Download war and politics War and politics have always been entwined in

The following is an excerpt from THE CONCISE PRINCETON ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN POLITICAL
HISTORY, edited by Michael Kazin, Rebecca Edwards, and Adam Rothman. To learn more about this book, please visit
http://press.princeton.edu. Copyright © 2011 by Princeton University Press. No part of this text may be distributed,
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war and politics
War and politics have always been entwined in
American history. Politicians and pundits often complained that politics intruded upon war or war upon
politics; generals should wage war without secondguessing by politicians, some demanded. The very
phrase “war and politics” treats the two as separate
if linked entities. But instead they mutually constitute each other, especially if “war” is understood expansively as all activities, institutions, and attitudes
involving military power. War defined American
politics, not merely intruded upon it, just as politics
defined war. This relationship was not unchanging,
however. It became more consequential to Americans
and the world as the scale of American wars and military prowess grew.
Political Control
The enmeshment of war and politics was inevitable:
modern states exist in part to wage war, and war is
an extreme form of politics. Some Americans hoped
that the United States would be an exception, having
witnessed European monarchies and dictatorships
deploying war to address personal, imperial, ideological, or racial ambitions. But American exceptionalism was impossible.
The relationship began with the nation’s founding.
Imperial and local politics sparked the war for American independence, and the nation owed its political
existence to war. The Constitution set the terms of
enmeshment by giving political authorities control of
war and its institutions. Only Congress could declare
war and fund it even if war were undeclared (undeclared wars erupted almost from the start). It also
had power “to raise and support armies,” “maintain
a navy,” and “make rules” for the armed forces. Its
power of the purse was striking (beyond what most
European legislatures possessed). Congress could not
dictate deployment, strategy, and tactics, but it could
set the fiscal terms that made those things possible.
The president was made “commander in chief of the
army and the navy” and of state militias “when called
into the actual service of the United States” but not
commander in chief of all government or of the nation, as some presidents and other political figures
later presumed. The Constitution was notably briefer
about the president’s war powers than about those
of Congress. Whether brevity established an implicit
check on presidential power or a tacit blank check
for it periodically roiled American politics. Civilian secretaries of war and the navy (superseded after
1947 by a secretary of the new Department of Defense) headed cabinet departments, although their
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authority varied widely. Civilians also headed other
agencies, proliferating in modern times, that had
war-related functions, from the State, Justice, and
Treasury departments at the nation’s founding to the
Veterans Administration (1930), Central Intelligence
Agency (1947), and the Department of Homeland
Security (2003). Americans phrased these arrangements as imposing “civilian” control of the military,
but “civilian” often meant “political.”
Most military officers accepted political control,
even if they chafed at the decisions, forces, and strategies that politicians provided. Among advantages for
officers, civilian supremacy made politicians—often
more determined than officers to initiate war or wage
it aggressively—more responsible for the controversial decisions and ghastly mistakes that war usually
entails. Civilian supremacy prevailed in political dramas, as when Abraham Lincoln fired generals in the
Civil War and President Harry Truman fired General
Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War (an act
condemned by some cold warriors as an intrusion
on war making by politicians with a defeatist or subversive mentality). Some officers challenged political
control during the cold war by favoring a nuclear first
strike on the Soviet Union or China, conducting unauthorized spy missions, or broadcasting a Christian
political agenda. But they were few and their damage
to political control was minimal.
War and the State
War was key to the creation of the American state—
the activity it most expansively and expensively undertook. War justified its general scale and many
of its specific measures, such as a federal income
tax (imposed during the Civil War, reestablished in
1913, and greatly expanded during World War II),
a welfare system pioneered through veterans benefits, and scientific and medical innovations by the
armed forces. “War is the health of the State,” the
radical critic Randolph Bourne declared in attacking America’s entry into World War I. Conservatives sometimes suspected much the same, as when
they asserted that President Franklin D. Roosevelt
sought to use rearmament and war to consolidate
the New Deal and the Democratic Party’s hegemony (though World War II undermined both).
Americans also expressed their political debt to war
by justifying state initiatives as warlike in character:
in 1933 FDR wanted the nation to respond to the
Depression “as if invaded by a foreign foe”; later
presidents waged “war” on crime, disease, drugs,
and other challenges. Appeals to war as a model for
national action overrode Americans’ chronic suspicions of an activist state. They also made war an
even more political category.
war and politics
Similarly, Americans imagined war as serving political purposes, not just the nation’s defense or expansion. War, it was said, would Americanize immigrants serving as soldiers (a favorite idea in World
War I), crush subversive people and ideas, enhance
social mobility (the military is “the greatest equal
opportunity employer around,” President George
H. W. Bush boasted in 1991), revive a flagging economy, spur technological development, and unite a
fractious nation. Americans rarely assumed that the
perils and benefits of war involved combat alone.
