact of War Trauma on Civilians: An International Perspective (Psychological Dimensions to War and Peace) by Various
Postmodern War: The New Politics of Conflict by Chris Hables Gray
The Legacy of George W. Bush's Foreign Policy: Moving beyond Neoconservatism by Ilan Peleg
America Between the Wars: From 11/9 to 9/11 by Derek Chollet
The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich
America in the World: The Historiography of US Foreign Relations since 1941 by Michael J. Hogan, ed.
The U.S. Marines and Amphibious War by Jeter A. Isley & Philip Crowl
Kosovo Liberation Army: The Inside Story of an Insurgency by Henry H. Perritt
Kosovo: What Everyone Needs to Know by Tim Judah
Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic and Cultural Relations With Europe, 1919-1933 by Frank Costigliola
Lee and His Army in Confederate History (Civil War America) by Gary W. Gallagher
How the States Got Their Shapes by Mark Stein
Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb by John Ray Skates

Black Confederates: Myth or Reality?

2009-12-18T06:58:00.000-08:00

The following is the first half of a historiography paper I wrote for my American Civil War class in the fall of 2008.

In the waning days and months of the Civil War, the Confederate Congress adopted a plan of action to plan the war. This was not a turn to guerrilla warfare, as practiced in Missouri among other places and dismissed by Robert E. Lee, but rather the arming of slaves to help prolong and hopefully win the conflict against the North. In exchange for taking up arms, slaves would have the fetters of slavery removed and become free men. Much of the discussion on so-called Black Confederates rests on this proposition, as well as earlier (but questionable) reports of slaves serving the cause of the Confederacy. Until recently, the subject of Black Confederates has not been taken seriously. The belief that there were slaves who willfully chose to serve the Confederacy has been challenged.

The earliest works on so-called Black Confederates appeared during Woodrow Wilson’s presidency, most coming toward the end of it. The first is a 1913 article by N.W. Stephenson found in the American Historical Review, entitled “The Question of Arming the Slaves.”[1] Stephenson places Confederate Secretary of State Judah P. Benjamin as the origin for the enrollment of Black Confederates instead of Jefferson Davis, but he also argues that many of the men in the army intended to leave service if such a proposal was enacted. In supporting this, Stephenson quotes Davis’ November 1864 address to Congress as support for slave laborers in the army, not slave soldiers.[2]

However, by the middle of March 1865, Davis became a convert to the idea of arming slaves. Yet, Stephenson is at a loss to explain why Davis became a convert, though he does offer an explanation on who was at fault for not acting sooner on arming the slaves: a dilatory Congress. What Stephenson does argue is that despite Davis’ reluctance to support the arming of slaves, his enemies claimed over the years that Davis wanted to become a dictator and would use the armed slaves to keep power.[3]

Stephenson shows his sympathy toward the Confederacy when he delves into the political machinations of the Senate and House. Discussing a resolution, Stephenson calls it “a truly pathetic landmark.”[4] This resolution called for a bill to be offered on placing slaves into military service. With his language, Stephenson clearly shows that he finds this move, not even the actual passage of legislation, to be against all that the Confederacy was for. Two of the more striking conclusions Stephenson comes to during his discussion on arming the slaves is on Secretary of Sate Judah Benjamin and the workings of the Confederate Congress. On the former, Stephenson infers that Benjamin, the scheme’s originator, became the chief spokesman because it pushed him out of government. The congress had no love for Benjamin and his championing of this issue would be a way to phase him out.[5] As for the Confederate Congress, Stephenson is at a loss as to Congress’ sluggishness in adopting legislation that could save the Confederacy. It is, in Stephenson’s words, “a psychological mystery yet to be resolved.”[6] Even Robert E. Lee’s support for arming the slaves did not spur Congress along.[7] Stephenson’s article details the Congressional debate on arming slaves, but it offers little in the way of telling us about the actual role of blacks in Confederate armies.

