Thomas Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York: Penguin Press, 2012)
Author: Thomas Ricks was a reporter on the defense beat for such publications as the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The New York Times, and Task and Purpose. He has written several books on military affairs including Fiasco and The Gamble about the invasion and surge of Iraq.
Overview: A detailed account of how Marshall’s performance standards were eroded as the military looked to fashion itself after corporate America in the 1950s, and how those mistakes laid the groundwork for costlier errors in Vietnam and Iraq.
Central Thesis: He argues that the decline in the performance of the Army — from the triumph of the World War II to stalemate in Korea through defeat in Vietnam to the fiasco of the early years of the Iraq war — can be attributed to failures in how the Army manages its senior officers. Because generals don’t fire generals anymore, civilians have to, and this has detrimental consequences to American military performance since World War II.
Scope of Book: Gen. George C. Marshall fired 16 army division commanders during World War II. Some for incompetence, but others simply weren’t the right fit and were given the chance to redeem themselves in new leadership roles. Since that war, Ricks argues, the Army has abdicated its responsibility to police its own ranks, failing to hold senior officers accountable for their actions.
- Generals normally don’t get fired by each other anymore; it’s now up to the civilian hierarchy to complete that task, and rarely does anyone below the four-star level get removed.
- Instead of a culture of accountability, the Army became bureaucratic, with generals considered too important to be relieved before their normal rotation times.
- In World War II marshall was known for being ruthless with his firings, but he also believed in giving them a second change. Marshall saw no disgrace in reassignment—some men simply weren’t cut out for combat command but they were still valuable elsewhere.
- “A popular myth, persisting even in today’s military, is that senior civilians were too involved in the handling of the war,” he writes in a chapter about the 1960s “collapse” of generalship. “In fact, the problem was not that civilians participated too much in decision making but that the senior military leaders participated too little.” (253)
- He rails against Gen. Maxwell Taylor for politicizing his own role, and reducing the military’s advisory role to the White House in the lead-up and prosecution of the Vietnam War into a chorus of yes-men. He portrays Gen. Tommy Franks as the culmination of the Army’s bent toward tactics at the expense of strategic thinking, which cost the U.S. dearly in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion.
- He argues that The U.S. Army is often led by generals who are masterful at combat tactics, at converging battalions on an agreed-upon enemy target, but woefully inept at recognizing changes in the battlefield.
- Credits DePuy with helping to create the tactically proficient army that liberated Kuwait in 1991, Ricks criticizes him and his acolytes for neglecting counterinsurgency doctrine and broader issues of strategy.
- Ricks admires those generals — Matthew Ridgway in Korea, Creighton Abrams in Vietnam and David Petraeus in Iraq — who were sent in to fix the mess created by their predecessors.
Commentary: A good, if scathing review of generalship in the US Army since WWII. The central thesis gets lost often as Ricks plods through operational history and other hum-drum. The book has also received criticsm for cheapening the debate on how to deal with underperforming officers. Nevertheless I think he has a point—all too often ineffective leaders are allowed to continue for their “careers.” Because as Paul Yinglin once wrote, “As matters stand now, a private who loses a rifle suffers far greater consequences than a general who loses a war.”