The Army in the Court of Public Opinion
Thanks for Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military. Peter Feaver. Oxford University Press. 328 pages. $27.95
By Lt. Gen. James Dubik, U.S. Army retired
Peter Feaver’s latest book is a must-read for Army general officers and command sergeants major, as well as for students and faculty at the U.S. Army War College and the U.S. Army Sergeants Major Academy. And it’s a should-read for every senior officer and NCO. The substance of the book is that important.
In Thanks for Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military, Feaver poses three major questions: Who has confidence in America’s military? Why do people have confidence in the military? And why does confidence in the military matter? His answers derive from new and proprietary surveys as well as other long-established sources. He presents analysis, insights, conclusions and recommendations that today’s Army leaders need.
To Question 1, Feaver presents six drivers of public confidence: patriotism, performance, professional ethics, party, public pressure and personal contact. His data show that the aggregate high confidence in the military masks interesting and important dynamics. Gender, race, income level, generation, geographic region and political party—all say something a little different about confidence.
He also disaggregates “the military” by looking at subcategories: officers, enlisted troops, general officers and retired officers. Knowledge, education, media and social contact are further contributing factors. These voluminous results will be useful to the Department of the Army and the U.S. Army Recruiting Command.
Feaver answers Question 2 by saying, “the average American believes that the military works, and that it works on behalf of most Americans, and that most other government institutions don’t.” But he finds chinks in the armor, showing that “poor operational performance and prominent ethical missteps” erode public confidence. He also digs deeply into the issue of partisanship. “On the whole,” Feaver says, “the public does seem to recognize some partisanship exists in the military.”
However, the public does not dislike it—“unless the behavior is obviously biased against their own party.” He concludes, “there is ample reason to be concerned, though perhaps not yet alarmed.” Senior Army leaders who seek to reenergize professionalism in the force will get a lot out of this section.
Finally, to Question 3. Feaver shows that confidence in the military correlates with support for manpower, budget and the use of military force. Even though, as he notes, “Americans are largely unaware of what the US government spends on national security and foreign policy, … military leaders have good reasons to pay attention to what Americans think of them. The personnel, fiscal, and political support the military requires will likely be boosted—or lowered—depending on fluctuations in the level of confidence Americans place in their military.”
Public support for the use of military force is similarly relational to public confidence. Feaver acknowledges the responsibilities that high public confidence places on senior military leaders. They must hold themselves and the profession accountable for performance, enforce norms of ethical behavior and do all they can to preserve healthy civil-military relations.
Feaver ends the book with 15 main “takeaways,” four enduring goals, several pages of policy recommendations and areas for future research. Thanks for Your Service is a trove of useful information for civil and military leaders responsible for the military profession.
Leaders: Buy this book, read it and do your part to keep the profession in high esteem with the American public.
Lt. Gen. James Dubik, U.S. Army retired, a former commander of Multi-National Security Transition Command-Iraq, is a senior fellow of the Association of the United States Army. He holds a doctorate from Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and is the author of Just War Reconsidered: Strategy, Ethics, and Theory.
* * *
Officer Looks Ahead After Horrific IED Attack
Finding Waypoints: A Warrior’s Journey Towards Peace and Purpose. Terese Schlachter and Col. (Ret.) Gregory Gadson. Schaffner Press. 320 pages. $28
By Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, U.S. Army retired
Retired Col. Gregory Gadson is a national treasure. Working with writer and Emmy Award-winning TV producer Terese Schlachter, he shares his inspiring story of sheer will, faith, resilience and support in Finding Waypoints: A Warrior’s Journey Towards Peace and Purpose. The book also displays the strength of Gadson’s Army family, especially his wife, Kim, a West Point graduate and former Army officer.