In a 1919 article, “The Employment of Negroes as Soldiers in the Confederate Army,” Charles H. Wesley looks several of the roles slaves had in Confederate armies.[8] Wesley also props up the arguments of the Lost Cause. On loyalty, Wesley writes, “The Negroes were not only loyal in remaining at home and doing their duty but also in offering themselves for actual service in the Confederate armies.” This was because they saw the Union as an invading force on their homeland.[9] This loyalty can be found in “Confederate laboring units,” which built fortifications as part of their help; there were also militias of free blacks throughout the Confederacy, though they saw no real service.[10]

As the war went on, blacks continued to serve, but emancipating the slaves was a controversial subject. One man did not want to emancipate all the slaves, only those who fought and served. If that plan came about, children and women would still be in bondage and continue the South’s peculiar institution.[11] General Howell Cobb made clear his opinion on arming and emancipating the slaves: “The day you make soldiers of them [slaves] is the beginning of the end of the revolution. If slaves make good soldiers, our whole theory of slavery is wrong.”[12] Wesley also covers the Confederate Congress’ passage of a bill to enroll the slaves and concludes, “Necessity forced the acceptance of the Negro as a soldier.”[13] However, Wesley cannot actually show that blacks served as Black Confederates. Black Confederates connotes a sense that blacks, free and slave, actually wanted to fight for the Confederacy, but most of the evidence Wesley presents only informs us of the service slaves likely did for their masters while in camp with them.

In 1972, Robert F. Durden released The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation.[14] Durden’s work marked at least a new line of inquiry into the question of Black Confederates; however, the work centers on the debate among Confederate leaders and newspapers over the arming of the slaves. As a result, The Gray and the Black is a work that allows history to speak for itself. In others words, Durden offers a large number primary sources over the debate on whether to arm the slaves, but lacks an analysis on what blacks actually did for the Confederacy. It is Durden’s final section on the problems of the historiography of the subject that is more intriguing. Durden looks at the three articles mentioned above as the start of the historiographical discussion of slaves and the Confederate armies. Durden finds that Jefferson Davis’ support of arming and emancipating the slaves had been lost over the years, something he tried to correct with this work.[15]

Durden also finds Robert E. Lee’s role in the emancipation debate to have been obscured. Lee’s biographer, Douglas Southall Freeman, bases his belief that Lee did not think highly of the martial capabilities of blacks in Lee’s September 1863 letter to Jefferson Davis, a letter that does not say as much. And in 1865, Lee’s letters to other Confederates would prove otherwise.[16] Ultimately, Durden comes to two conclusions about blacks and Confederate armies. The first is, “[…] the whole subject of the ‘Negro’s Civil War’ is perhaps vastly more complex, and perhaps more ambiguous or paradoxical, than most of us have realized.” The second is that, unlike The Gray and the Black, there is the possibility to look at the actual role of the blacks in the Confederacy.[17] Unfortunately, the challenge Durden offers has not been looked at maturely until recently.

Unlike Durden’s work, J.H. Segars and Charles Kelly Barrow’s Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts is one example of the ill treatment of so-called Black Confederates.[18] Barrow is a high school social studies teacher and the Historian-in-Chief of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, an organization dedicated to the continuance of Southern and Confederate heritage. The work is primarily an edited and compiled work of historical accounts of slaves involved with the Confederate armies. In the preface to the work, Segars writes, “Some scholars feel that Black Confederates were few in number so the subject is not worthy of serious study.”[19] Yet the rest of the book is not a serious study of so-called Black Confederates. Segars and Barrow do not look seriously at the documents they compiled and included in their work. As the close to the preface states, the documents have “minimal amount of editorial opinion and analysis.”[20] In this instance, allowing history to speak for itself appears to be a detriment to Segars and Barrow. One of the sources is a letter from a man in the United Confederate Veterans seeking to gain a pension for a former slave who served his master for four years in a Confederate army.[21] The letter calls the former slave a “servant of Dr. John Searcy.” This fails to prove that Shadrick Searcy, the slave, was a Black Confederate. As property of Dr. Searcy Shadrick went where he was told. Serving his master in the war does not equate to being a Black Confederate. Another of their sources appears to contradict the claim that slaves were Black Confederates.

A report from the Savannah Daily Morning News in September 1863 seemingly overlooks the text of an Alabama Legislature resolution on the use of slaves in the army. The original resolution, the paper reports, called for the military service of slaves to do jobs that included being a soldier. But the adopted resolution, the article states, eliminated “military” and “soldier” from the resolution. Yet the opening of the article reads, “A joint committee of the Alabama Legislature reported a resolution in favor of the proposition to employ slaves in the military service of the Confederate States.”[22] Ultimately, Black Southerners in Confederate Armies does contain historical accounts about blacks in the South during the Civil War, but the editors accept these accounts at face value without evaluating what was really going on. This is neo-Confederate propaganda.

