Posted by
Bert Chapman on Tuesday, January 22, 2008 12:42:58 PM
Several weeks ago, I posted a listing of what I think is essential foreign policy experience for presidential aspirants. Today, I'll list what I think is essential military experience for a presidential candidate. Many of these essential attributes are drawn from the characteristics I presented in the foreign policy blog posting. These include the candidate believing in the superiority of the United States, having an intense interest in the histories and policies of foreign countries and cultures, and recognizing the intrinsic sinfulness of human nature.
We need to begin by dismissing the canard that personal military service and experience is essential for presidents. Unless, a member of the armed services rises to the high level officer command rank, they are going to have very little concrete understanding of major military strategic operational issues and the political, diplomatic, and other currents affecting policymaking on those issues. Any individual with a reasonably substantive understanding of military history and current military trends and developments can be an effective commander-in-chief. The actual commander-in-chief must be able to listen carefully to the advice presented by U.S. military commanders, but does not have to accept all of that advice uncritically. Elliott Cohen's 2002 book Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime demonstrates that truly effective political leaders such as Churchill, Lincoln, Ben-Gurion, and Clemenceau achieved desirable military and political objectives by challenging their military establishments and pushing them beyond their comfort zones. Military institutions often tend to be inherently conservative and bureaucratic and favor maintaining the status quo even while upheavals may be occurring in military technology and strategy.
The next president must not adhere to the belief that future military conflict will be all conventional forces or involve exclusively counterinsurgency forces. History demonstrates that military conflicts can involve all kinds of force structures. We cannot rely exclusively on a World War II/Cold War view of military conflict nor can we rely on warfare being exclusively counterinsurgency based. Consequently, the next commander-in-chief must resist the temptation to put all their military eggs in one basket.
The next president must resist the temptation to believe that future U.S. enemies share the same normative or moral views about warfare the U.S. does. John McCain is an egregious adherent of this utopian viewpoint and McCain's military leadership skills are effectively denigrated in Mark Levin's January 20, 2008 column in National Review online which I commend to your reading. Our next president must also be able and willing to tell the American public and international community in blunt language that the war against Islamist terror will involve brutal tactics and take decades and that it cannot be won by pandering to the tender sensitivities of the chattering classes of leftist intelligentsias in the U.S. or elsewhere internationally.
The next President must recognize that national security involves securing the homeland against illegal immigration (which McCain again has fallen woefully short on) and must recognize that societal cohesion is a vital prerequisite for conducting and sustaining difficult military operations. At the same time, the President must be willing to go against domestic and international public opinion when it is in the U.S.' vital strategic interest to do so. Presidents must be prepared to take decisive action to defend U.S. national interests at short notice without consultation with Congress or allies. The President must recognize that U.S. national security decisions are made only in the U.S. and tell the American public and international community in unequivocal terms that the United Nations or other international organizations do NOT have a veto on U.S. national security policy. Additionally, the President must ensure that the U.S. has the appropriate size and mix of military forces to deal with current and potentially future national security needs and not allow excessive reliance to be placed on military branches like the Army has experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What ultimately matters in terms of presidential military experience and leadership are knowledge, character, vision, curiosity, adaptability, ruthless determination, and forceful and decisive communication skills.