Defence

The Decline of American Military Leadership

A professional soldier is rarely a professional strategist. —B.H. Liddell Hart, Thoughts on War (1944) The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today by Thomas E. Ricks Penguin, 2012, 576 pages, $39.99 In June 2007, I attended a conference on civil–military relations at the Military Academy at West Point, the spiritual home of the American profession of arms. A pervasive atmosphere of suppressed anger was evident in the alma mater of Grant and Lee, Pershing and MacArthur and Patton and Eisenhower. The American military, the most powerful force on earth, seemed to be losing the Iraq War,…

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