From the beginning of Finding Waypoints, the reader is thrust into then-Lt. Col. Gadson’s combat sector in Baghdad during the famous Surge in the spring of 2007. Gadson’s Humvee hit an IED as he was leaving a memorial service for two soldiers in his brigade. Three 130 mm artillery shells ripped apart the vehicle and flung him 150 feet across the asphalt. Soldiers of the convoy worked together to find the grievously wounded Gadson and stop his massive loss of blood. Their efforts kept him clinging to life long enough for teams of medical professionals to take over.
The incredible loyalty and devotion of Gadson’s former West Point football teammates throughout the book are amazing. One in particular, Maj. William Huff, stayed by his side from the Baghdad field hospital all the way to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany.
Once at then-Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., doctors had to amputate Gadson’s left leg to keep him alive. Complications developed in his other leg, and his right arm was not functioning. After consulting with the doctors, Gadson and his wife made the difficult decision to have his right leg amputated.
The story of Gadson’s long recovery as a double-leg amputee with the use of only one arm is a story of his will to succeed and his resiliency.
As one can imagine, Gadson fought depression and mental health demons. Finding “waypoints” for the next steps in his life’s journey was his saving grace. Gadson’s use of goals associated with his personal physical recovery and key family events to support mental recovery is incredibly powerful and instructive. Kim Gadson was his primary caregiver. She encouraged Gadson and stayed with him every step of his journey.
Finding Waypoints shows how Gadson’s life took different turns as unique challenges and opportunities presented themselves. When a former Army football teammate asked him to speak to the struggling New York Giants, Gadson was so inspiring that he became a sideline regular as the team went from last place to winning the 2008 Super Bowl. He demonstrated belief and the will to succeed by starring in the 2012 movie Battleship and continued with a career as a motivational speaker.
His recovery and resilience almost make the reader forget that Gadson lost both his legs in combat. However, Finding Waypoints keeps it real by describing Gadson’s continuous struggle as a double amputee conducting daily life.
Gadson’s story is one of great sacrifice and service to his fellow soldiers and to the United States. His struggles and triumphs as an Army leader are amazing and inspiring. He continues to make a difference out of uniform and finds new waypoints to guide him past the challenges placed before him every day.
Maj. Gen. Dana Pittard, U.S. Army retired, is vice president of defense programs for Allison Transmission Inc., Indianapolis. During his 34 years on active duty, he served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, including as joint forces land component commander-Iraq. He is the co-author of Hunting the Caliphate: America’s War on ISIS and the Dawn of the Strike Cell.
* * *
Petraeus, Roberts Analyze Warfare Since End of WWII
Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine. Gen. David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts. Harper. 544 pages. $40
By Col. J.P. Clark, U.S. Army retired
Then-Gen. David Petraeus was the intellectual force behind U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine and a prominent commander in Iraq and Afghanistan. Within the field of history, Lord Andrew Roberts of the U.K. is an equally eminent figure, having written popular biographies and other works touching on 20th-century military and political history. It is fitting that Petraeus, now retired, and Roberts have set themselves the ambitious task of describing the evolution of warfare since the end of World War II and speculating on its trajectory.
In the first nine chapters of their book, Conflict: The Evolution of Warfare from 1945 to Ukraine, Petraeus and Roberts provide an overview of warfare from the end of World War II to the present, highlighting key policy, strategic and operational events. The first chapter covers the early Cold War, with the Chinese Civil War and Korea. The second chapter on the “Wars of Decolonization, 1947–1975” moves briskly through seven conflicts in Africa and Asia, mainly the counterinsurgencies of Britain and France, but also including the 1948–49 Israeli War of Independence, also known as the Palestinian Nakba.
Later chapters of the developing Cold War and the 1990s are equally wide-ranging, covering 14 conflicts. These chapters focus primarily on wars involving the U.S. or the U.K., but also include Arab-Israeli wars, Rwanda and South Ossetia. The selected cases are usefully diverse in terms of geography, combatants and methods employed. Readers will learn much from this account, while the analysis is sure to prompt reflection.