Ervin L. Jordan’s Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia is an interesting case study of blacks in Civil War Virginia and their role in the Confederacy there.[23] The first half of Jordan’s work looks at the societal role of slaves in Virginia before and during the Civil War; it is not until the second half of the work that Jordan looks at the role of slaves in the Confederacy and its armies. His first examination is of body servants, who were ubiquitous in Confederate camps. There is no debating that slaves did work in military camps, but to claim that they were faithful servants to the Confederate cause is another matter. Jordan would have us believe that the Virginia pension records for those body servants who lived long enough to receive one is proof of Black Confederates.[24]

As to those pro-Confederate blacks who did support the Confederacy, according to the sources Jordan uses, “Some were sincerely patriotic; others were alarmed individuals acting on behalf of their own self-preservation and economic interests.”[25] This muddies the concept of Black Confederates, because it shows that loyalty to the Confederacy may not have been out of any desire to support its ideals but to help oneself. When the Confederate States Colored Troops formed in 1865, Jordan relates, “a negro Confederate soldier” did not take an oath of allegiance to the United States of America; rather, he “steadfastly refused to betray Dixie and remained bars ‘unreconstructed and unreconstructible,” loyal to the last, last of the loyal.”[26] Jordan certainly appears to be quite accepting of the validity of his source that relates this story, an 1866 publication. However, it is certainly possible that the language used by the observer of this event was attempting to promote the idea of black loyalty to the Confederacy instead of what really happened.

Jordan concludes with a further clouding of Black Confederates:

As dwellers in the crucible of race, Afro-Virginians of the Civil War era are shining examples for present and future generations. They were heroic in every sense of the word as warriors, musicians, farmers, craftsmen, revolutionaries, and survivors. They were and have always been Africans, Southerners, Virginians, and Americans.[27]

But were they Confederates? Is being a Southerner the same thing as being a Confederate? The Confederacy was a political entity, but from Jordan’s work it would appear that blacks were less Confederate and more Southern in inclination. The South was their home and the source of their culture, though separate from white culture. Jordan is correct in writing that slaves served in a variety of roles, and often in heroic ways, but to call them Confederates, which Jordan is somewhere in between, is a stretch.

[1] N.W. Stephenson, “The Question of Arming the Slaves,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Jan. 1913): 295-308, JSTOR (20 Nov 2008).

[2] Stephenson, 295-296.

[3] Stephenson, 296-297.

[4] Stephenson, 298.

[5] Stephenson, 299.

[6] Stephenson, 302.

[7] Stephenson, 303-04.

[8] Charles H. Wesley, “The Employment of Negroes as Soldiers in the Confederate Army,” The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Jul.,, 1919), pp. 239-253.

[9] Wesley, 241.

[10] Wesley, 242-3.

[11] Wesley, 246.

[12] Wesley, 247.

[13] Wesley, 252.

[14] Robert F. Durden, The Gray and the Black: The Confederate Debate on Emancipation. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972.

[15] Durden, 293-94.

[16] Durden, 295.

[17] Durden, 296-97.

[18] J.H. Segars & Charles Kelly Barrow, eds., Black Southerners in Confederate Armies: A Collection of Historical Accounts, Gretna, Louisiana: Pelican Publishing Company, 2007.

[19] Segars & Barrow, i.

[20] Segars & Barrow, ii.

[21] Segars & Barrow, 72.

[22] Segars & Barrow, 138.

[23] Ervin L. Jordan, Jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia, Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1995.

[24] Jordan, 200. The subject of pension record, numbers, and Black Confederates is further examined by Peter Carmichael, looked at later in this paper.

[25] Jordan, 231.

[26] Jordan, 251.

[27] Jordan, 309.

Recent Acquisitions

2009-12-09T17:56:00.000-08:00

In case anyone is wondering, I recently acquired the following works:

Warrior's Rage: The Great Tank Battle of 73 Easting by Douglas Macgregor (Naval Institute Press, 2009) - Warrior's Rage details the major engagement of the 1991 Gulf War between the Iraqi Republican Guard and the US 2nd Cavalry. Macgregor led Cougar Squadron /2nd Cav into battle. While detailing the battle, Macgregor also criticizes his high command for their decisions to stop the war after removing Iraqi forces from Kuwait.

Rumsfeld's Wars: The Arrogance of Power by Dale R. Herspring (University Press of Kansas, 2008) - Herspring takes aim at former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld for basically destroying civil-military and military-civil relations over the last decade through his quest for transformation and his I-know-it-all attitude.

