It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
It's also true in quite some other countries, and it is to ensure that the military remains subordinated to the civil government, after the many examples of military coups in History.
https://www.military.com/join-armed-forces/swearing-in-for-m...
Americans disagree about a lot, including how to interpret the Constitution and which parts of it are more or less important. But I would really hope that myself and any other random American can at least agree that our Constitution is the rule book that we must all live by and that it is ultimately what binds us as a nation.
Those prominent Americans include the original authors of said constitution: they always knew it would be a living document to be modified via amendments. Constitutional "originalists" who believe we should be totally beholden to a 240-year-old document with no changes are the ones who are not following either the spirit or the letter of the constitution.
Somebody has to be in charge of the military. If that person is just someone promoted from within, you're never more than one person's decision from a coup d'etat, "A republic, if you can keep it". So, an elected leader it is.
Of the three branches of the US government, only one is intended to provide an executive function, to decide, in an instant where necessary, without deliberation and compromise. The President. So that's the right person for the job of ultimate military commander, and it's one of the few things about that job which the voters seem to actually have some idea about.
Both the US and UK systems are under-staffed. The UK shares the job of executive leader and legislative leader (very different skill sets) under one role "Prime Minister" - while the US shares the job of executive leader and head of state (a figurehead) which also require totally different skill sets under the role of "President". This would make sense with a very small population, but it's crazy to imagine these huge countries couldn't find two people to do these very different jobs even a little better than one man (and in the US it has always been a man somehow) can do both.
(Though I think that role might go to the chancellor in times of war. Not sure.)
Yes, just like in the US.
My main point was that the chancellor is not the commander in chief by default. Only under exceptional circumstances.
That might have something to do with a leftover from the English Civil War. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Model_Army
There is no Royal Army. But all members of the armed forces, police, and certain prominent political appointments, swear an Oath of Allegiance to the monarch.
Note this is not to the country. And certainly not to the people. Not even to the Crown, which is a kind of abstract superclass of British monarchs in general.
The Royal Navy does not have to swear this oath. It exists by direct Royal Prerogative which means it's assumed to be loyal, pretty much by definition.
Of course, that style is a lot harder, and thus consumes a lot more limited attention.
No, its not; and its kind of odd to say that during the era when not omly does the President fully exercise that power, they have for all practical purposes had it augmented by delegation (substantively on paper, and even more broadly in practice) of Congress’ power to declare war.
It’s true that most Presidents don’t micromanage the military, but they very much do command it, and a power generally used with some discretion and reserve is not the same as a legal fiction.
But the important thing about the President’s Commander-in-Chief role is not that it is a power (though it is), but that it is a constraint on the Congressional power to orgabize and set rules for the military.
Ultimately, military grand strategy is a domain of politics as much as it is about how to wage war. The agendas and objectives are ultimately continuations of political goals of whoever is in power. During a war, the fighting must be coordinated with diplomacy, economy/trade/manufacturing and public relations/propaganda, all of which generals tend to know little about.
And even if the President is not the one making the micro decisions, he/she definitely is responsible for making sure the war is waged in a way that is aligned with the general objectives of the administration.
This means defining objectives, access to resources as well as defining the rules of engagement. And equally importantly, listen to the military and determine when the time is right to actually provide additional resources or permissions, despite political costs.
Instead we get military generals who act more like politicians the more senior they get (proven by study). And it seems that often politicians with little to lose and a lot to prove are often more hawkish than the military around them (Hilary Clinton, Wolfowitz, et al).
But, you know, tradeoffs…
Having served in the US Navy, this statement could not be more wrong. All command authority is delegated from the President, full stop.
So, yes, he does have final command (subject to "legal orders" and similar restrictions). But he's not commanding in the normal sense of a military commander.
War is ultimately a political endeavor; the goal of a war is to compel, by use of military force, some sort of political objective. It only makes sense then that the person in charge of directing when and where that military force is used is also the person who is empowered to carry out the political policy of the entire country.
For people who rise to the top of the military from within, every political problem becomes a nail in want of the military hammer for a solution, and thus the default answer to every crisis tends to become war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused without a war because both Kennedy and Khrushchev couldn't bring themselves to push the button marked nuclear war, while virtually the entire military establishment was convinced, and forcefully arguing, that the only way out of the situation was to be the first to push that button.
I wouldn’t be surprised if back in the Grenada/Panama era of the 80’s that there may have been many chomping at the bit. These days, I’m guessing not so much.
As to Iraq and WMDs, you could prob call him a “stooge” if you wanted to. But the little I know from a distance, that was something that racked his conscience for the rest of his life.
