The American President: Warrior in Chief?

by Douglas M. Brattebo and Shannon E. French

Tuesday, November 02, 2004

The 2004 presidential election has been uniquely divisive in many ways. Because of an increasingly unpopular war in Iraq, the two major-party presidential candidates have spent as much time arguing about the lingering effects of the Vietnam era and attacking each other's integrity as they have offering contrasting visions of the future. American voters have given a great deal of thought to the question of which man - President George W. Bush or Senator John F. Kerry - would be a better commander in chief. It is worth pausing during the shrillness of the election season to note that American presidents have come to the office of the presidency with varied military backgrounds, and that caution is in order when it comes to assuming a direct relationship between an individual president's military experience and his expertise as commander in chief. The framers of the Constitution, who had seen and studied more than their share of bloodthirsty monarchs and dictators on horseback, quite intentionally created the presidency as a civilian political office. A president need not have been a warrior to be an effective commander in chief, but he must be conversant with his country's political and military history and intimately familiar with its Constitution and traditions. Just as important, a president must know the values and purposes of the military. All of these things will guide his decisions about the use of force and determine his place in history.

Much has been made over the past year of the contrasting military backgrounds of President Bush and Senator Kerry. Senator Kerry volunteered to serve in Vietnam, came home a decorated veteran, and went on to criticize the war, its architects and the behavior of some who prosecuted it. President Bush, like his Oval Office predecessor, Bill Clinton, sought to avoid going to Vietnam, and he ultimately secured a place in the National Guard. Yet none of this reveals much about what kind of commander in chief either man will be after taking the oath of office on Jan. 20, 2005. It might be tempting to presume that a president with prior military service would possess special insight into what the military needs from its political leadership, but this is simply not the case. If a president's military service was extremely limited or occurred far in the past, he might be at nearly as great a risk of being out of touch with the needs of the contemporary military as someone who never served. It is necessary for any president, whether he served in the military or not, to be acquainted with the contemporary culture of the military, and to show respect for it. The long sweep of American history illustrates that great generals do not always make great presidents, and the military records and subsequent leadership performances of modern commanders in chief defy easy generalizations.

Franklin D. Roosevelt never wore the uniform of his country, but he served as assistant secretary of the Navy during the Wilson administration, and he performed exceptionally as commander in chief during World War II (WWII). Truman, an artilleryman on the Western Front in World War I, impressively concluded WWII and shaped the postwar world. Eisenhower, the conquering general of Europe, shepherded the United States through some of the most harrowing passages of the Cold War; so did Kennedy, whose heroics in the Pacific as a young officer had earned him fame and helped launch his political career. Kennedy surely won a great victory during the Cuban Missile Crisis, but he also helped to enmesh the United States in Vietnam, a conflict that his WWII-decorated successor, Lyndon Johnson, so woefully mismanaged that it destroyed his presidency. Both Nixon, who took an agonizingly long time to conclude the Vietnam War, and Ford, who helped to heal the nation in the war's aftermath but handled the Mayaguez incident imperfectly, had been in combat and had won medals in WWII. The Naval Academy-educated Carter served on submarines after WWII but received much criticism during his presidency for being too accommodating to the Soviet Union and too hesitant to use force against Iran. Reagan saw only stateside film-narrating duty during WWII but as president did not shrink from using force; he is to many Americans the very embodiment of a commander in chief. George H.W. Bush, the youngest Navy pilot during WWII and the winner of the Distinguished Flying Cross, waged the first Gulf War but, unlike his son 12 years later, thought better of pressing on to Baghdad. Clinton, erstwhile draft evader and culturally disconnected to all things military, stumbled badly in Somalia but prosecuted effective military campaigns to stabilize Bosnia and Kosovo.

A president must be cognizant that, for many people around the world, the only regular, direct exposure to Americans and American values occurs through interactions with the U.S. military. This simple fact places a premium on the judgment that a president must use in selecting the appropriate circumstances for sending our forces into battle. The behavior of "troops in the field" has always been a yardstick by which nations and their leaders are judged and remembered. The generosity and humanity of American GIs in both the Pacific and European theaters during WWII continues to pay dividends in the present day. On the other side of the coin, international outrage against American abuse of prisoners in Iraq reveals how dramatically a nation - and its commander in chief - can be affected by the negative actions of even a very few of its military representatives. Our warriors are a reflection of our society, charged with the task of ensuring our security and upholding democratic values, both overseas and at home.

