My Amazon Review of Michael Beschloss' "Presdents of War"

Making War

Historian and media personality Michael Beschloss has written an important history of how and why presidents took us to war and of their wartime decision making process from Madison to Johnson. He is at is best in discussing the role of Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam War. His “tick-tock” of how the Gulf of Tonkin resolution came to be is worth the price of the book. He is very clear that the Johnson administration was deceitful from Day One when they knew in their heart of hearts the war wasn’t winnable. Where I would fault him is that he does not lay enough of a predicate as to the role of John Kennedy in the lead up to the war. After all Johnson was continuing Kennedy’s very aggressive policy with respect to Vietnam.

Beschloss opens his book at the end of the Jefferson administration in 1807 and then fully discusses Madison’s role in the War of 1812. To me he is not critical enough of Madison and Jefferson. In my mind both were guilty of dereliction of duty in failing to maintain adequate naval strength while both Britain and France were raiding our ships and impressing our seaman. They both, having witnessed the Seven Years War that a generalized European conflict would sooner or later make its appearance in the Americas.  Although England was not directly threatening the U.S., Madison was egged on by the “war hawks” Henry Clay and John C. Calhoun to declare war. Be that as it may for the young trading nation that the U.S. was, the principle of freedom of the seas was worth going to war over.

He next is very critical of James K. Polk. To be sure Polk created an incident to trigger the Mexican War and lied to the American people about it, but to my mind Polk was the Bismarck of North America. Polk had the strategic vision that a war with Mexico would bring with it the entire southwest as well as California. He was fulfilling “manifest destiny,” a term that came into use during his administration. But before Polk could go to war with Mexico he had to settle up the Oregon dispute with Great Britain, which he did. Polk was smart enough to realize that U.S. could not fight a two front war against both Mexico and Britain.

Lincoln, of course, comes across as the great Civil War leader that he was. He does this not only by ultimate success on the battlefield, but by elevating the purpose of the war to give rise to “a new birth of freedom.” Unlike other presidents Lincoln was able to witness and agonize over battlefield casualties he was also able to be decisive.  Where I would be critical of Beschloss is that while the fighting was going on Lincoln pushed through Congress three great Hamiltonian projects, the Homestead Act, the Pacific Railway Act and the Morrill Act(land grant colleges), quite a domestic program. This distinguishes Lincoln from other presidents, where domestic engagements gave way to wartime exigencies.

Beschloss is kind to McKinley. After the sinking of the Maine (an accident) in Havana Harbor, he does not rush into war. However once engaged McKinley becomes an all-in imperialist by taking the Philippines, Guam and Puerto Rico. Intended or not with the Spanish American War the U.S. enter the world stage.

Beschloss likes Wilsonian policies, but he doesn’t seem to like Woodrow Wilson. He comes across as an arrogant intellectual and where Wilson demonstrated great political acumen in passing his domestic program, he is a complete disaster on the world stage. Wilson’s thought process on entering the war is a “theme park” (my words) for executive indecision. In his discussion of Wilson, Beschloss leaves out a lot. He ignores the role of the March Revolution in Russia that made it easier for Wilson to argue that he was “making the world safe for democracy.” He also ignores the challenge that Lenin brings with the November Revolution. Many historians believe that his 14 Points were a response to Lenin. He also only skims through the wave of domestic repression that took place during the war and immediately thereafter. And he ignores Wilson’s hidden agenda, which he accomplished, of orchestrating the transfer of economic power from London to New York.

Roosevelt, on the other hand learns from Wilson’s mistakes. Instead of trying to keep the U.S. out of the Second World War, he molds public opinion into acceptance of the inevitability of a war against fascism. He also brings the Republicans on board, both before and after, something Wilson refused to do. Roosevelt learned what not to do when he was an assistant secretary of the navy in the Wilson Administration. He also brings in the American people, with his fireside chats, into the vast theater of the global war.

Truman does not come off well. He doesn’t bring Congress into the process and that with hostile opposition from the likes of Taft and McCarthy leads to huge problems when the Korean War stalemates on the battlefield. After he rightfully fires General MacArthur his popularity plummets. It is a sad ending for someone who so clearly understood the Soviet menace in the late 1940s to see him so pilloried.

As I said at the outset Beschloss has written an important book, but as I noted he left out quite a bit and in many cases, especially with the earlier presidents he was way too detailed and the average lay reader will likely get bogged down in the weeds. Hence four stars, not five.

The full Amazon Review appears at the following URL: https://www.amazon.com/review/R107WQR5NDUEBL/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Henry Lewis Gaddis' "On Grand Strategy"

Strategy Rules

 I wish I could take Yale history professor’s grand strategy course. Reading his book is the next best option. At the heart of Gaddis’ book is Isaiah Berlin’s parable of the hedgehog and the fox. Simply put a successful strategist has to have the strategic focus of a hedgehog with the tactical flexibility of a fox.  The strategist can’t view evolving events through the lens of a fixed ideological view and must be flexible enough to adapt to the changing environment. The enemies of flexibility are ego and hubris.