Grenada, they never had time to think about it - it took three days for the most mighty military in the world to secure one of the tiniest nations in the world.
After 9/11, Rumsfeld asked the Army for their plans. They gave him a stack of plans on occupying Afghanistan and requirement for 600K troops (per doctrine) - they had no intention of volunteering. He was furious to be sidelined when the CIA guy convinced W it could all be done with small teams and airpower.
For Iraq, Rumsfeld agreed to all their plans and they saluted happily when he said to not make any occupation plans...
Simple: the founders of the US thought it would protect our democracy to ensure that a elected civilian was in charge of the military. It's mostly worked.
Nope. There's a lot of writing about this issue from various founding fathers. There was great desire to avoid the President appearing to be a king or turning into one.
Plus what they say they wanted to achieve is not necessarily what they did achieve. That's not to say they failed and the president is a king, but the president is not entirely un-king-like either.
Since a king is literally all of the functions of government, there is really no way to argue that any part of a government isn't somewhat king like.
In the US, the Judiciary with lifetime appointments and review power was always viewed as the most king-like.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
subservient office culture in Japan where the big boss was reading it, so it spread to the entire organisation from where it spread to other organisations. It got to a point where no one knew why they were reading it, just that they had to. Around the same time it caught imagination of the Americans because of the Japanese (who were actually pretty efficient at their jobs).
Will look for the comment and post if it takes me less than 15 mins.
Edit: forgot how bad reddit search was. While I did not find what I was looking for, this [0] is one high quality answer you may be interested in. Only top comments are heavily moderated on that sub.
[0]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1j37co/when_...
I still think there is huge potential for an overarching, creative strategy, and I wouldn't be surprised if the difficulties of Soviet/US forces in Afghanistan were not an accident, but sun-tzu'd in some way.
I think modern democracies do a much better job of separating military and civilian leadership than dictatorships do. Putin seems to be too personally involved in micromanaging his war, insisting on conquests that are simply not possible (like Bakhmut and some other places). Hitler similarly interfered with his generals and hampered his war effort that way.
Zelensky is of course involved with the war, but he listens to his generals.
> "appear weak when you are strong"
That only seems useful if you want to lure the enemy into an attack in order to ambush him, but with our modern day sensibilities about the value of life, we prefer to have no attack at all. More applicable to us is "appear strong when you are weak", although such secrets never last long, so we prefer to appear strong when strong, in order to discourage any attack.
Also, Russia appeared strong while weak, and that didn't exactly work out well when Putin called his own bluff. Turns out he incorrectly believed the strong appearance of his own army. And he believed the West to be weak (or at least divided and disorganised), so he attacked.
It's not that these concerns are irrelevant, but they're a lot more complex than Sun Tzu makes them out to be, and it's possible to fall for your own disguise. Or maybe the civilian leadership can fall for the military's disguise.
That only seems useful if you want to lure the enemy into an attack in order to ambush him"
No, it is also good (necessary) for preparing a good offensive. If the enemy thinks you are weak in some area, he does not expect a push from that direction.
Ukraine did just that last fall very succesfull. Show off force and big noisy preparation of a offensive south and starting it loud. And then push hard, fast and unexpected in the north, after the enemy already moved more troops further south.
And then confusion and panic among the enemy, so a relativly small force could conquer vast lands.
That makes it sound as if Putin attacked because an opportunity presented itself.
I don't think that's why he attacked. I think he attacked because he felt he had no choice. Not because NATO was crowding into his borderlands, which is Putin's story; but because following the collapse of Soviet communism and the USSR, the rump Russia was clearly a state dependent mainly on resource-extraction, which desn't promise a great independent future. Especially with Europe's increasing development of non-fossil energy, earnings from fossil fuel exports could be expected to diminish rapidly.
But why Ukraine? Well, setting aside his deranged opinions about the historic unity of Ukraine and Russia, and the historic destiny of the "Rus", Ukraine was rapidly becoming closer to Europe, and Ukrainians were clearly happy with that prospect. Having a successful, happy fragment of the USSR on his border threatened his control over his own population.
> Turns out he incorrectly believed the strong appearance of his own army.
Agreed! In fact everyone overestimated the strength of his army.
"Rapidly" but still on a decades scale, which Putin is unlikely to live to. Meanwhile he has forced Europe to look elsewhere for energy and drastically accelerated their plans.
> But why Ukraine? Well, setting aside his deranged opinions about the historic unity of Ukraine and Russia, and the historic destiny of the "Rus", Ukraine was rapidly becoming closer to Europe, and Ukrainians were clearly happy with that prospect. Having a successful, happy fragment of the USSR on his border threatened his control over his own population.
