What Is the Very Model of a (Post) Modern Major General?
by Susan Bryant
Originally published in Book Review Roundtable in the Texas National Security Review here.
Upon announcing retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis as his pick for secretary of defense, President Donald Trump remarked, “He is the closest thing we have to General George Patton.”39 This statement, intended as high praise, reflects a fundamental misunderstanding of both the duties and temperament of an American defense secretary. Nonetheless, it also reflects the American public’s enduring cultural preference for the heroic qualities of generalship: boldness and extreme risk tolerance, curiously coupled with a degree of disdain for the civilians they have taken an oath to obey and serve.40
Americans tend to see their commanders as heroic figures, in the mold of John Wayne, physically courageous, rough men of action, rather than in the persona of George Marshall or Colin Powell, diplomatic, detail-oriented, and politically savvy. Lawrence Freedman explores this idiosyncratic American preference for certain personality types in its generals and the consequences for military operations in Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine, concluding that these qualities are less than ideal in the current domestic and geopolitical environments. In the book’s final chapter, Freedman concludes that the rapid rate of technological change has made the extraordinary responsibilities of command more complex and technical with the introduction of disruptive technologies in the space and cyber realm, such as generative AI and the potential for quantum computing. When coupled with the current landscape of near-peer geopolitical competition, the chance for catastrophic miscalculation by a military commander has radically increased, making it even more essential that those chosen to command are equal to the task, displaying political savvy, intellectual depth, and the ability to function well as a member of a team. Freedman observes that, at the outset of World War II, Army Chief of Staff George Marshall chose Dwight Eisenhower to command American Forces in Europe for his “astuteness” and “ability to get along with others” rather than for his courage or heroic qualities.41 This selection criteria has withstood the test of time and remains equally valid today.
When asked to review Command, I expected a thoroughly researched, detail-rich, and engaging volume. And that was what I found. Thinking back to my experience reading Freedman’s Strategy, which runs to 768 pages, I also expected it to exceed the average length of an academic tome.42 At 624 pages, Command is not a work that can be read in a single afternoon. Nonetheless, it is well worth the time for anyone looking to better understand the complicated interplay of politics and military operations in contemporary geopolitics, regardless of political system type. And there is some humor to be found in the noted enduring French cultural preference for generals to be regarded as “attractive” by women.43
The closest analog to Command is Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command, a classic for teaching civil-military relations at the university level.44 While Supreme Command considers four cases in which the chosen commanders can all be classified as political-military geniuses — U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and Israeli Prime Minister David Ben Gurion — who successfully governed wartime democracies, Freedman casts his net more widely. Command analyzes 11 cases — some successful, some decidedly less so.
In each, the commander was not necessarily the political leader of a democratic state who has the best interests of the citizens at heart or who is accountable to anyone but himself. This leads to broader conclusions than are found in Supreme Command. Freedman includes chapters on the command styles of such nefarious figures as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. As a result, the lessons that can be drawn from Command are more diverse than those found in Supreme Command and usefully include some of the shortcomings, such as “coup-proofing,” that are baked into authoritarian governance models. These are good reminders for military officers — including me — who have chafed at the slowness, inefficiency, and even self-contradictory nature of decision-making in democratic societies.
Nonetheless, like Cohen’s book, Command is ultimately a work about civil-military relations. For contemporary American strategists, politicians, and commanders, Freedman’s most significant contribution lies in his exacting exploration of the bewildering intersections of strategic, political, and military cultures, their effects on civil-military relations, the preferred way of war, and wars’ outcomes. Therefore, the book is a must-read for anyone working at the seams of these uniquely complex spheres.
Command and American Culture
Freedman begins his study by noting the unique qualities of military command, pointing out that, unlike other forms of authority, commands are “authoritative orders, to be obeyed without question.”45 He further notes that successful command in combat requires “people of special character,”46 for whom courage, physical, and intellectual ability are required in nearly equal measure. Despite these enduring requirements for military command, a particular state’s conception of what constitutes an exceptional commander must be filtered through both its strategic and military cultures, producing commanders whose character reflects the cultural norms and preferences of the states they serve.
Both American strategic and military cultures encompass degrees of dissonance regarding the desired qualities of senior military commanders — on the one hand, requiring them to be obedient guardians of democracy, while on the other, preferring them to embody the persona of an iconoclastic maverick who reflects the spirit of American cowboy culture.47 This dissonance, which infuses and complicates American civil-military relations, is a recurring theme in Freedman’s U.S.-focused case studies. He considers the relationship between the character and successes — and failures — of Douglas MacArthur, Eisenhower, Wesley Clark, and Tommy Franks, analyzing how their temperaments, actions, and interactions with their peers shaped the outcomes of the conflicts they oversaw.