The actions and institutions of war propelled the
nation’s development. Military force subdued Native Americans and conquered new lands. The Civil
War aside, U.S. wars before at least 1941 were efforts at national aggrandizement, not survival; the
Mexican-American War (1846–48) secured vast
territories in the American West; the SpanishAmerican War of 1898 expanded America’s power
and holdings in the Caribbean and the Pacific. The
armed forces also promoted development by undertaking exploration, charting canal and railroad
routes, building dams and ports, and cultivating
technical expertise when the nation lacked other
technological institutions (the U.S. Military Academy at West Point was the nation’s first engineering
school, among its functions). The military’s developmental role was often highly visible, as with its
building of the Panama Canal (completed in 1914)
and its promotion of nuclear, aviation, space, and
computer technologies (the Internet had origins in
a Defense Department program). Sometimes the
military remained in the background except during
disaster, as in 2005, when hurricane Katrina spotlighted the Army Corps of Engineers, the politically
astute builder of much of America’s infrastructure.
In these ways, the role of the armed forces was political as well as military.
War and politics also intersected in the scramble for military spending and the resulting connections between civil and military institutions.
The desire of local authorities—mayors, legislators,
businessmen—for military bases and contracts is an
old story, though its scale swelled in the twentieth
century. Often it meant overriding the military’s
judgment about where to erect a base, whether to develop a weapon, or which company should build it.
Many politicians who decried civilian interference in
other military matters were masters of military pork.
Especially in the twentieth century, military spending directed resources, population, and political influence toward southern and western states. From
the start, the armed forces used civilian institutions
for research, weapons, supplies, and services, and civilians went to work for the military while officers retired to jobs in defense or other businesses. The use of
private organizations for quasi-military operations,
an old practice by states and especially evident in
America’s post-9/11 military conflicts, further blurred
the line between “civilian” and “military.”
War and politics were also enmeshed in how
Americans understood citizenship. African Americans’ Civil War military service helped underwrite the
citizenship they acquired, in theory, during and after
the war. Through America’s post-9/11 conflicts, noncitizens’ military service guaranteed their citizenship.
Since service was overwhelmingly a male activity—
coerced during periods of conscription—citizenship
was gendered in this way as in others. Beyond legal
citizenship, war reshaped political and social citizenship. Military service in World War II strengthened
citizenship for millions of Americans of eastern and
southern European descent. Colin Powell, a career
officer and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman, became
the highest-ranking African American in government
as secretary of state (2001–5). The second woman in
a cabinet post was Oveta Culp Hobby, World War II
commander of the Women’s Army Corps and then
secretary of health, education, and welfare (1953–55).
Military service lubricated upward mobility and social change, especially as measured by prominent figures. Likewise, those barred from military service or
denied equality in it felt treated as lesser citizens—
hence the long struggle over racial desegregation of
the armed forces, ordered by Truman in 1948; conflicts over women’s place in military service; and the
1993 battle over “gays in the military.”
Veterans also had housing, health, education, and
employment benefits lacked by most Americans,
even as critics regarded those benefits as puny or
badly managed. Veterans’ elevated status was hardly
a constant. Anxiety periodically erupted that veterans, especially of combat situations, would return
damaged, disruptive, or dangerous. White Southerners feared demobilized black Union troops, and freed
slaves feared ex-Confederates in the Ku Klux Klan.
Anxiety surged during World War II—one reason
for the famous 1944 GI Bill, or Servicemen’s Readjustment Act, which gave unprecedented benefits to
most of the war’s 16 million veterans. Anxiety resurfaced when Vietnam War veterans were often diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, the
sense of veterans as especially entitled or deserving
citizens generally prevailed, as evident in the number
of presidential candidates who were veterans. Those
candidates were especially successful when regarded
as heroes in victorious wars—Washington, Jackson,
Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Kennedy—although military service was no
guarantee of electoral victory, as Nixon in 1960, Dole
in 1996, Kerry in 2004, and McCain in 2008 learned.
War and the Presidency
The presidency underlines how war and politics constituted each other. War or its apparent threat underwrote the presidency’s expanding powers, both legal
and illegal. Major crises, none more so than 9/11, produced presidential claims that constitutional provisions, international laws, and humanitarian norms
should be altered, suspended, or reinterpreted. War
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war and politics
also brought greater power for individual presidents,
though less often lasting glory. Many Americans suspected presidents of using war for political gain, but
presidents usually achieved little that endured. Those
who secured lasting luster—Lincoln and Franklin
D. Roosevelt—died before the emergence of the sour
aftermath war usually presents. Woodrow Wilson’s
presidency crumbled after World War I; Republicans
seized the White House in 1921. Truman and the
Democrats barely survived World War II’s aftermath
and then succumbed to the Korean War; a Republican, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, became president in 1953. The Vietnam War and their handling
of it destroyed the presidencies of Lyndon Johnson
and Richard Nixon (his abuse of war powers shaped
the Watergate crisis of 1973–74). Difficult wars readily damaged presidents, as George W. Bush found in
the Iraq War, but even a triumphant Gulf War gave
no lasting political traction to his father, defeated in
1992 by Bill Clinton. By the same token, three of
the four post-1945 presidents who served two full
terms—Eisenhower, Reagan, and Clinton—avoided
costly war making and remained popular. War was as
fickle in its political ramifications as in its conduct
and global consequences, often overwhelming the
state’s ability to control it and ensnaring presidents.
