How the Dulles brothers made Kissinger and Cheney look like peaceniks

http://www.npr.org/2013/10/16/234752747/meet-the-brothers-who-shaped-u-s-policy-inside-and-out

We don't hear much about these two (apart from the DC airport name), but their beliefs and actions literally shaped the Cold War, US global ambitions, and we are still dealing with the negative repercussions today.

Ike appointed John F. Dulles as his Sec. State and Allen Dulles as the CIA head. They were both corporate lawyers who represented, among others, United Fruit and the financiers of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. Enough said. Ike basically gave them carte blanche authority to make enemies and "intervene" in any foreign country they saw fit, and they didn't hesitate: Guatemala, Iran, Congo, Cuba, Indonesia, and Vietnam ... basically our greatest hits. They were especially adamant about Iran, because under no circumstances could they tolerate a leader nationalizing oil reserves for the people, and renegotiating terms on foreign companies. Imagine the shockwaves to big business, and what message that would send to other countries.

Unlike Kennedy's "team of rivals" model, it was very dangerous for Ike to appoint two like-minded, corporate shill, biological brothers into the complementary (and sometime necessarily adversarial) positions of State and CIA. One side shapes foreign policy and strategy, and the other carries it out covertly. Or one side tries to make peace, while the other sows the seeds of war. It's playing with fire. Now they were basically one org, without any sanity checks or devil's advocate to say, "What happens after we overthrow Lumumba? (answer: civil war and genocide for decades)," or "Maybe we can't win in Vietnam."  I guess the Dulles' and their Cold War were enough to make General Ike warn the nation about the military-industrial complex upon his retirement.

The Dulleses believed that the US, its market economy, and its multinational corporations were exceptional and entitled to dominate the globe (because we were the good guys). Anyone who opposed these interests (regardless of the reason, like the crazy notions of self determination and liberty) were automatically evil monsters. It's OK for George Washington, but not for Third World leaders (esp. when they are sitting on natural resources). Clearly enemy #1 was communism, and by extension populist nationalism, because it went against the model of private capital might makes right, and neo-colonialism/imperialism. Any attempt to regulate or take power/profit away from US companies was as much of a threat to US security as nuclear missiles.

Apart from the direct and indirect violence & collateral damage (5M total deaths at least), militancy/extremism, and harm to our global reputation in most of the world, here is the Dulles' biggest legacy and curse on humanity: a pervasive culture of rejecting peace talks and the undermining of democracy.

After Stalin died, the USSR wanted to improve relations with the West. It was a great opportunity, but Dulles was the only major foreign leader to reject this overture (and pressured our allies to do the same), because he thought the Russians were too evil to talk to, and preferred that our conflict continue. Later, both sides' nuclear brinksmanship almost ended the world. During the North-South Vietnam diplomatic talks after the French withdrawal, most European powers felt that the party was over and they should learn to live with Ho Chi Minh. Dulles was the only one who felt that Ho could be beaten militarily if we stuck it out, and he persuaded Ike and Kennedy. We know how that turned out. But you can see this US hubris and misguided thinking carrying over to our negotiations (or lack theoreof) with Cuba, Iran, and North Korea over the years. We have certain beliefs about other people, and our stubbornness ends up prolonging/worsening conflicts and missing out on opportunities.

Why was the US so successful in overthrowing the democratic regimes in Iran, Guatemala, and Congo in the '50s? The author argues that it was because those societies (and their idealistic, civilian, center-left leaders - a.k.a. died-in-the-wool commies) were fairly open and democratic, thereby allowing foreign agitators access to covertly undermine the gov't and eventually launch a coup d'etat (with a pro-US dictator waiting in the wings). Later revolutionaries learned from those cases, and ruled more like repressive tyrants in order to defend against a possible US overthrow. Cuba, North Vietnam, the Islamic Republic of Iran, North Korea, etc. all became more paranoid and less democratic after the Dulles' time. It could just be coincidence, but at least in the case of Cuba, Che and Castro were quoted that they would not repeat the mistakes of Arbenz in Guatemala. They would repress and spy on their own people to make sure the CIA wasn't gaining a foothold.