The Policy Makers: Shaping American Foreign Policy from 1947 to the Present edited by Anna Kasten Nelson (Rowman & Littlefield, 2009) - This book looks at six policy makers who did their work mostly behind the scenes. They are: Paul H. Nitze, Robert Bowie, Walt W. Rostow, Sen. Henry "Scoop" Jackson, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Bill Casey, and Colin Powell. I borrowed it from my professor, but based on the first essay, it's going to be a good one.

Two books that I recently ordered and am waiting for their arrivals:

American Soldiers: Ground Combat in the World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam by Peter S. Kindsvatter (University Press of Kansas, 2003) - Kindsvatter examines why the American soldier has fought and persevered in combat. I met the man in April 2008.

The CIA in Guatemala: The Foreign Policy of Intervention by Richard H. Immerman (University of Texas Press, 1982) - The CIA's clandestine operations in Guatemala.

Counterinsurgency Readings

2009-12-03T19:54:00.000-08:00

Given President Obama's recent announcement that the United State will conduct a counterinsurgency in Afghanistan by sending more troops there, it's time to look at three recently released books on counterinsurgency. Those works are The Fourth Star by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe, A Question of Command by Mark Moyar, and The New Counterinsurgency Era by David H. Ucko.

The Fourth Star tells the story of four Army officers who achieved their fourth star, indicating their rank as a full general, during the American adventure in Iraq. Those four generals are John Abizaid, George Casey, Jr., Pete Chiarelli, and David Petraeus. The first half of the book details the soldiers' lives before the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The second half chronicles the years of 2003 to 2008 when Chiarelli became vice chief of staff of the Army and Petraeus took over CENTCOM.

Your view of COIN will determine how you view this book. If you are a proponent of COIN, you'll find this book of great value. If you are someone like Gian P. Gentile, you'll find this work to be COIN-porn (scroll down or search for his name in the link to find that comment). Gentile actually made that comment in reference to the parts that concerned the Department of Social Sciences (Sosh) at West Point. Gentile is opposed to counterinsurgency warfare so his remarks are not unexpected. I found those sections to be very informative as they show how it was a department of outsiders, men who did not always believe the orthodox Army way was correct. Overall, the first half really captures how these men were influenced prior to Iraq. The second half doesn't quite live up to the first half. That's where the other two books enter.

Mark Moyar's A Question of Command traces the evolution of American participation in counterinsurgencies. Moayr challenges the idea that COIN is population-centric and concerned with hearts and minds. Rather it is leadership-centric and based on the interaction between the military's leaders and local elites. The United Stats has failed at COIN because the wrong leaders have been in place until recently. General Petraeus repeatedly demonstrated the correct leadership decisions in Iraq and has helped shepherd in what appears to be the counterinsurgency era of the US Army.

David H. Ucko looks at how the military institutions have adapted to COIN since events in Afghanistan and Iraq. Ucko concludes that the military has not fully adapted to counterinsurgency yet. Yes, COIN has been integrated into the military, but conventional war is still the aim of the Army. Will the US Army eventually move completely toward COIN? Ucko doesn't offer an answer, but cautions that how the Department of Defense learns from this debate will decide the future.

So, here's the question: If COIN becomes the mission of the US military, what will become of the military's ability to conduct a major conventional conflict?

Upcoming Reviews

2009-11-22T18:50:00.000-08:00

There won't be any new reviews for another week or two as I put the finishing touches on my thesis, Waging Diplomacy: The United States, NATO, and Russia during the Kosovo Crisis. But until then, I'll provide a list to all four individuals (maybe fewer) who read this blog on what to expect in December.

The Fourth Star: Four Generals and the Epic Struggle for the Future of the United States Army by David Cloud and Greg Jaffe

A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War by Melvyn Leffler

Armed Progressive: General Leonard Wood by Jack C. Lane

A Question of Command: Counterinsurgency from the Civil War to Iraq by Mark Moyar

The New Counterinsurgency Era: Transforming the U.S. Military for Modern Wars by David Ucko

That should cover a few weeks in December. I already have them read, but time right now is a bit short to write reviews.

