Category Archives: Military

by James McPherson On this, the 200th Anniversary of perhaps our greatest President – I’m still holding out for Washington, but perhaps that’s on the basis of his entire body of work – it’s worth considering his role as Commander-in-Chief. Not merely as described in Eliot Cohen’s leadership study, Supreme Command, but his role specificallly in shaping policy, strategy, and operations. Other Presidents have had to fill that role, although none under such critical circumstances as Lincoln. James McPherson, who is rapidly becoming one of our finest popular Civil War […]

by John Feinstein When Charlie Weatherbie arrived to take up his first head coaching position, he was asked about Army-Navy. He’d seen other rivalries, he said. He knew about other rivalries, Oklahoma-Oklahoma State, for instance. Seemed no different to him. People at Navy spent way too much time worrying about Army when there was a whole season to play. A subtitle to the Navy side might be “The Education of Charlie Weatherbie.” Even going into the game, after Army Week and a whole season of “Beat Army,” he was more […]

by Eliot A. Cohen Almost everything you think you know about the civilian-military relationship in a democracy is wrong. Sure, you know that the military needs to be subordinate to the civilian. But what, exactly, does that mean? You think you know that the politicians should declare war, and let the military win it. You think that war is too technical for politicians to understand. You think that political interference lost Vietnam, and military autonomy won the first Gulf War. You think that the US military is non-political. And you […]