The pacifist current in American thought has been strong. The total rejection of war accords with the liberal view that men are rational and that consequently they should be able to arrive at a peaceable solution of differences. All that is needed is either the proper education — the elimination of nationalistic and bellicose propaganda — or the proper institutions — international organization and arbitration treaties — to furnish the machinery for the pacific settlement of disputes. Organized pacifism in western civilization has normally been a middle-class movement and the United States, as the middle-class country par excellence, has had its full share of such thinking.4
The crusading approach to war has not been incompatible with pacifism. It is a common observation that American nationalism has been an idealistic nationalism, justified, not by the assertion of the superiority of the American people over other peoples, but by the assertion of the superiority of American ideals over other ideals. “ ‘[T]o be an American,’ ” as Carl J. Friedrich reminds us, “is an ideal, while to be a Frenchman is a fact.”5 American idealism has tended to make every war a crusade, fought, not for specific objectives of national security, but on behalf of universal principles such as democracy, freedom of the seas, and self-determination. Indeed, for the American a war is not a war unless it is a crusade. The usual listing of American wars omits all mention of the nineteenth-century Indian struggles, although many were longer and bloodier than some of the seven wars which are normally recognized. The Indian struggles did not have the ideological goals and popular enthusiasm of a crusade; they were waged primarily by regular troops not by special forces enlisted for that war alone. The British, in contrast, have no hesitancy in classifying their border struggles as wars when they were serious enough to warrant the appellation, as, for example, the First and Second Afghan Wars. Aside from the Indian conflicts, however, it was not until June 1950 that the American people were called upon to support a war rather than to enlist in a crusade.
The tendency to swing from one extreme to another has a self-perpetuating quality. War aims phrased in sweeping ideological terms are seldom capable of achievement. Consequently, war is normally followed by a period of disillusionment with the techniques of violence as means for securing liberal goals. After the Spanish-American War there was a wave of anti-imperialism. After World War I there was the isolationist and revisionist reaction. Emphasis was put upon eliminating war or finding a substitute for war. The Hague Court and the arbitration treaties followed the Spanish-American War; the Kellogg pact, disarmament conferences, and neutrality acts followed World War I. Eventually, when these techniques fail to safeguard the national interests, disillusionment with liberal pacifism sets in, national interests are rationalized in terms of new ideological goals, and enthusiasm mounts for a new crusade.
THE HOSTILE IMAGE OF THE MILITARY PROFESSION. Liberalism is divided in its views on war but it is united in its hostility to the military profession. The function of this profession is the military security of the state, and the legitimacy of this concern is recognized by neither crusader nor pacifist. Both see the military profession as an obstacle to the achievement of their own aims. The pacifist views the professional military man as a warmonger, plotting to bring about conflicts so as to enhance his own rank and power. The crusader views the professional soldier as a sinister drag upon the conduct of war, uninterested and unaroused by the ideals for which the war is fought. The pacifist sees the military man contaminating his peace; the crusader sees him contaminating his crusade.
The pacifist view that the professional military man desires war is a widespread one in western society. More peculiarly American is the opposition to the professional military man in war. In Great Britain, for instance, the military have traditionally suffered in peace but have been relied upon in war: the shifts of British attitude are well reflected in Kipling’s “Tommy Atkins.” In America, however, the regular has been rejected in both peace and war. Crusades must be fought by peoples not by professionals. Those most interested in the ideological objectives of the war have been most vehement in denouncing the conservative, limited policies of the professional military officers. This attitude was well expressed with reference to the Mexican War by Nathaniel Hawthorne in a campaign biography of Franklin Pierce:
The valor that wins our battles is not the trained hardihood of veterans, but a native and spontaneous fire; and there is surely a chivalrous beauty in the devotion of the citizen soldier to his country’s cause, which the man who makes arms his profession and is but doing his duty cannot pretend to rival.6
In the Civil War the Radical Republicans, anxious to pursue a vigorous and aggressive policy toward the South, were bitter in their attacks on the cautious behavior of McClellan and other generals. In a similar vein Woodrow Wilson, during World War I, minimized the role of the professional on the grounds that:
This is an unprecedented war and, therefore, it is a war in one sense for amateurs . . . The experienced soldier, — experienced in previous wars, — is a back number so far as his experience is concerned . . .
America has always boasted that she could find men to do anything. She is the prize amateur nation of the world. Germany is the prize professional nation of the world. Now, when it comes to doing new things and doing them well, I will back the amateur against the professional every time.7
The essential conservatism of the military outlook has caused American liberalism to identify its external and domestic enemies with military professionalism. The Revolutionary War was described as a war of citizen-soldiers against the standing armies and mercenaries of George III. The Civil War was against the West Point directed armies of the South. President Wilson’s words quoted above reflect the American view that German militarism was the principal enemy in World War I. In World War II the American identification of the German Army with the Nazi regime frustrated the possibilities of capitalizing on the opposition of the former to the latter. The professionals, in other words, are always on the other side.