So even though the US portrayed itself as the global example and defender of democracy, in fact its foreign policy under the Dulleses was terribly undemocratic, and motivated many others around the world to choose brutality over democracy too (tragically, during a time of global change that we will never get back, when we really could have forged tremendous social progress and peace). And the human race may never fully recover from the legacies of those dark times. To me, that is a much greater failure, security threat, and shame on the US than letting a few undeveloped countries elect a socialist leader, or try to nationalize their resources.  

Are US generals helping or hurting war efforts?

http://www.npr.org/2012/11/01/164096479/ricks-firing-generals-to-fight-better-wars

Ricks' recent book describes how less effective US generals are compromising our military and making our current ugly wars even harder to win. Bad managers are not confined to the private sector and politics - plenty of generals are incompetent, selfish, and foolish. It's nothing new - see WWI or the Napoleonic Wars.

In WWII, it was standard procedure to dismiss generals from command for even small battlefield failures, even if they had a track record of good performance. Maybe that policy was too harsh, but there were plenty of other officers to replace them. And often the relieved officer got a new command elsewhere after serving a short penance. 16 such generals were relieved during the 5 years of WWII. Since Vietnam, only one field general has been relieved for combat ineffectiveness. Theater commanders have been "fired" instead: Westmoreland, Casey, etc. - but those moves were more symbolic, from civilian leaders aware of the public's frustration with those wars. In addition, the average duration of American wars has increased, and with worse strategic outcomes. Apart from the Gulf War I anomaly, now the US is engaged in decade-long quagmires, versus less-formidable enemies than the Axis. There are several reasons for this that Ricks postulates:

WWII was a "traditional" war with a clear, existential threat to the US and our allies, with well-defined military objectives. For the nuclear-age Cold War, combat mostly became small and unconventional (keeping the lid on civil wars, counter-insurgencies, nation building, etc.) - situations that generals did not study and were not prepared for.

The relationship between civilian leaders, military leaders, and soldiers has changed. During WWII, in general the priority was to win the war with as little loss of American life as possible. Therefore there was little tolerance for inept generals who put troops under undue risk. As the military-industrial complex grew into its own "special interest", the military strayed from this and became more general-centric. Now war was more about career development for officers, rather than winning humbly and efficiently. Egotistical generals have always cared about their own glory since the dawn of organized battle, but it descended to new lows since Vietnam. Therefore, top brass were reluctant to fire battlefield commanders as a black mark on the fired officers' careers, and also their own. Civilian leaders were also hesitant to fire even inept military leaders, as that could be construed as an admission that the war was not going well or it was the wrong war to fight. So we "stay the course" with inept leaders. Again, US lives took the back seat to political concerns.

Relations between the White House and Pentagon have changed too. Lincoln and JFK's "team of rivals" concept was very much at play during WWII. FDR and George Marshall probably didn't like each other very much, but showed enough honesty, respect, and patriotism to listen to conflicting opinions when it was best for the nation. Most war failures result from incorrect information, improper assumptions, and other possibly preventable errors of judgment. FDR and Marshall did their best to make sure those mistakes were avoided. This isn't just nostalgia for the Greatest Generation, and the Allies made plenty of goofs during WWII too. But their "HR" system was more sound - contrast it to the Iraq War and Bush's team of yes-men neocons, total liar "expert advisers" like Chalabi, and sycophant generals. Now we go to war based on hunches and ideologies. It's the opposite of the dispassionate, data-driven, risk-averse decisions we should be making.

The decline started around Vietnam, and possibly coincides with the trend of US presidents being less and less likely to have served in the military. The relationship between LBJ and Westmoreland was a joke. The two kept info from each other, tried to avoid disagreements, and only told the other what they wanted to hear. I am not sure how Obama deals with the military today, but seeing how many of his policies are quite Bush-like (and definitely not worthy of a Nobel Peace Prize), I bet he is kowtowing more often than giving tough love - which is his job, his duty, and what the citizens expect of him. Part of this is due to the "cult of the military", where we overly venerate the institution. It's schizophrenic, because on one hand we skimp on veteran's care and don't want a draft, but on the other we have to "support the troops" no matter what, with nearly limitless funding. It's verboten to criticize the military, maybe even at the highest levels of government. Sometime criticism is the highest form of patriotism. Just ask Lincoln and FDR. Look how much of Romney's candidacy is about fellating the military. He wants to grow military spending to 4% GDP AFTER we have wound down two ground wars. Even at the peak of it's power, the British Empire didn't spend that much. Ricks finds this especially shocking from a former CEO who made his fortune cutting costs and giving tough love to struggling companies. We should always support our troops, but we have to stop coddling the generals and the institution if it's not serving the interests of the people.

