Samuel P. Huntington. 1961. The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics. New York: Columbia University Press.

Review by Gene Giannotta Huntingtons 1961 study of national security policy-making in the American system presents a detailed description and analysis of the ways in which the executive and legislative branches interacted to craft defense budgets and strategic goals in the first decade-and-a-half of the Cold War. The nature of the American system necessitated conflict between the short-term political interests of members of Congress, the public desire for a strong military, and the long-term strategic views of the presidential administrations. In addition, over the course of the late 1940s and 1950s, under both the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, economy drives made budget balancing a key presidential goal, one not always shared by the Congress or the military. Huntington assesses the political dynamics at work in developing national strategy in the context of the Cold War, seeing the conflict inherent in the American system of separated and shared powers as a key variable in determining the form the policy-making process took in those early years. To sum Huntingtons argument, neither the Congress nor the military establishment itself was sufficiently unified in

Giannotta 2 ! support of long-term military strategic goals that connected domestic and foreign concerns. The two Administrations that provide the bulk of the empirical evidence, those of Truman and Eisenhower, are portrayed as being quite taken with the goals of economy and stability in military policy. The former was a recurrent push for balanced budgets and a desire for savings where possible; the latter, connected to the former, was concerned with holding military policy and spending steady over time. The Administrations were also more aware of the twin natures of military programs - they are at once matters of domestic and foreign policy, and all of the myriad complications built into each and their interaction made developing a coherent and effective military policy difficult. Congress, as a body aggregating hundreds of parochial interests, was unable to consider military policy in such broad-brush terms. Events like the Soviet detonation of a nuclear bomb years before the Americans had projected it happening, or the launch of the sputniks in the mid-1950s, provided political impetus for those in Congress, and some in the executive branch, to back increased military spending where they otherwise would not have. In the late 1940s, for example, the delicate situation between the United States and the Soviet Union made domestic politicking for adequate military expenditures exceedingly difficult. On the one

Giannotta 3 ! hand, the Soviet threat could not be exaggerated or played up because it would threaten American relations with the U.S.S.R. during a crucial period of diplomacy; on the other hand, such theatrics were probably needed to garner support for military spending adequate to strengthen the national defense against possible Soviet aggression. Until the nuclear test in 1949, the public and their representatives were not motivated to support more spending on defense. In fact, there was a strong push to demobilize in the years immediately following the end of World War II. Demobilization caused difficulties in American foreign policy, primarily because it weakened the U.S. hand with regard to the Soviets. Had the Truman Administration been willing to bluntly and dramatically...warn the nation of the threat from the Soviet Union, it may have made a difference in the public drive for demobilization, but this was easier said than done. In Huntingtons words, Reversing the disintegration of American military strength would require a denunciation of Soviet Russia, which would undermine completely our ultimate objective of arriving at an appropriate agreement with her. But, on the other hand, agreement was impossible without the strength to compel it. To speak out would

Giannotta 4 ! reveal fully our military weakness; to remain silent would perpetuate it. (1961, 37) At the same time, Truman, dedicated to balanced budgets, found himself in conflict with Republicans on tax rates. The Republicans in Congress wanted tax cuts, but Truman vetoed their bill, only to see it passed over his veto. Because of the presidents commitment to not spending more than the government took in, this amounted to a definite ceiling on military spending, which inhibited strategic planning and provided one constraint on the military requirements of [the Cold War policy of] containment from being realized (1961, 41). In this way, domestic political considerations proved a key determinative variable in the overall military strategic policy at this point in the Cold War. But the conflict between long-term foreign policy and military strategy goals and short term domestic political concerns would persist. As Huntington says that domestic-focused budgetary politics at this time left the country without the military forces to implement either the foreign policy of the diplomats or the strategy of the soldiers. (1961, 47). Conflict between the branches was not the only impediment to a unified strategic policy-making process. Eisenhower would run have trouble getting his Joint Chiefs of Staff, or rather,

Giannotta 5 ! as Huntington makes clear, Trumans JCS, to sign on to his policy preferences for greater economy in military programs. The holdovers from the previous administration were adamant in their support for maintaining existing military programs and spending levels, while the new president was committed to economy and wanted cuts. Those in Congress who supported the Presidents economy drive were frustrated again when the new Joint Chiefs failed to support those cuts immediately upon assuming their offices in time for the FY 1955 budget. In fact, despite being pushed to speed up their own strategic review, they stuck to their predecessors recommendations and advocated a slight increase in the FY 1954 funding levels, which caused a good amount of ire among those who were leading the economy drive in military spending (1961, 71-73). This also inhibited Eisenhowers New Look military program for a bit, but it would prove to be a uniquely substantial and comprehensive strategic policy program, in Huntingtons telling. Huntington also addresses the role of public opinion, pointing to but playing down Walter Lippmanns concern over its negative effects. The level of defense spending, Huntington says, was determined not by external limits upon the Administration but by conflicting demands within the Administration. (1961, 251) Opinion thus played a role in the