In domestic politics each liberal group tends to identify the military with its own particular enemies. Without any recognized function in a liberal society and standing outside the American ideological consensus, the military have been a universal target group. The identification of the military with the political enemy was initially valid because eighteenth-century military institutions were fundamentally aristocratic and opposed to liberalism. This pattern of thinking persisted, however, after the military had become divorced from the aristocracy and had begun to be professionalized. Each successive emergent liberal group identified the military with the vested interests of the old order. The Jeffersonian Democrats saw the military as the ally of monarchy and a threat to liberty. The Jacksonians saw them as the foundation of aristocracy and a threat to democracy. Business saw the military as the obsolete remnant of a past agrarian age, the refuge of parasites from the competitive ardors of civilian life, and threat to productivity. Labor and reform groups, on the other hand, have pictured a sinister alliance of business and the military. Obviously, all these theories could not be true, and in actual fact, with the exception of their affiliations with the South, the military have had no significant ties with any group in American society. Yet it is precisely this isolation which makes them eligible to be everybody’s enemy. The identification of the military with the domestic enemy has a double effect. It enables each liberal group to exaggerate the gap between it and its political opponent by identifying itself with civilian control and its opponent, who was normally within the liberal consensus, with the military profession, which was outside that consensus. This use of the military is thus one manifestation of the tendency of all groups in American society to magnify their political differences by linking their opponents with foreign or “un-American” groups. At the same time, however, this practice also serves to reinforce the antimilitary attitudes already present in the American mind.
LIBERAL MILITARY POLICY: CONFORM OR DIE. These hostile images have b
een the basis of the military policy of American liberalism. The essence of this policy is sustained opposition to military values and military requirements. Liberalism’s injunction to the military has in effect been: conform or die. On the one hand, American liberalism has supported the virtual elimination of all institutions of violence and thus has attempted to do away with the problem of civil-military relations entirely. This is a policy of extirpation. On the other hand, when it has been necessary to maintain armed force, American liberalism has insisted upon a rigorous subjective civilian control, the refashioning of the military institutions along liberal lines so that they lose their peculiarly military characteristics. This is a policy of transmutation. Together these two approaches represent the American solution to the problem of civil-military relations. While different in means, both policies have the same goal of the subordination of functional military imperatives and the professional military viewpoint.
The policy of extirpation has tended to prevail in peace when security needs have not required the maintenance of large armed forces. Its most obvious manifestation has been the devotion to the idea of “a small standing army.” It is reflected in a number of attitudes which have been fairly constantly characteristic of the American approach to military affairs.
(1) Large military forces are a threat to liberty. This attitude was particularly popular in the first years of the Republic and was directed principally against the Army. It was revived in somewhat different form at the end of the nineteenth century when it was asserted that military forces tended to infringe upon the civil liberties of citizens. The danger then was viewed not so much to liberty in the abstract as it was to specific liberties such as the right to strike, to refuse military service, and to engage in pacifist propaganda.
(2) Large military forces are a threat to democracy. This attitude appeared with Jacksonianism. It viewed the officer corps as an “aristocratic caste” plotting to subvert popular government. It was directed against both the Army and the Navy, although its most typical expression was resentment at the “West Point clique.”
(3) Large military forces are a threat to economic prosperity. Since it was impossible to view the Navy as a danger to liberty, the Jeffersonians attacked it as a danger to the economy. After the Civil War, when the professionalization of the officer corps deprived the “danger to liberty” argument of much of its appeal even against the Army, this “burden of armaments” argument was applied to all military forces in general. It was popular both with business groups and with radical groups, each of whom attacked the unproductiveness of military force.
(4) Large military forces are a threat to peace. The view that armaments races lead to war and that the military are the principal supporters of war was one element in Jeffersonian opposition to a Navy and has, of course, been a consistent part of the pacifist attitude. It became most popular, however, about the beginning of the twentieth century and, like the “burden of armaments” argument, has continued down to the present time.
The policy of transmutation has prevailed more in war when large armed forces were recognized as necessary. Elements of it, however, have also appeared in peace. It is perhaps best symbolized in the slogan that “primary reliance should be placed upon a militia,” and in Josephus Daniels’ declaration in 1915 with respect to the Navy that: “You cannot have an institution in America that is not Americanized.” Three principal arguments have been advanced in support of this policy.
First, military defense is, like suffrage, the responsibility of every citizen. It cannot be delegated to a small exclusive group. This view which originated in the colonies before the rise of military professionalism was perpetuated into the twentieth century in the concepts of the “citizen-soldier” and the “nation in arms.”
Second, a democratic country must have a democratic military force. This, too, has come down from colonial times, its most extreme manifestation being the practice of electing officers. In its milder forms it emphasizes the desirability of abolishing distinctions between officers and enlisted men, inculcating the democratic-liberal ideology into the forces, and relying more on individual initiative than upon discipline and coordination.
Third, the armed forces, if they must be maintained, should be utilized to further other socially desirable objectives. This has been a persistent element throughout American history from the beginning of the public works activities of the Corps of Engineers down to the present time. It contrasts with the Calhoun-Root view that the only purpose of military forces is war.
