Understanding What Makes The American Military Different
Don’t assume we will always have this difference
Military studies usually means the study of the tactics and the strategies of those generals and leaders who were successful in meeting their aims. While these tactical studies are very important the requirement of leading a large professional military in the Constitutional Republic that is America requires additional studies by its military and civilian military leaders. These additional studies need to focus on the strategic differences that make America unique in the world, the ideals for which we fight and why we wage war so our military will always be a protector of our liberty rather than a force of tyranny oppressing “We The People”.
Before the Thirteen Colonies coalesced into the United States of America, there had never been a nation on earth that was founded on or adhered to the ideals as stated in the Declaration of Independence. Natural Law, the idea that all the people’s rights come from God and governments are simply the means to ensure those God-given rights are preserved echoes throughout the Declaration.
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them… We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed”
By basing our Independence on Natural Law rather than individual selfish desires, we set ourselves apart from all other nations on earth. By instituting the Constitution we entrenched Natural Law into the framework for how to run the country. By our actions through history, for the most part, we inculcated these ideals to succeeding generations.
Why are these additional studies necessary now? Today’s military is asked to do many things and to go many places which it did not do in such large numbers until after World War II. The repercussions of Vietnam made many question the basis of the American ideal by, among other things, how the draft was handled (1). This, along with other issues that occurred during the same time period (racial tensions and riots, the sexual revolution, etc.) has caused the study of America’s founding philosophy to be discarded to a great extent.
This sets up dangers for our Republic since the freedom we enjoy today is based on the framework and the ideals of the late 1700s. If this is forgotten or disregarded, the American military can easily become a force against the people rather than for the people.
An historical example of this transition from supporting a country’s ideals to becoming a force against it can be seen in the Roman Legions. Before Gaius Marius (157 BC — 86 BC), the Legions worked for, and were loyal to, the ideals of the Roman Republic. Marius instituted allegiance of the Legions to a general who provided pay, equipment, allowed plunder and pledged retirement benefits — not the Roman Senate(2).
After Marius, the Roman Army was not the defender of the state all the time. It could overthrow the state and subjugate its citizens when it pleased. Julius Caesar and his army demonstrated this just 37 years after Marius died when he crossed the Rubicon and brought down the Roman Republic.
Until recently, the American public has perceived the use of its military for grand purposes rather than wars as an extension of governmental policy as Clausewitz writes about (3). The Wars of American Independence (the American Revolution and the War of 1812), the War to Preserve the Union and to End Slavery (the Civil War), Manifest Destiny (the Mexican-American War and the Indian Wars), the War to End All Wars (WWI), the War Against Fascism (WWII), the War Against Communism (the Cold War) and the Global War on Terrorism all play to overarching themes not found in the wars of most other countries.
George Washington has never been thought of as a general on par with Napoleon, but that is only when we look at the tactical arena. Washington, like Napoleon, brought his country from chaos and established a working government. For Washington it was winning the American Revolution and presiding over the creation of the Constitution. For Napoleon it was establishing control of France under his Emperorship after the governmental disarray created by the French Revolution.
Washington led his country through humility and his acquiescence to the ideals of America embodied in the Declaration. Napoleon led by invigorating his men to join him in his personal goal for a greater France with more power and more money — particularly for the Emperor.
There were many times where Washington could have become the undisputed leader of America but, in the tradition of Cincinnatus, he voluntarily gave up power to let others serve. Contrast this with what happened to the Roman Legions and what occurred, very quickly, to Napoleon’s Army — succumbing to “the baser desires for cash, glory and adventure” (4). Napoleon’s France lasted 16 years and is no longer. Washington’s adherence to protecting “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” has allowed America to become the bastion of liberty in the world for almost 225 years which still brings immigrants to its shores each day.
Abraham Lincoln was not a general, but he commanded the Union Armies unlike any previous president through the use of the telegraph. Prince Otto von Bismarck is remembered for his ability to use war surgically so that the aims of the state would be met at the right time and place for an acceptable price. Indeed, as the Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare puts it, “he was a first-class politician with a gambler’s instinct of when to play and when to leave the table.” (5)
Lincoln was thrust into a situation after the election of 1860 and the secession of the Southern states, that demanded he either go “all in” and defeat the Confederacy or do nothing and wait for the right time to make smaller moves that would gain him strategic advantage over the long run. Bismarck, most likely, would have chosen the latter. After all, time was on the North’s side. It had more men, more industrial capacity and more railroads than the Confederacy. Bismarck probably would have opted to wait for the right time to move like he did against the Austrians in 1866 and the French in 1870.
Lincoln, on the other hand, knew that what made America, America was its ideals and that to acquiesce to the Confederacy and not do anything right away was to show that the ideals of America meant little. In the end, America grew stronger because of the purge of slavery despite the carnage on both sides — a point Lincoln eloquently made in his Second Inaugural Address (6) — and became the Arsenal of Democracy in less than 80 years. Without the statesmanship of Bismarck, German politicians “would lose all control over the state’s military institutions.” (7) and suffer the consequences in two world wars.
It is important to remember the ideals of America because this country is a melting pot of different people with different beliefs that have come together to form a uniquely American persona. We do not pledge allegiance to a person, but to a flag. As members of the United States’ Armed Services we do not swear fealty to a general but to four pieces of paper — the Constitution. We are homogenous only in our adherence to the ideals of America not because we look the same, have the same ethnic or religious background.
When we fail to study and appreciate the ideals of Natural Law, we lose what makes us American. When we lose what makes us American, we then become easy prey for the misuse of power and the loss of liberty through tyranny. The American military could easily contribute to this tyrannical loss of liberty if it does not study and understand the strategic differences that make America unique in the world.
Endnotes
1. Williamson Murray, Warfare (Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 2009), p 354.
2. Ibid., p 53
3. Peter Paret, Makers of Modern Strategy (Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 1986), p 187.
4. Murray, Warfare, p 53
5. Ibid., p 234
6. Abraham Lincoln, Second Inaugural Address, 4 March 1865. The passage to which I refer is:
“Yet, if God wills that it [the Civil War] continue, until all the wealth piled by the bond-man’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash, shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said “the judgments of the Lord, are true and righteous altogether”.”
This is a most eloquent understanding Natural Law and the consequences when man goes against it.
7. Murray, Warfare, p 241
Bibliography
Murray, Williamson. Warfare. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
Paret, Peter. Makers of Modern Strategy. Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, 1986.