In the words of Colin Gray, all political and military activity is encultured, meaning there is no aspect of decision-making or strategic formulation free of cultural context or influence.48 This statement requires further explanation. In 2006, Thomas Mahnken observed, “One of the central challenges facing the scholar of any state’s strategic culture lies in determining which institutions serve as the keeper and transmitter of strategic culture. Is it the state? The military as a whole? Or some subset of the military?”49 He proposed that strategic culture is best understood as three distinct yet interrelated levels. They are:
[T]hose of the nation, the military, and the military service. At the national level, strategic culture reflects a society’s values regarding the use of force. At the military level, strategic culture (or a nation’s “way of war”) is an expression of how the nation’s military wants to fight wars. … Finally, strategic culture at the service level represents the organizational culture of the particular service–those values, missions, and technologies that the institution holds dear. 50
Thus, although Carl von Clausewitz correctly observed, “War is a continuation of politics by other means,”51 members of both the American public and military would prefer that the two spheres remain separate.52 Although likely unaware of the theory’s existence, many Americans prefer Samuel Huntington’s objective control model of civil-military relations, in which the military is given autonomy in exchange for professionalization. In this construct, the military is free to make “military” decisions apart from political considerations.53
Although the decision to use force is a fundamentally political one, the preference for this model persists on both sides of the civil-military relationship. This may be why the U.S. military has managed to maintain the trust and confidence of the American people, even as other institutions — from the church to Congress to the Supreme Court — have seen plummeting ratings over the last few decades.54 The title of a recent New York Times article sums up the prevailing American sentiment pithily: “How do Americans Feel about Politics? Disgust isn’t a Strong Enough Word.”55 However, Americans have greater trust in the military. For example, in 2022, a Gallup poll found that 64 percent of Americans expressed a significant amount of confidence in the military, well above the presidency at 23 percent and Congress at 7 percent.56 Despite the current American disdain for all things political and the enduring preference for “apolitical” military officers, the major general — modern, post-modern, or otherwise — is an inescapably political figure, a fact that the average American seems not to recognize.
While reading Command, I was surprised by Freedman’s repeated use of two fictional characters from Anton Myrer’s Once an Eagle as shorthand for the debate over the preferred qualities of American military leaders.57 The book tells the story of two U.S. Army officers, Sam Damon, the hero who embodies the persona of the apolitical “soldier’s soldier,” and Montgomery Massengale, the villain, an ambitious, political, and self-serving West Point graduate. More than an engaging story, Once an Eagle is a touchstone for several generations of Army officers who strove to emulate Damon and knew that being compared to Massengale was a severe insult.58 A one-time fixture on the chief of staff of the Army’s reading list, Once an Eagle has recently fallen out of favor, although it remains widely admired by generations of Army officers.59
Freedman adopts this Damon-Massengale shorthand in Command to demonstrate American military officers’ continuing disdain for all things political despite the fact that a senior commander’s function is inescapably political. He also notes that, at times, Army officers use the specific “Damon-Massengale” typology to classify each other. For example, Freedman recounts an incident during Operation Allied Force, when then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton, who would denigrate the character of other officers by calling them “Massengales,”60 believed that the NATO Commander, Clark, was behaving too overtly politically and in a self-serving manner. Freedman recounts how Clark’s subordinates often referred to him as a “perfumed prince” and describes an occasion when he was explicitly called out as a “Massengale, not a Damon.”61 Freedman then returned briefly to the case study of MacArthur’s relief during the Korean War, in which he described MacArthur as the model from which Massengale was created.62 Like all typecasting, the absence of nuance is evident. Nonetheless, the fact this “Damon-Massengale” sorting persists among U.S. Army officers demonstrates the continuing misunderstanding and disdain for the political aspects of command.63
For all that Once an Eagle tells a compelling story of good versus bad leadership, the necessary covariance of political savvy and self-serving behavior in contemporary strategic and military culture is detrimental to America’s ability to fight and win future wars. Its enduring popularity among military officers is problematic. Certain aspects of the story are inherently obvious. No one wants to be commanded by a self-serving leader who cares more about their own advancement than the welfare of their troops. That said, by conflating “political” with “self-serving,” Once an Eagle and American military and strategic culture has done itself a profound disservice.
The pretense of Huntington’s separate spheres — the political and the military — is a fantasy that persists to America’s profound peril. Freedman addresses this reality and its potential consequences in Command through the shorthand of the Massengale/Damon dichotomy. He quotes Maj. Gen. Robert Scales, a former commandant of the Army War College, who opines that “the novel conflates two views of careerism … the good warrior versus the bad staff officer.”64 Scales further observes the strategic problem these cultural preferences engender: “We need more officers with Courtney’s [Massengale’s] skills as strategists, officers with the ability to think in time, who are able to express themselves with elegance … and … navigate through the swamp of political-military policymaking.”65 In concurrence with this assessment, Freedman demonstrates the consequences of this preference in a chapter about the U.S. invasion of Iraq that “Franks was a Damon rather than a Courtney Massengale, though in this case, the lack of a political sensibility was a major handicap.”66 As long as the adjective “political” remains an insult in American military culture and senior leaders avoid honing their political instincts, their ability to provide comprehensive military advice to their civilian superiors will be compromised.
Looking Ahead: What Is the Very Model of a (Post) Modern Major General?
