Making do with Less, or Coping with Upton's Ghost: May 26, 1995

by Eliot A. Cohen

Every April the Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute hosts its Annual Strategy Conference. This year's theme, "Strategy During the Lean Years: Learning From the Past and the Present," brought together scholars, serving and retired military officers, and civilian defense officials from the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom to discuss strategy formulation in time of penury from Tacitus to Force XII. In this time of declining defense budgets, the Army and the other services are coping with the dual challenges of downsizing while remaining the world's foremost military. Today, the armed forces are 35 percent smaller than they were only five years ago. Amid the uncertainty of the build-down, the Army faces what is both a challenge and an opportunity: how to make the very fine Army which won a decisive victory in Desert Storm even better while it changes its size and structure. In this paper, Professor Eliot A. Cohen of Johns Hopkins University urges the Army to draw on lessons from its own history. More than one generation of American military professionals have inherited and perpetuated Civil War Major General Emory Upton's distrust of-and disdain for-civilians in general and politically elected or appointed civilian leaders in particular. As Professor Cohen indicates, the uncertainties of downsizing and reorganization coincide with the need to accommodate new technologies that could help the Army cope with the diverse threats that are part of what is still a very dangerous world. He cautions that in coping with this enormous challenge, the Army must be careful not to engage in the kind of introspection that may foster an institutionalized isolation from the nation it is sworn to defend. Professor Cohen suggests there are ways to keep America's Army truly the Army of the nation and its people. The way soldiers and leaders are recruited, trained, educated, and promoted must, he asserts, change to bring more and not less civilian influence into the Army. Professor Cohen urges the Army to go forward into Force XXI and to do so with both enhanced technologies and with an enhanced understanding of who and what it serves: the American people and the defense of their Constitution. The future is uncertain, and we will be better prepared to meet the challenges of that future if we are willing to engage ideas in an open and informed debate. To that end, the Strategic Studies Institute offers Dr. Cohen's perspective for your consideration.

32 pages, Paperback

First published March 7, 2013

About the author

I am an academic who has been fortunate in many ways - beginning with my family, but to include teaching at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, the country's leading school of international relations; serving in government, most recently as Counselor of the Department of State from 2007 to 2009; and having the freedom to move from political science, my original discipline, to history.

One friend who looked at the manuscript CONQUERED INTO LIBERTY, wrote to me -- "Aha! A love note!" and in some ways it is that. It deals with almost two centuries of battles along the Great Warpath route from Albany to Montreal, and it does, I hope, show some of my affection for this part of the country. A good part of the fun of writing the book was tramping around all the sites that I describe in it. But its purpose is serious: to show how the American way of war emerged from our conflict with an unlikely opponent: Canada. It tells the story of ten battles and shows how they reveal deeper truths about the American approach to war. The title, in fact, comes from a propaganda pamphlet strewn about Canada before the Americans invaded in 1775: "You have been conquered into liberty..." it began, and that notion is one that is still with us.

But the argument of the book, I believe, should not detract from stories that will appeal to readers. I hope that you will be as fascinated as I am not only by the events, but by characters you knew (George Washington, for example) whom I show in rather different lights than is customary, and even more so by characters you will probably meet here for the first time. A personal favorite: La Corne St. Luc, the incredibly wily French aristocrat who fought the British, sided with them, joined the Americans, rejoined the British and died one of Canada's wealthiest men after several decades of terrorizing the northern frontier. But there are others: enjoy discovering them!