Also there was the gradual phasing out of the draft. When the 1%'s kids were no longer in harm's way, US soldiers quickly became more expendable. All sorts of waivers were granted for the rich during Vietnam, so really the war was fought by the poor and uneducated. That trend continues today, as the volunteer military tends to attract those without much civilian career prospects. A volunteer army also concentrates war suffering on a minority of the citizenry (the segment of society that is already marginalized), so the rest of us are less inclined to care if the war is going poorly and led by bad generals. Tying into a previous point, the causes we are fighting for after Korea are more murky and controversial. Therefore it's hard to get the whole country behind the war effort and engaged with the daily progress enough to hold under-performing commanders accountable. Most of us can't even name an actual combat general serving in Iraq and Afghanistan now, and have no idea what they're doing. National security secrecy and lack of free press access aren't helping either.

Despite the fact that our current volunteer military is mostly comprised of the lower classes, they are actually some of the most professional and high-performing troops the US has ever had (on average). That is both a blessing and a curse. Like a high-performing department with a bad manager, it masks the incompetence of the manager. Bad generals in Iraq and Afghanistan "get away with" more incompetence because their troops sacrifice and struggle so much to accomplish objectives in spite of their leaders. And since the generals know their troops are quite good, they ask too much out of them. They subject them to more risk and strain instead of thinking harder and devising better strategies. Stop-loss is an obvious example. Lazy command, dereliction of duty, lack of concern for the men under your command.

Some other interesting facts about past wars and dispelling some myths:

- MacArthur may be the only general in human history who was insubordinate to 3 national leaders. And yet he had dreams of the White House. Some believe that we should have let MacArthur "finish off" North Korea when he had the chance (or even fight China), but if he had his way, it would have been a disaster. Just for that, Truman goes down as one of the great C-in-C's of US history. Chinese forces were waiting in ambush at the border to slaughter any Americans who pushed too deep. It would have escalated the war, and Mac wanted authorization to use "about 35" nuclear weapons to destroy China's military capability, and then let the Taiwanese come in for mop-up duty. Of course I don't have to explain what a moronic idea this is, but to humor you: the USSR clearly wouldn't just sit idly by while 2 major Asian communist nations got wiped out. They would have conquered Europe, and we probably couldn't have stopped them because we committed forces to the Pacific. It would have led to WWIII. And I don't think even the Taiwanese would have been comfortable with the task of occupying mainland China. As WWII hero General Bradley said, it was the wrong war at the wrong time with the wrong enemy. Unfortunately we repeated the blunder in Vietnam.

- Patton was actually a mediocre to poor battlefield commander, and obviously a very poor leader in terms of "people skills". But what he was really good at was getting a plodding armored fighting force to cover large distances quickly in pursuit of a retreating enemy, or to relieve a besieged position. So the brilliant foresight and talent management skills of Marshall and Ike knew that Patton wouldn't be really "useful" until the end of the war. They coddled him and tolerated many of his issues until they let him loose in , to do what he was best at.

- Ike was a fairly unproven, junior commander going into WWII, but Marshall picked him to be the combined Allies leader because he was diplomatic, patient, and knew how to work well with others (a rare trait for egotistical generals). Marshall and FDR realized that this was a new chapter of warfare, and the Allies would ultimately beat the Nazis, not just the Americans (and let's be honest, the USSR did most of the heavy lifting anyway).

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A follow-up with Tom Ricks: http://www.kqed.org/a/forum/R201211140900

He had a good point on the sex scandal - for YEARS in Iraq, hundreds or even thousands of people were dying under incompetent generals, but none of them were fired, demoted, or even had to get chewed out by a civilian committee. But a general sends some flirting emails to a floozie socialite (after years of "drought" serving in combat zones in conservative Muslim nations) - HEADLINE NEWS!!!! NATIONAL OUTRAGE!!!! My only criticism of those generals is their HORRIBLE choice in mistresses. At least learn from Charlie Sheen and Tiger.

For the record, Ike had an affair with his female driver during WWII, and he later became president (I think that was Petraeus' ambition too). But that was the pre-Twitter, integrity in journalism era.

I'm not defending the generals' actions, but let's prioritize our criticism.