“Political Commissars in Camouflage”
Dr. Tony Corn opens fire at the SWJ with a 33 page broadside against ….well….many targets… of the Defense Department/ military academia/civilian political status quo. I can’t say that I agree with every point in this brutal, turbocharged jeremiad, but some of Corn’s targets deserve the abuse he heaps on them, and he nails a few of my pet peeves, including the chronic neglect of strategy and grand strategy by the American elite (civilian appointees even more than flag officers, in my view).
You will agree and disagree with Corn as he has a high density of concepts and references here, often expressed in polemical terms. He also throws in a gratuitous dose of anti-Clausewitzianism to add salt to the wounds of some readers, if the political angle is not providing sufficient friction 🙂 :
From War Managers to Soldier Diplomats: The Coming Revolution in Civil Military Relations
….There was of course a price to be paid for the failure to distinguish between political partisanship and political literacy. The risk was to end up with an officer corps focused exclusively on tactical and operational matters, and so lacking in political literacy as to be unable to relate military means to political ends, i.e. to think strategically. It did not seem to matter much at the time for two reasons. In the nuclear age, strategic thinking was seen as being too important to be left to the military, and was therefore quickly taken over by civilians. In addition, those same civilians (including Huntington) tacitly shared the conviction famously expressed by Bernard Brodie in 1946: “Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have no other useful purpose.” And indeed, if the main raison d’etre of the military is not to win, but to avert, war, why take the risk of having officers develop an “unhealthy” interest in politics by emphasizing the strategic level of war?
Read the whole thing here.
ADDENDUM:
My take, four years ago, on the emerging class of “soldier-statesmen” (I try to be so far ahead of each curve that it brings me no recognition whatsoever. LOL!)
July 2nd, 2009 at 9:59 pm
I found it pretty much unreadable. Of course, that has to do with my prejudices about a certain number of repetitions of political correctness and similar epithets within the first five pages or so.
More seriously, he’s obviously angry about something, perhaps many somethings, but the anger gets in the way of clear expression of what he’s angry about and what might be done about it.
I find it curious that his way into that thicket of anger is the academic discipline of civilian-military relations. He says it’s one of the least powerful disciplines, but blames it for all those things he’s angry about. I’d like to know how the academicians have turned that low spot on the totem pole into all that, er, power.
July 2nd, 2009 at 10:50 pm
Printed it. Train reading. Also got Kaplan and Totten interview and Stephen Biddle on Afghanistan. Good stuff all, by the look of it. A couple of pops of bourbon with the other lawyers here, and I am fortified for the evening.
July 3rd, 2009 at 4:38 pm
Corn was angry and that can impact clarity. I think though Cheryl, what he argued was that civil-military relations field was least prestigious, but it nevertheless had managed to get a hammerlock on military education and the parameters of discourse on "civilian control of the military" by virtue of being a narrow and insular academic community and the lack of competing voices.
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Just read Corn. Good stuff. Dense, and in need of editing and elaboration, but he is certainly identifying real problems.
.
The basic point is not so much, who guards the guardians? It is why would anyone be a guardian when being one is disparaged, and what you asked to bleed and die to guard is disparaged?
.
Someone recently said that the America our military thinks it is guarding is an illusion that either never existed or died a long time ago. That is an overstatement. But the America that produces our military personnel is a minority in terms of population and ideas and territory, and a shrinking one.
.
Why should Red State America, and Blue Collar America, sends its children to die in foreign wars? The people who run this country — its government, its universities, its major businesses — have disdain for them, their values, their beliefs, their God, their guns, and the military they send their sons and daughters to serve.
.
I disagree with Cheryl that Corn is "angry", and I certainly don’t agree that any such perceived "anger" justifies dismissal of the substance of what he says. Seeing something seriously wrong should provoke anger. Anger can be justified. Anger is not bad. Anger can be energizing. Anger can be motivating. Say yes to anger — anger that if focused on positive change, anger that is channeled to do good and change a status quo that needs to be changed. Reformers are often angry. So be it.
July 4th, 2009 at 4:25 am
His work tends to have a very stream of consciousness style to it. See Bassford on this: http://www.clausewitz.com/readings/Bassford/OnCornyIdeas.htm
July 5th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Lex’s comment reminds me of the song ‘Freedom’, the last track on Rage Against the Machine’s first self-titled album, which utters the line ‘anger is a gift’. Or Fight Club, fantastic movie.I buy that he is angry, and his re-reading of Huntington is spot in. I also agree that IR tends to be quite silly with regard to its inability to be policy-oriented, but he comes across as if all other governance-type occupations are full of swindlers. Now certainty the military is the trying of all occupations (it may demand ultimate sacrifices), but that doesn’t mean that some aspects of the global elite are completely useless. For example, ‘the disaggregated state’, a concept from Anne-Marie Slaughter’s <i>New World Order</i>, which for her is composed of regulators, judges, and legislators. One occupation she does not (but absolutely should) include is the military, who can theoretically network alongside those of other occupations to build institutional capacity in other states. The military, then, should be conceived not as the only virtuous institution among legions of self-destructive civilians, but an integral partner among those other occupations, whom if they all work together, can actually achieve strategic goals jointly fulfilling the national interests of their respective countries.
October 6th, 2009 at 6:29 am
[…] Someone I’ve heard of put an intriguing blog post on zenpundit.com Blog Archive Political Commissars in CamouflageHere’s a quick excerptSLENTROL is available in 20mL, 50mL, and 150mL Slentrol for Dogs (20mL) SLENTROL (20ml) is the first prescription canine weight-loss product in the US. Buy Dog Supplies from top rated Pet Supplies stores. Azodyl 6 Pack 360 Capsules By Slentrol 50ml. slentrol- Compare & Save at- Slentrol for Dogs (20mL) Slentrol for Dogs (50 mL) Slentrol for Dogs (150 mL) slentrol. /2/458357011/Slentrol-l product/2/458357009/Slentrol-l. Slentrol will decrease the appetite; however, if your dog does not eat for 24 hours, contact. Heart and Blood Pressure- Cardiac and Anti-Hypertensives. Readers who viewed this page, also viewed. SLENTROL (dirlotapide) is The first proven and dependable veterinary medication for the management of canine obesity. SLENTROL (20ml) Old Price: 28.31 SALE 21.99 Save 22.3!/product/Slentrol-l/product/Footvax-20ml-20-l product/Louping-III-vaccine-l. 5 mg/ml Oral Solution 50ml, 9N-50941 59.99. Best price search results for SLENTROL 20ml SLENTROL 20ml 28.31. The UK pet medication and Slentrol Oral-20ml. SLENTROL (dirlotapide) is a solution formulated at a Slentrol for Dogs […] […]