The Politics of Victory.('Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime')

Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, by Eliot A. Cohen (Free Press, 272 pp., $25)

Conservatives all know why the U.S. lost the Vietnam War -- meddling civilian leaders handcuffed the military and prevented it from vigorously pursuing the victory that was there for the taking. The lesson has become an article of faith in conservative orthodoxy, and in the political culture more broadly: American generals should be left alone to make war as they see fit, protected from any interference from grasping, ill-informed, timid politicians.

Eliot A. Cohen makes a persuasive case in his excellent new book that there are three problems with this view of Vietnam: It is wrong as a factual matter; it blinds us to the lessons of history's truly great wartime leaders; and it impedes America's ability to fight successfully to this day. Cohen argues that, counter to the post-Vietnam conventional wisdom, war is inherently a political enterprise, and therefore requires the close supervision of political leaders.

For his core proposition, Cohen quotes Lincoln biographers John Nicolay and John Hay:

Every war is begun, dominated, and ended by political considerations; without a nation, without a government, without money or credit, without popular enthusiasm which furnishes volunteers, or public support which endures conscription, there could be no army and no war - - neither beginning nor end of methodical hostilities. War and popolitics, campaign and statecraft, are Siamese twins, inseparable and interdependent; and to talk of military operations without the direction and interference of an administration is as absurd as to plan a campaign without recruits, pay or rations.

It is a testament to Cohen's intelligent and timely book that by its end, this point no longer seems so much brilliant or counterintuitive, as, simply, obvious.

When it comes to Vietnam, Cohen's perspective leads him to defend LBJ's notorious review of bombing targets as an appropriate exercise of oversight, given the strategic and political consequences of the targeting choices. In Korea, the military had heedlessly prompted a massive Chinese intervention, and a repeat was obviously to be avoided. Besides, LBJ approved most of the targets anyway. It is hard to blame Johnson's interference for the failure of the war, Cohen writes, when military leaders were also clueless about how to fight it: "There is no evidence that they understood any better than the civilian leadership the mentality of friend or foe, or that they had any ideas for bringing the war to a conclusion on terms acceptable to American diplomacy and bearable for the American public."