In the book’s final pages, Freedman considers the future of command predominantly through the lens of technological change. He concludes, “Decision-making authority has had to be more widely distributed to empowered subordinates, forming executive teams, closely united around a common understanding of the mission…”67 This is due to the increased complexity of military campaigns in the current era.68 Freedman forecasts that this trend will likely increase as technology continues to improve. He briefly delves into the critical question of the impacts of generative AI on command, noting the possibility that “non-human logic” may be transformative.69 Like the rest of us struggling to understand the potential impacts of AI, he leaves the detailed “how” an open question.
Regardless of the answer, the inherently political nature of command will not change with technology. Thus, the Damon-Massengale dichotomy should be destroyed within American political and military culture, and political savvy should accompany physical and moral courage on the long list of attributes necessary for the [Post] Modern Major General.
Dr. Susan Bryant, Colonel (Retired), U.S. Army is the executive director of Strategic Education International, an educational nonprofit that designs and delivers executive education programs for governments and private industry. She teaches grand strategy and military history at Georgetown University. She is also a visiting research fellow at the National Defense University and a Marine Corps University Board of Visitors member. She is a retired army colonel, having served 28 years on active duty with overseas assignments in Afghanistan, Jerusalem, and South Korea. Her education includes a BSFS from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, master’s degrees from Yale University and Marine Corps University, and a doctorate in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University. She is a co-author of Military Strategy in the 21st Century (Cambria Press, 2018), Finding Ender: Exploring the Intersections of Creativity, Innovation, and Talent Management in the United States Armed Forces(NDU Press, 2019), and Winning Without Fighting(Forthcoming, Cambria Press, 2024). She is also the editor of Resourcing National Security: Connecting the Ends and Means of US National Security (Cambria Press, 2022).
Endnotes
39Michael Gordon and Eric Schmitt, “James Mattis, Outspoken Retired Marine, is Trump’s Choice as Defense Secretary,” The New York Times, December 1, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/01/us/politics/james-mattis-secrtary-of-defense-trump.html.
40Jeannie L. Johnson, “Fit for Future Conflict? American Strategic Culture in an Era of Great Power Competition,” Journal of Advanced Military Studies, 11, no. 1 (2020): 189, https://muse.jhu.edu/article/796241/pdf.
41Lawrence Freedman, Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine,” (Oxford University Press: 2022), 5.
42Lawrence Freedman, Strategy: A History (Oxford University Press, 2023).
43Freedman, Command, 40.
44Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (Free Press, 2012).
45Freedman, Command, 1.
46Freedman, Command, 2.
47Edward C. Stewart and Milton J. Bennet, American Cultural Patterns: A Cross-Cultural Perspective (Nicholas Brealey, 2005), 45.
48Colin Gray, “Strategic Culture as Context: The First Generation of Theory Strikes Back,” Review of International Studies, 25, no.1 (January 1999): 56, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20097575.
49Thomas G. Mahnken, “United States Strategic Culture,” prepared for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency, 2006, 4, https://irp.fas.org/agency/dod/dtra/us.pdf.
50Mahnken, “Strategic Culture,” 5.
51Carl von Clausewitz, On War, trans. Peter Paret and Michael Howard (Princeton University Press, 1984), 280.
52Risa Brooks, “Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States,” International Security, 44, no. 4 (Spring 2020): 8-10.
53Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Belknap Press, 1959).
54Jeffrey M. Jones, “Confidence in U.S. Institutions Down; Average at New Low,” Gallup, July 5, 2022, https://news.gallup.com/poll/394283/confidence-institutions-down-average-new-low.aspx.
55Jack Healey et al., “How Do Americans Feel about Politics? Disgust isn’t A Strong Enough Word” The New York Times, October 6, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/06/us/kevin-mccarthy-congress-matt-gaetz-speaker-biden-trump-voters.html.
56Jones, “Confidence.”
57Anton Myrer, Once an Eagle (Harper Collins, 2013).
58The introduction to the current edition is written by former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. (ret.) John Vessey, who discusses the profound impact the book had upon him personally, along with generations of military officers.
59Once an Eagle appeared on Chief of Staff of the Army Raymond T. Odierno’s reading list as recently as 2015, https://history.army.mil/html/books/105/105-1-1/CMH_Pub_105-5-1_2014.pdf. However, it did not appear on Gen. Mark Milley’s list. The book’s hero, Sam Damon, engaged in a long-term extra-marital affair, a punishable offense under the Uniformed Code of Military Justice, which makes it an odd choice for a “must-read” book. The fact that it was a one-time staple on the chief of staff of the Army’s reading lists speaks to the enduring cultural resonance of the leadership traits found within the novel.
60Freedman, Command, 339.
61Freedman, Command, 339.
62Freedman, Command, 338.
63As recently as 2022, I observed an Army general explaining the differences between Massengale and Damon and stating to an incoming cohort of Army strategists that they never want to be a “political, self-serving Massengale.”
64Freedman, Command, 360.
65Freedman, Command, 360.
66Freedman, Command, 408.
67Freedman, Command, 494.
68Freedman, Command, 509.
69Freedman, Command, 505.
70Lawrence Freedman, Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2022), 8.
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