America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force

2009-11-16T17:13:00.000-08:00

America's Army: Making the All-Volunteer Force by Beth Bailey (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University of Press, 2009)

Beth Bailey's America's Army tells the story of the evolution of the All-Volunteer Force (AVF) for America. This is not a guns-and-trumpets military history so much as it is a social history of the Army over the last three decades. Bailey begins her work by examining how 1968 presidential candidate Richard Nixon made the draft a campaign issue by calling for an end to it. While this was politically motivated to silence his critics on the left, the conservatives and free-market economists also championed the AVF. By the time Nixon assumed the presidency in January 1969, commissions and studies were already or were about to be under way. The one thing that was clear was that the notion of military service was no longer part of the right to citizenship.

From 1969 to 1973 when the AVF started, the army did not attempt to stop the implementation of the AVF, but it wasn't too enthusiastic about it. The major challenges the Army faced was how to sell the Army to young American boys. How could the Army compete in a crowded marketplace when America wound down its war in Vietnam? By hiring a marketing agency. The first slogan was "Today's Army Wants You," which the army did not like. But the Army accepted it and, under former Vietnam War general William Westmoreland, went ahead with marketing the Army as an opportunity. The Army was no longer a duty, but a way to make a living and receive benefits that were hard to receive elsewhere.

Bailey also looks at how the Army approached race and gender in the AVF. One of the arguments against the AVF was that it would become an all-black army. NATO allies also expressed concern over this. As part of a larger transformation, the Carter administration looked to level the playing field for everyone, but what this amounted to was making the AVF look as if it were a success even though it wasn't. The debate over women in the AVF demonstrated that the Army moved slowly in this area. There were concerns over how women should present themselves in the army, but what ultimately happened was that during the Reagan administration, there was a "womanpause" that saw the end to recruiting women.

Bailey's last two chapters deal with the challenges of the 1990s with the drawback of forces in the wake of the Cold War and then the need for recruits in the age of Afghanistan and Iraq. Bailey finds that the AVF has been a success. It is solidly middle class and has not overrepresented minorities. Though discussion of bringing back the draft has hit the news occasionally, the Army and the public is against its reinstatement. She concludes that the AVF "is, in very many ways, a take of progress and achievement. Nonetheless, in a democratic nation, there is something lost when individual liberty is valued over all and the rights and benefits of citizenship become less closely linked to its duties and obligations."

Overall Rating: 5 out of 5 stars. This is a must read for anyone interested in the social history of the Army since Vietnam. It is a deeply and well researched work that should win several awards.

West Pointers and the Civil War

2009-10-30T13:57:00.000-07:00

West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace by Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2009).

Wayne We-siang Hsieh is currently a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy who served in Iraq on a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) before assuming his current position. West Pointers and the Civil War is based on his dissertation of the same title. He studied under Gary W. Gallagher at the University of Virginia, a hot bed for Civil War research.

Hsieh takes a revisionist approach to the issues of the conduct of the American Civil War by looking at the professionalization of the U.S. Army from just after the War of 1812 to the end of the civil war. That professionalization of the Army led to a culture of warfare practiced by both North and South as gentlemanly and honorable. Though the Confederacy did have pockets of guerrilla resistance with Union forces, it was ultimately the attitudes and teachings gained from West Point that led Robert E. Lee and the South to honorably end the war.

Before the Mexican War (1846-1848), Hsieh demonstrates how West Point developed in the wake of the military failures of the War of 1812. Old Army officers traveled to Europe to understand how Europeans taught war. West Point became a school for engineers under the leadership of Sylvanus Thayer, and it established the bureaucracy necessary for the Army to function.

Manuals on tactics, artillery, the cavalry, guns dominated the period between 1812 and the Mexican War. The American victory in vindicated the Old Army's view that it was sufficiently professionalized to continue bringing changes to the military. New weapons, the incorporation of French infantry tactics, and the coming predominance of artillery helped further professionalize the Army.

In the years leading up the the Civil War, we see that Old Army officers carried out their orders even though they may not have agreed with them because it was the professional thing to do. However, when Southerners resigned their commissions and turned to the Confederacy, this was a problem. We are left to ask the question of whether it was honorable for a Southerner to resign his commission and then take up arms against the government that accepted the resignation? And was it right for the United States to accept a resignation knowing the officer was going to join the Confederacy? Even with these questions to ponder, both the North and the South wielded armies that had their foundations in the Old Army.

Hsieh examines the influence of the Old Army on the conduct of the Civil War. The reader will come away with the sense that the supposed superiority of the tactical defensive came about as a result of a command style and leadership instead of the normal argument of the rifle musket, field fortifications, etc. In the end, it was the professionalization of the army that led the Civil War to drag on for four years and become a hard war that eventually turned the Northern war effort into a war for abolition.