Gaddis teaches us that there has to be a relationship between means and ends. As the Rolling Stones taught us we can’t always get what we want. He continually invokes Carl von Clausewitz’s maxims especially that war is the extension of politics by more violent means. As such he understands Bismarck’s view the “politics is the art of the possible. So too is strategy.

Gaddis’ work here is also a paean to the liberal arts. He brings out the strategic thinking of Tolstoy, Saint Augustine and my personal hero Niccolo Machiavelli. He prefers intuitive thinkers over experts the latter of whom are more locked into rigid thinking. His favorite American strategists are Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lincoln understands how to use his technological and manpower superiority over the South by aggressively attacking in the Mississippi Valley and Roosevelt for understanding that the axis would be defeated by the factories of Detroit and California. Gaddis goes overboard, in my opinion, in giving too much credit for Roosevelt’s 1933 diplomatic recognition of the Soviet Union as a harbinger of the World War II alliance with Stalin against Germany and Japan.  

As an aside I wish Gaddis would have discussed the grand strategies of Bismarck, Lenin and Stalin. All three were masters of tactical flexibility with very strong strategic goals.

So for those of us who can’t take Gaddis’ class, read his “On Grand Strategy.”

For the complete Amazon URL see: https://www.amazon.com/review/R315HKPJ4E7XCB/ref=pe_1098610_137716200_cm_rv_eml_rv0_rv

My Amazon Review of Margaret Macmillan's, "The War that Ended Peace: The Road to 1914"

Having read Margaret Macmillan's "Paris 1919," which focused on the political settlements that accompanied the end of World War I, I was looking forward to her take on how the war started. I was not disappointed. Her take is especially interesting because rather than honing in on how the war started, she is more interested in how the the great European peace ended. She starts her history in 1890 when a general war was far from inevitable. However with each passing year, seemingly independent decisions narrow the options of the key political decision makers that a general war becomes practically inevitable. In her view, it is not only the broad historical forces at play, but the personalities of the political leadership that puts Europe on the road to war.

To me her story is one of great diplomatic success on the part of France, Britain and Russia and monumental diplomatic failure on the part of Germany, in particular the very erratic Kaiser Wilhelm. Look at the scene in 1890, Bismarck has France isolated, has an alliance with Russia and Austria and Germany is friendly with Britain. By 1914 France is allied with Russia and Britain. How did this happen?

First Wilhelm fires Bismarck and doesn't renew the Reinsurance Traty with Russia. France jumps in and allies itself with Russia, militarily and financially. Then France settles up colonial issues with Britain and romances her into the Entente Cordial. France is no longer isolated and Germany fears the dreaded two front war which gives birth to the offense of the Schliefen Plan. Britain's diplomacy is stunning. Ending its policy of "Splendid Isolation" it settles up with U.S. over a border dispute in Venezuela, makes a deal with Japanese in the Pacific, reaches an interim settlement with Russia over Persia and gets close to France. As a result it has a free hand in Europe without having to worry about diverting forces to protect its over-stretched empire.

How did this diplomatic revolution happen. Simply put Kaiser Wilhelm does everthing he can do to antagonize Britain. First by acting as bully in Morocco and then by starting a naval arms race with Germany. Instead of building fast cruisers and submarines, Germany builds dreadnought battleships which goes to the center of gravity of British naval power. Britain was forced to respond.

In a very important chapter of what might have been were it not for Wilhelm, Britain and Germany could have been allies.This is not far fetched.. Both countries were allied in the Seven Years and Napoleonic Wars and it would make sense for the strongest land power to get together with the strongest naval power. They have no colonial conflicts and conducted the largest bilatteral trade relationship in the world. It could have happened and if it did, no World War I.

As with all World War I histories Macmillan covers the two Moroccan crises and the three Balkan crises leading up to the Sarajevo assasination. She asserts, rightly, that the successful ending of those crises made the political leadership too complacent about the severity of the crisis caused by assasination of Archduke Ferdinand. To be sure it was summer and all of Europe's political leadership were either vacationing or away from their respective capitals, but still this was an act of what we would call today, state sponsored terrorism. What is missing in Macmillan's account is the role of the "Balkan incption scenario" highlighted by Christopher Clark's "Sleepwalkers...."

Macmillan does an excellent job in portrayiing the social millieu of Europe of the early 1900s. This was a time of rapid economic growth accompanied by the rise of socialist parties, women's sufferage, militarism and most of all nationalism creating a host of tensions. For some war was viewed as the great unifier. The role of honor becomes very important to all of the statesmen involved as the countdown to war begins in late june 1914. When honor is involved a negotiated settlement becomes difficult. It hard to compromise honor without losing face.

Macmillan has written a magisterial and very readable work of history. My one quibble is that she makes more than a few snarky comments about analogies for today. For example she writes that the German Right's fear of Russian cultural penetration of Germany is analagous to today's Republican Right's fear of Mexico. I beg to differ. Mexico is not a geopolitical rival of the U.S.; the Russia of 1914 was certainly one that Germany rightfully feared.

The URL is: http://www.amazon.com/review/R2NJJQ6AB1KBTH?ref_=pe_620760_65501210