When war went badly, accusations of unwarranted
political interference usually intensified. After Japan’s
attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, with
American forces in retreat or defeat, critics charged
that Roosevelt had connived to bring the United
States into World War II or even to allow Japan’s attack to proceed. But few complained about political
intrusion when later operations pushed by Roosevelt
and his civilian advisors succeeded—the invasion of
France in 1944, the bombing of Nazi Germany and
Imperial Japan, and the use of the atomic bomb in
August 1945. Likewise, suspicion of politicians’ meddling intensified after 1945, when U.S. wars in Korea,
Vietnam, Iraq, and elsewhere had dubious or disastrous outcomes. Success quieted suspicion. Failure
stoked it.
So did uncertainty. The cold war arms race, portending a possible nuclear cataclysm, sparked diverse
suspicions. Nationalist conservatives charged that
politicians denied the military the tools of victory
given how the metaphoric “button” of push-button
warfare lay under the president’s thumb. Cold war
liberals suspected that generals like Air Force chief of
staff Curtis LeMay schemed to control the button.
The growth of a vast civilian bureaucracy aggravated
suspicions. Complaints about the number-crunching
oversight of the military imposed by Secretary of
Defense Robert McNamara (1961–68) prepared the
ground for accusations that civilians, especially McNamara and Johnson, hamstrung their generals. Left
to their own devices, accusers charged, the generals
might have won the Vietnam War.
Faith in a wise officer corps able to win wars ignored institutional realities, however. Top officers
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disagreed about whether and how to wage war, especially given their intense service rivalries: the Air Force,
Navy, Army, and Marine Corps usually had competing schemes for victory, with each also divided within.
Indeed, those differences invited or compelled civilian
superiors to “intrude”—to meddle, mediate, or mandate. No fount of secret wisdom, the uniformed military mirrored, though inexactly, divisions about war
elsewhere in the body politic.
As formal declarations of war ceased after World
War II, Americans could readily imagine a distinction between war and politics. The last protracted
debate about entering war came before Pearl Harbor,
after which power to initiate war lay with the presidency, positioning itself as above politics, not with
Congress, the more obviously (though substantively
no more) political body. To varying degrees, military
actions were undertaken by presidents operating in
haste, secrecy, and deception—hardly circumstances
conducive to freewheeling debate. Congress trailed
behind with various measures, usually approved overwhelmingly, that authorized operations. Hence political contests erupted about the conduct and consequences of wars more than their initiation, especially
since most wars seemed dissatisfying or disastrous.
As earlier, civilians and service personnel, and voices
abroad, charged U.S. forces and leaders with illegal,
excessive, or misguided use of force or torture against
enemy soldiers, civilians, and captives.
The practice of politicians and pundits criticizing presidents and generals was bipartisan, however
partisan at any moment. Many Democrats tried to
shield the White House from criticism when their
party held the presidency. Many turned against Nixon
later in the Vietnam War and George W. Bush in
the Iraq War. Likewise, Republicans, often defenders of presidential prerogative and military wisdom,
second-guessed Clinton’s use of force amid Yugoslavia’s disintegration in the 1990s.
War and politics were above all interwoven because the United States waged war frequently. It became a foremost participant in the militarization of
the modern world. Perhaps no state waged war more
often, even though, or perhaps because, the cost in
American lives was light (the Civil War aside), compared to that of its enemies and allies, even in a losing
war like Vietnam’s. If the Founding Fathers hoped
that war would play only an episodic role in American politics, the episodes became so numerous as to
be nearly continuous, though often the incidents
were not declared or widely recognized as wars (as in
Nicaragua in the 1920s and Beirut in 1983).
Efforts to portray war and politics as distinct
arenas were not persuasive, but they did express a
desire to restrain the course by which war defined
much of American life. Americans partook of the
appeals and benefits of war, but they also remained
suspicious of them.
See also Caribbean, Central America, and Mexico,
interventions in, 1903–34; Civil War and Reconstruction;
Korean War and cold war; Iraq wars of 1991 and 2003;
Mexican-American War; Vietnam and Indochina wars; war
for independence; War of 1812; World War I; World War II.
F U R T H E R R E A D I N G . Andrew Bacevich, The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War, 2005;
John R. Gillis, ed., The Militarization of the Western World,
1989; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations, 1957; Linda
K. Kerber, No Constitutional Right to Be Ladies: Women and
the Obligations of Citizenship, 1998; Richard H. Kohn, “How
Democracies Control the Military,” Journal of Democracy
8.4 (1997), 140–53; Idem, ed., The United States Military
under the Constitution of the United States, 1789–1989,
1991; Walter Millis, Arms and Men: A Study in American
Military History, 1956; Michael S. Sherry, In the Shadow
of War: The United States since the 1930s, 1995; Russell
F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United
States Military Strategy and Policy, 1973.
MICHAEL SHERRY
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