Poland and the Baltics are already on his border, and most of the former Warsaw Pact is already in the EU and happily progressing, with quality of life drastically better than in Russia. I really don't think this excuse works.
I guess you're right, it doesn't. I don't know what I'm talking about; I'm just someone who enjoys strategy games.
I'm also extremely interested in trying to figure out what Putin was thinking when he attacked, and why he didn't just pull back when his initial blitzkrieg failed.
I happen to think his own utterances and writings are a largely-accurate presentation of what he really believes about geo-politics; but they don't answer the "Why now?" question. I think you can understand his thinking by listening to what he says. I think he really believes "there's no such thing as Ukraine".
And regarding the Baltic states: they weren't in NATO, and individually they have short borders with Russia. Ukraine has a very long border with Russia.
They have been in NATO since 2004. Narva in Estonia is <3 hours drive from St Petersburg, the second largest city in Russia. Poland also has a large border with Belarus which is for most intents and purposes a Russian client state. And the border with NATO argument falls even further apart when you consider that Russia occupying Ukraine will gain them hundreds of km of borders with NATO member states Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Romania.
> I'm also extremely interested in trying to figure out what Putin was thinking when he attacked, and why he didn't just pull back when his initial blitzkrieg failed.
> I think you can understand his thinking by listening to what he says. I think he really believes "there's no such thing as Ukraine".
I guess we'll never really know about his actual reasons, but as to why he didn't pull back - he's a strongman dictator, his whole persona is a tough guy. If he gets his nose bloodied and loses massive amounts of troops, that will be a huge blow to his reputation in Russia, which he can't really afford, lest someone near him things they can do a better job.
My mistake, you're right. But not Finland. And I wasn't counting Poland, which was a former European imperial power; I don't think of Poland and Sweden as being Baltic states, even though their coastlines are Baltic coastlines. In the same way (roughly), I don't think of Greece as a Balkan state.
I think he saw a rapidly closing window of opportunity. A successful Ukraine would be a threat to his own rule over Russia, because there are a lot of ties between Russians and Ukrainians, and Russians would notice if a more EU-aligned Ukraine is more prosperous than Putin-ruled Russia, and that would undermine Putin's story of saving Russia's economy (which he did, between 2000 and 2008).
With increasingly closer ties between Ukraine and NATO, and Ukraine possibly even joining at some point, he has to take advantage of the fact that Ukraine wasn't in NATO yet. And NATO didn't respond to him taking land from Georgia in 2008, and the Crimea in 2014, so he figured they wouldn't do anything this time either. Besides, he'd invested a lot of effort into dividing the EU and NATO: funding extreme-right-wing parties all over Europe, supporting Trump, supporting Brexit, all things that seemed to make the EU and NATO weaker. But he vastly overestimated our weakness and his own strength.
That wasn't possible, and as far as I'm aware it remains impossible for now. I believe it is a prerequisite for joining NATO, that you should be in control of your internationally-recognized borders. Otherwise, at the moment of joining, the whole of NATO would instantly be at war with Russia, because NATO's supposedly a mutual defence treaty organisation.
Same goes for Georgia, as far as I can see; Georgia's internationally-recognized borders place South Ossettia inside Georgia. But South Ossettia remains occupied by Russia.
[Edit] FWIW, I don't think NATO is in shape to go to war in Eastern Europe. Western countries took advantage of the end of the Cold War and the "peace dividend" to hollow-out their armed forces and ammunition reserves. As a Brit, I'm particularly ashamed of Britain's conduct, which has involved committing huge amounts of money to two spiffy aircraft carriers, which still don't carry a full complement of F35s, and which can't operate without a fleet of destroyers and frigates, not to mention supply ships. And a new generation of strategic nuclear missile submarines. Having a stockpile of 122mm artillery shells would be massively cheaper, and a better use of money.
It is, and that's at least part of the reason why when Ukraine asked to join NATO, they were rejected. But NATO won't rule it out entirely, and Putin took that as a reason (a necessity, he claims) to invade Ukraine.
> Western countries took advantage of the end of the Cold War and the "peace dividend" to hollow-out their armed forces and ammunition reserves.
Even with those cuts, though, NATO has a far, far larger army than Russia. And far better. Though ammo shortages are definitely a big problem.
It’s not a formal prerequisite, but its probably a practical one.
> Otherwise, at the moment of joining, the whole of NATO would instantly be at war with Russia
There’s no theoretical reason the Accession Protocol for Ukraine couldn’t specify particular territories as excluded from the coverage of Article 6 until some specified future determination.