Hsieh moves away from the argument of the impact of the Civil War on World War I by solidly grounding the American Civil War as an event on its own terms. The Old Army's professionalization during the nineteenth-century influenced how the Civil War was fought because West Point produced the military leaders who led the armies. The Old Army fought in war and developed in peace. Thus, it is a distinct event that should be looked at for what it was, not as a precursor.

One concern after a first reading is something that was out of Hsieh's hands over the last two years. While in Iraq, several works by Earl J. Hess came out that would have helped Hsieh's argument. Hess's final two volumes on field fortifications in the Civil War would have enhanced the final chapters, and The Rifle Musket in Civil War Combat: Reality and Myth came out less than a year ago. Hsieh acknowledges the earlier work Hess and others did on the rifle musket, but Rifle Musket became the first full-length study to show that the weapon did not radically alter battlefield conditions; rather, the rifle musket made at most an incremental change in killing. I won't go further into that as I plan a review on that work later.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth

2009-10-25T19:45:00.000-07:00

U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth by Joan Waugh (Chapel Hill: University Press of North Carolina, 2009).

Historical memory studies have become an important part of the American Civil War. Joan Waugh's U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth is one of the latest attempts at examining how an iconic figure of that conflict existed in public memory over time. Waugh argues that the popular image of Ulysses S. Grant has suffered over the years as a result of reconciliation between the North and the South. But this image is with faults, and for twenty years after the conflict Grant was the most popular American of his day. It is important to remember Grant as he was in the nineteenth century because the Civil War still resonates in the American consciousness.

Waugh divides her work into two sections. The first is mostly a biography of Grant, covering his youth, his time in the Civil War, and then his eight years as president. Waugh tackles the question of whether Grant was a drunk and concludes that he enjoyed alcohol as much as most men of his time did, but that he never drank to excess when it mattered (i.e., before a major engagement on the battlefield). Before the war started, Waugh contends that Grant's failures provided him the character to withstand the stress he experienced as a general. The weakest part of Waugh's work comes in her discussion of Grant during the war. While not wrong, the writing fails to engage the reader for the most part. By the end when she recounts the final year of the war, the narrative is gripping, but this does not make up for the lull of the first half. As for Grant's presidency, Waugh does not concentrate much on the plights and scandals of the Grant Administration; rather she shows how Grant worked hard at bringing peace to the United States. Though when she mentions the gold scandal, Waugh channels present-day situations involving the economy by informing us that Grant flooded the economy with capital to stave off a disastrous economic downturn, a first, but not last, for the federal government.

The second half of U.S. Grant traces Grant's image in the United States in his final years. She provides a chapter each on Grant's memoirs, his funeral, and his tomb in Manhattan. The overriding image Waugh creates in these last three chapters is that Grant was the most famous American and many believed that, even with the problems of his presidency, he was one of the greatest Americans, up there with Washington. He became a symbol for reconciliation because both Northerners and Southerners came together to celebrate the white version of the Civil War, otherwise known as the Lost Cause. However, Grant's funeral served more to celebrate the Union Cause because it was predominantly a Northern-led event. Grant's Tomb in Riverside echoed the downturn in Grant's stature over the next century. As the Lost Cause mythology took hold, Robert E. Lee took Grant's place. Scholars wrote disparaging studies of Grant and crime overtook the area where his tomb stood. Only recently has the image of Grant changed. He is not the butcher, but a better strategist that Lee. He is not the gullible and incompetent president, but a leader who's administration helped lead the country through an important time.

If one is looking for a biography of Grant, this is not the work to read. There are other works out there for that. U.S. Grant is for those who want to understand how an important figure in American history has so often been mocked and vilified while during his life he was hailed as one of the greatest American ever. By learning how memory shapes our understanding of the past, we'll better know why such things happen.

VERDICT: 4.5 (out of 5) stars

First Post

2009-10-23T18:52:00.000-07:00

This site will review works of diplomatic and military history, mostly covering the United States. Personal areas of interest within those two fields are, for the the former, Woodrow Wilson's foreign policies and Bill Clinton's foreign policies (especially relating to Kosovo), and for the latter, the American Civil War to the present.

The first review on this site will appear some time in the coming week, covering the recently released U.S. Grant: American Hero, American Myth by Joan Waugh. This should have been a double review with Wayne Wei-siang Hsieh's West Pointers and the Civil War: The Old Army in War and Peace, but the book's release moved to the middle of November.