Giannotta 6 ! formulation of American national security policy only to the extent that it played a role in the minds of those involved in the policy-making itself. As with the rest of Huntingtons argument, the structure of American government forces competition between various interests, both within and outside of the Administration, which holds the most direct responsibility for military policy development. Each entity that has a part to play is often divided, whether it be Congress, the services, or the executive branch elites and bureaucracies. Each could conceivably find some fact or public poll number that supported its particular position. Ultimately, major strategic innovation was motivated more by circumstances like the Soviets showcasing their atomic bomb or sputnik, which motivated all parties to feel a measure of pressure to compete and political advantage to seize on the opportunity presented. There was also the issue of interservice rivalry, which was an issue in at least a few major strategic decisions during this period. The push for a universal military tranining (or UMT) was backed by the Army, but it ended up framed as UMT vs. a bolstered Air Force, pitting the services against each other, and weakening the case for UMT. Ultimately, the perception that UMT was unnecessary if the Air Force was expanded to a certain size caused it to wither on the political vine (1961, 371-72).

Giannotta 7 ! Another flashpoint in the ongoing rivalries between the services was the contentious matter of unification in the later 1940s. The Air Force wanted independence of and equality with the other services. The Army backed the Air Force and in addition wanted an effective system of centralized control over all three services. The Navy and Marine Corps feared that independence for the Air Force and unification for the Army would mean subordination or elimination for themselves. (1961, 372) The services faced pressure to justify [their] existence as far as future importance in a general war with Russia, and there was little agreement among them as to how such a war would or should be fought (1961, 373). This conflict within the military establishment was a key factor in the civil-military relations of the period as well; lack of unity among the services allowed civilians, particularly in the State Department and Budget Bureau, to play one off the other and pick and choose policies according to their own preferences (1961, 379). Huntingtons description of presidential leadership also deserves some attention. He points to the criticism leveled at Eisenhowers tendency to demand unanimous decisions from the Joint Chiefs of Staff. But, rather than agree with the portrait of an abdication of presidential responsibility, he sees the request as being an effective means of asserting control, along

Giannotta 8 ! the lines of Franklin Roosevelt in World War II and Secretary Forrestal in the late 1940s; a superior can encourage his subordinates to come to an agreement by threatening to decide the issue himself (1961, 157-8). But this did not mean that the process would be easy. Both the JCS and the National Security Council were composed of individuals with competing interests and service or department loyalties. This was obvious, and yet, their decisions are presumed to be in the national interest (1961, 155). There was also the potential for misunderstandings between the different entities. General Ridgways failure to dissent on the FY 1955 budget was perceived by the Administration as approval while to the general, it simply meant that he had accepted his superiors decision (1961, 151). Similar to Avants study of the institutional factors at work in the militarys ability to innovate strategically (1994), Huntington thus offers an analysis of American strategic choice that depends upon both domestic variables driven by public appetite and Congressional electoral priorities, on the one hand, and the foreign and military preferences at work within the Administration, the services, and the State Department. Just as Avant would later argue that the CIA and Marines had greater incentive to innovate in terms of effective counterinsurgency

Giannotta 9 ! strategy during the Vietnam War, Huntington points to the conflict between the Army and Air Force in the early years of the Cold War. And, as Avant lays out a clear portrait of the American separated powers system as inhibiting rapid change (as opposed to the case of the United Kingdoms unified executivelegislature structure), Huntington presents a good deal of evidence that the need to cater to domestic political concerns, most obviously in the Congress, causes the American system to be far less efficient and more cumbersome when it came to crafting and implementing an effective foreign and military policy strategy to confront the Soviet Union. While laying out a clear picture of the American political system as being at times counterproductive by its very nature, Huntington notes that this had not prevented the country from developing a military strategy in the first decade-and-a-half of the Cold War. While swift decisions were impeded by the constitutional democracy in the United States, this was also cause for optimism in a long-term conflict like that against the Soviet Union. Our type of government lacks not staying power but acting power, and as Huntington points out, the government which does have the capacity for sudden spectacular success usually also has the capacity for sudden spectacular failure (1961, 447). Referring to Fisher Ames comparison of

Giannotta 10 ! authoritarian forms of government versus democratic republics, he continues this point by making clear that the capacity for quick decisions also means the possibility of more spectacular failures. A republic...is like a raft: slow, ungainly, impossible to steer, no place from which to control events, and yet endurable and safe. It will not sink, but ones feet are always wet (1961, 447).

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