The west still appeared to be disrupted by COVID. The US and allies sent mixed signals on Ukraine which were interpreted as the US and West will let nature take it's course. The opportunity was there for Putin, and he took it. Putin wasn't wrong. Evidence: Biden tried to evacuate Zelenskyy leading to the famous quote, "I don't need a ride, I need ammo." The surprise to everyone was Ukraine fighting back ferociously. Now, Putin needs to realize the window has closed, and it is time to stop the madness.
The feeling of having no choice tends to be influenced by incentives, though. Had NATO mobilized 5 million soldiers in eastern Poland in late 2021, with the clear message that they would send those forces into Ukraine if Putin attacked, he would probably feel differently.
Personally, I think he may have felt "it's now or never". It appears he started preparing directly after the 2020 election, and he may have misjudged Biden, thinking him too weak to respond.
Yes, That's exactly what I think.
As an example, the quote Cast a Brick to Attract Jade from The 36 stratagems of War (https://changingminds.org/disciplines/warfare/36_strategems/...) is eminently usable in design/development/product plan meetings i.e. you present a simple and concrete idea as a starting point and then leave it to the attendees to build/modify/change it and come up with a best and final solution.
To me Sun Tzu writings and all the ancient writings are about preparing one's "mind" for an attitude that can be used to cope. The commonality of story to a culture strengthens the social structure. The commonality is used to apply old wisdom to seemingly new and complex events. These writings become the common thread.
This is exactly it!
One of my interests is the study of "Worldly Wisdom"(have a bunch of books from different cultures in my collection) categorized into;
1) "Idealistic"(Ethical/Moral) - Lots of Philosophies/Holy Books/etc. deal with this.
2) "Realistic/Pragmatic"(the World as it is and not how you would like it to be) - These are the common books of Wisdom/Aphorisms/Quotes/etc. from Culture/Daily Life.
3) "Crooked/Cynical"(how to further self-interest/getting-back on wrongs) - These are books on Strategy/Kingship/etc.
I find it quite transformational studying this subject since it teaches one all aspects of dealing with/making sense of Life. With the ascendancy of Scientific thought and decline of traditional Religions it has become even more necessary for each of us to chart our own ways with whatever advice (adapted to Modern Science/Times) we can glean from these ancient texts.
Here is a partial list in no specific order (lookup their reviews on Amazon/elsewhere on the web for details);
1) The Pocket Oracle and Art of Prudence by Baltasar Gracian translated by Jeremy Robbins. This book is also available as "The Art of Worldly Wisdom" translated by many others. Of these the one by Christopher Maurer is noteworthy.
2) A Pocket Mirror for Heroes by Baltasar Gracian translated by Christopher Maurer.
3) The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli. Of the many translations, the one by Peter Bondanella in Oxford World's Classics is noteworthy.
4) Maxims and Reflections (Ricordi) by Francesco Guicciardini translated by Mario Domandi.
5) The First Great Political Realist: Kautilya and His Arthashastra by Roger Boesche - A very nice summary of the magnum opus "Arthashastra" from Ancient India.
6) King, Governance, and Law in Ancient India: Kautilya's Arthasastra translated and annotated by Patrick Olivelle - A very good and modern translation of a large text.
7) The Essence of Politics (Sanskrit: Nitisara) by Kamandaki translated by Jesse Ross Knutson - A shorter Ancient Indian text in the vein of Arthashastra.
8) The Pancatantra: The Book of India's Folk Wisdom translated by Patrick Olivelle.
9) Tirukkuṟaḷ by Tiruvalluvar (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kural for details) - For a good English translation see the one translated by P.S.Sundaram and published in Penguin Classics.
10) The Art of War by Sun Tzu translated by Ralph D. Sawyer.
11) The Seven Military Classics of Ancient China translated by Ralph D. Sawyer.
12) [The Complete] Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi translated by Kenji Tokitsu.
I have left out the obvious works by Epictetus/Seneca/Cicero/Marcus Aurelius/etc. since they are all well known.
The above is a good representative of the three categories drawn from different cultures and should get you started.
Now, I haven't come across people quoting Sun Tzu in my career, but I know the type of person you're talking about.
They are the type to either stick around short-term as execs, just a couple years, or to escape with a golden parachute when things start to turn. Un-surprisingly, their accomplishments are often enough detrimental to the customers, the business or both. They are aggressive, but don't really have much skin in the game.
Furthermore, as someone who like you has served in the armed forces, I agree amongst those who serve we do not think of "war is business", those in charge do absolutely think of "war as business".