THE MILITARY HERO IN LIBERAL POLITICS
The American temper has been so strongly antimilitary that the question inevitably arises: Why have military heroes been so popular in the United States? How is it that ten of our thirty-three presidents have been generals, and that military exploits have contributed so much to the popularity and success of others such as Theodore Roosevelt? Why is it that careful analysis indicates that the military hero by and large makes a more successful political candidate than the man without military experience? Is not this a peculiar anomaly in a society which has generally had little regard for the military? In contrast, England since 1789 has only had one prime minister, the Duke of Wellington, who was also a successful general.8
The answer to these questions is, of course, that the popularity of the military hero in America is the supreme example of liberal transmutation. The successful military hero has been the man either who was a nonprofessional soldier or who, if he was a professional soldier, abandoned his military trappings and adopted the guise of liberalism. The role of the military hero in America is indeed conclusive proof that political power and military professionalism are incompatible in the American climate. The American public has never hesitated to make heroes out of those figures who forsake their military heritage. The military man qua military man, on the other hand, has never been popular. As Dixon Wecter has pointed out, all the great national heroes of American history, with the possible exception of Washington, have been liberals, and the professional soldier, consequently, has had little durable appeal. Instead, it has been the amateur or the defrocked professional, even the military iconoclast, who has gained the sympathy of the American people.
Fifteen major party presidential nominees may be classified as military heroes. Nine were nonprofessional in the sense that the military career was neither their exclusive nor even, in most instances, their primary occupation. These nine included Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Pierce, Frémont, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison, and Theodore Roosevelt. The six professionals were Taylor, Scott, McClellan, Grant, Hancock, and Eisenhower.* The outstanding fact of the political careers of these fifteen men is the extent to which the nonprofessionals had better fortune than the professionals. Only one of the nine nonprofessionals, Frémont, failed to see the inside of the White House; on the other hand, three of the six professionals were unsuccessful. In terms of campaigns, the score is more even: the nonprofessionals won ten out of fifteen campaigns; the professionals, five out of eight. In two of the three elections which regular officers lost, the victor was a nonprofessional military hero: Pierce defeated Scott in 1852 and Garfield defeated Hancock in 1880. In both elections the issue of the citizen amateur versus professional soldier played a significant role. Scott was attacked for his military formality; his war record and his allegedly mercenary motives were contrasted unfavorably with the simple idealism, patriotism, and valor of the citizen-soldier Pierce answering the call to duty. Twenty-eight years later, Scott’s namesake, Winfield Scott Hancock, suffered the same sort of attacks. His exclusively military career was claimed to have unsuited him for the Presidency, and his military adherence to civilian control during Reconstruction was interpreted as partiality to the South. Garfield’s supporters stressed his variety of experience as lawyer, teacher, scholar, statesman, general, and Senator. While the American people like their political candidates to be military heroes, they want their military experience to be an interlude in, or a
sideline to, an otherwise civilian career. With the exception of military heroes straight from the field of victory, they normally prefer a well-rounded candidate who has been a success in law, politics, business, or other civil activity to one whose talents have been exclusively military. The liberal hero is a versatile hero. “Americans,” as Dixon Wecter has said, “have a special affection for the man of peace — like Sergeant York in the World War — who leaves his trade only long enough to beat the military at their own game.”9
The popularity of the military professionals depended on the extent to which they became men of the people rather than men of the military. The three professional officers who became President did so largely through the combination of military victory and pleasing personality. Their military service enabled them to be presented as the servants, not of party or faction, but of all the people, and this plus a homey, folksy sort of personality — “Rough and Ready,” “Uncle Sam,” “Ike” — did the trick. These factors also enabled them to avoid commitment upon most of the issues of the day. They appealed to the public not because they had a definite program, military or otherwise, but because they had so little program. Those professionals who were defeated — Scott, McClellan, Hancock — either were too distinctly the military type, possessed forbidding personalities, or demonstrated too clearly and too early their ineptness in the civilian world. The failure of any naval officer ever to win a presidential nomination or even, with the exception of Dewey, to be seriously considered for such a nomination also reflects the more narrowly professional and isolated character of the naval officer corps. Naval officers, more than their Army colleagues, tended to live in a world apart from civilian society, and consequently have found it difficult to establish a broad political appeal.* That officer has also generally been unsuccessful who has attempted to vindicate himself at the polls for rough treatment accorded him while in the service by a hostile administration. The American people want victorious generals not vengeful ones. Fré-mont’s appeal in 1856 and his abortive candidacy in 1864 reflected his unceremonious exits from the Army in 1848 and 1862. Scott wanted to justify himself against the Democrats for his removal from command at the end of the Mexican War, and McClellan harbored similar grudges against Lincoln. In the twentieth century Leonard Wood was unable to win much support by claiming that he had been unjustly denied a field command in World War I, and General MacArthur’s dramatic dismissal did not set up a countering tidal wave of political support in his favor.
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