As Shakespeare has the king argue eloquently in Henry V, it is not reasonable to hold a commander in chief responsible for all the actions of the individual warriors serving under him. However, it is fair - and essential - to hold an American president responsible for policies, coordination, supervision and, when it becomes necessary, punishment of members of the military. King Henry may not have been responsible for his friend Bardolph's looting of the French, but the king nevertheless had a duty to bring him to justice to send the clear message that such behavior would not be tolerated and did not reflect the values of the nation.

Before sending troops into combat, a president must do the difficult work, both at home and abroad, of making a credible case to the American public and to America's allies that the conflict in question is necessary and that it can be won. If at all possible, the United States must secure the support of its closest strategic partners when embarking upon expansive military campaigns. The president and his administration also must carefully define the mission and construct realistic plans to cover contingencies. Both before and after troops are committed, the president must seek out and heed the advice of experienced civilian and military leaders, give them what they need to get the job done and make sure that the job is done in a way that is compatible with his policies and the values of the United States. He must not allow our forces to be stretched too thin, so that military personnel, many of them new to deployment, must operate under the additional pressure of shortages of time and resources. Troops have the right to expect that when their commander in chief sends them into harm's way it is for good reason and truly as a last resort, and that they will be supported logistically and politically.

In the Vietnam era, the military rightly felt betrayed by America's political leadership, including presidents', for reasons that included the lack of a clear exit strategy and a failure to heed the warnings and respond to the requests of military advisers. The resulting mistrust of civilian decision makers and loss of morale throughout all branches of the service weakened the military. It took more than a decade for the military to recover and rebuild a healthy relationship with civilian leadership. Presidential administrations that abuse the trust of the military, or take it for granted, may do serious damage to civil-military relations in our country and compromise its defense capabilities.

As they prepare to go the polls on Nov. 2, Americans will attempt to determine whether such worrisome erosion is occurring today, and if it is, how much of the responsibility rests at the feet of the current commander in chief. The central question is whether September 11th so changed the nature of the world system that America's tradition of making war defensively must give way to one of making preemptive war whenever the commander in chief thinks it best to do so. Americans will have to decide whether President Bush's eagerness to use military force in Iraq, despite the warnings of former generals, such as Secretary of State Colin Powell and former national security adviser Brent Scowcroft, was the stuff of grand vision or great folly. The voters also will have to reach some conclusion as to whether the planning for postwar Iraq has been too haphazard and implemented, as former Army chief of staff General Eric Shinseki warned well in advance, with too few troops.

To arrive at a verdict as to whether George W. Bush or John F. Kerry would be a better commander in chief over the next four years, Americans should reflect on some of the characteristics of past commanders in chief: perhaps Lincoln's humility and awareness of his own fallibility, Theodore Roosevelt's bullish embrace of modernity and America's new role in the world and Ike's appreciation of the costs of war and healthy hesitancy about using military force. Voters will not find the answer in the military records of the two presidential candidates. It will be necessary to ponder instead the totality of the competitors' contrasting character and capabilities. The realization that the future hangs in the balance is a heavy one, but such has been the burden of citizens in democracies from Athens to the present day - and, one hopes, through many centuries to come.

Doug Brattebo is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. At the Naval Academy, he teaches "Honors Introduction to American Government," "The American Presidency," and a seminar on the Democratic Peace. The author of numerous scholarly publications, Brattebo is editor of The Presidency, the Navy, and the War on Terror, to be published in 2005.

Shannon E. French is an Associate Professor with tenure in the Ethics Section of the Department of Leadership, Ethics, and Law at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. At the Naval Academy, Dr. French teaches "Moral Reasoning for Naval Leaders" (the core ethics course), "The Code of the Warrior," "Advanced Warrior Ethics," "Philosophy of Religion," and "Knowing Your Enemy." Her main area of research is military ethics. Her recent book, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values, Past and Present, (Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003) includes a foreword by Senator John McCain.

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