The decline of civilian control over America’s military is once again apparent in the surging arms shipments to Ukraine
by James Carden June 8, 2022
WASHINGTON – In The Best and the Brightest, a still unmatched history of America’s intervention in Vietnam, David Halberstam observed a phenomenon that is alive and well today as Washington policymakers – bit by bit, so as to be almost imperceptible to the public at large – deepen American involvement in the Ukraine war.
Halberstam noted the “particular power” the US military held “with the Hill and with hawkish journalists, their stronger hold on patriotic-machismo arguments…their particular certitude, made them far more powerful players than men raising doubts. The illusion would always be of civilian control; the reality would be of a relentlessly growing military domination of policy, intelligence, aims, objectives and means…”
The capture of the civilian national security apparatus by the Pentagon and intelligence community is by now an old story. The steady decline of civilian control over the military has been a feature of American politics for some years.
During the Barack Obama administration, the president faced fierce resistance to his plans to draw down troop levels in Afghanistan. At the time, the chairman of the House of Representatives Appropriations Committee, David Obey, complained that Generals like Stanley McChrystal were part of “a long list of reckless, renegade generals who haven’t seemed to understand that their role is to implement policy, not design it.”
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