Throughout these historical chapters, the authors make good use of four principles of strategic leadership to explain success or failure. These principles are for strategic leaders to recognize the fundamental nature of the war and to craft an appropriate strategy; to communicate that strategy within their organizations and to important external audiences; to oversee implementation; and to adjust their strategy, messaging and implementation as conditions change.
Though Conflict draws on a range of cases, many of these are treated in short sections of just a few pages. More than half the book is given to four conflicts: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan and the current Russia-Ukraine war. Many readers will be eager to get Petraeus’ account of Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts in which he played such a prominent role. Others hoping for something closer to what is promised in the subtitle might be frustrated by this skewed balance.
The chapter on the Russia-Ukraine war is inevitably the least successful; books are poor vehicles for analyzing current events. The substantive analysis of battles, based largely on media accounts and think tank reports, is limited to the events of 2022, mainly the first few months of the conflict. This is a weak basis upon which to draw meaningful conclusions about the nature of conflict.
The final chapter on wars of the future offers a useful overview of some of the most significant trends that likely will shape future conflicts. Petraeus and Roberts’ discussion of emerging trends in warfare, such as robotics and artificial intelligence, disinformation and cyber warfare, will be particularly useful for readers who do not have time to keep up with the constant stream of think tank reports on these and other topics.
Sadly, as Petraeus and Roberts note, conflict in all its dimensions will remain relevant for many years to come.
Col. J.P. Clark, U.S. Army retired, is an associate professor of strategy at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He is the author of Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815–1917. He holds a doctorate in history from Duke University, North Carolina.
* * *
Effect of War on Words—and Information
The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading. Andrew Pettegree. Basic Books. 455 pages. $35
By Thomas Bruscino
The Book at War: How Reading Shaped Conflict and Conflict Shaped Reading, by Andrew Pettegree, professor of modern history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, is a strange journey through topics related (sometimes tangentially) to reading and war. Pettegree touches on subjects ranging from the American Civil War through the end of the Cold War, with occasional excursions into the more distant past.
Whether by design or accident, the bulk of the content comes from World War II, so much so that the book would have been better off had it just focused on that war, particularly the British experience.
Regardless, much of the first third of The Book at War is not about books or periodicals at all. Rather, the topic is reading, which leads away from books and into discussions on pretty much any topic relating to military history. Officers read military theory to prepare for war, so Pettegree critiques military theory. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, had something to do with starting the Civil War, so he drifts into a shallow grasp of the origins of that conflict. Scientists read to support their research, so he discusses technological development. Soldiers read books and newspapers, so Pettegree summarizes the secondary literature on fighting motivation. Intelligence officers read ciphers and codes—they even have codebooks—so there is a chapter on spy craft. It is all too much and off-topic.
The last two-thirds of the book deal more directly with books at war. Pettegree focuses on World War II—often just calling it “the war”—and is at his best in dealing with the British experience. He discusses what people read on the homefront; government efforts to print, distribute and control reading at home; and what troops read in the service and prisoners of war read in camps.
Those topics are followed by descriptions of efforts to protect books and libraries from the ravages of war and the plunder or deliberate destruction of books by occupying powers.
Despite the clearer focus, Pettegree is only on solid ground with Great Britain. When he jumps to Germany, the U.S., the Soviet Union and others, he makes more mistakes and arguments that tilt toward moral equivalency.
The best thing that could be said about the relevance of The Book at War to readers of ARMY is not a point the author makes himself. The book jacket says Pettegree writes about information culture and, in a sense, this work is more about what the military calls the “information” element of national power (or joint function) in and around conflict.
The U.S. government and military struggle to understand and manage information, in large part because its manifestations are so disparate and diffuse, especially in a free society. Information, especially in war, is confusing and nearly uncontrollable. That lesson unintentionally comes through in spades in The Book at War.
Thomas Bruscino is a professor of history at the U.S. Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pennsylvania. He is the author of A Nation Forged in War: How World War II Taught Americans to Get Along and Out of Bounds: Transnational Sanctuary in Irregular Warfare, along with numerous book chapters and articles.