Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 9

On the surface, the anti-war movement in the United States in 1914 represented a key part of the coalition that had helped to elect Woodrow Wilson as president two years earlier. However, looking at this group of people in more detail, reveals a more inchoate mass for which the outbreak of the Great War represented a challenge instead of an opportunity.

There were three strands in the movement:

(a) Morally-minded businessmen and lawyers. These people regarded capitalism and liberalism (in the old-fashioned sense of anti-clerical and anti-monarchical) as social systems that would undermine the national boundaries and dynastic rivalries that provoked wars. In a sense, they were the Mirrors of Marxism, regarding the business class as having no nationality, and the progenitors of today's globalization as the End of History. They also supplied the leadership of the anti-war movement in 1914.

(b) Radical social reformers. For them, war was representative of immoral businessmen and social systems. A program of general social reform and some kind of transnational or supranational political authority would remove the need for war as a means of settling social disputes. However, their focus was on reform, not revolution. They found common cause with (a) on many occasions, because they welcomed any steps taken to eradicate war, even little ones.

(c) Revolutionary Socialists. For them, war was inherently a part of a social system that was corrupt and doomed. A simple refusal to fight, a revolutionary act on the part of the masses, would not only halt war, but quite possibly bring the whole corrupt edifice of capitalism crashing down. They had some common ground with (b).

In the event, between the outbreak of war and the resignation of William Jennings Bryan in June 1915, Group (a) were largely conspicuous by their absence in offering any kind of leadership to the anti-war movement, perhaps content with Wilson's management of American diplomacy, which did seem to offer a pragmatic implementation of their views. Group (b) made a few grand gestures, such as the women's Peace Parade down New York's Fifth Avenue on 29 August 1914, and a meeting at Henry Street Settlement House in September that was to have major long-term significance. However, they at first yielded leadership to group (a), in the mistaken anticipation that they would use the war to promote ideas for a kind of World Government that had been current for some years prior to August 1914. Group (c), meanwhile, focused on pressing labor issues that were also going to have important repercussions on the anti-war movement.

By pulling in different directions, the anti-war movement allowed initiative to pass to those who supported some level of involvement in the war, whether in laying the groundwork for eventual American entry, or simply by seizing sound business opportunities that steadily increased the American stake in an Allied victory. After Bryan's resignation as Secretary of State, however, matters began to take a different turn.

Downsize That

Listening to the Senate Armed Forces Committee hearings on the FY2008 budget, the DDG 1000 came up again, as Senator Susan Collins (R, Me) tossed a few batting practice pitches to General Pace over the long-term savings that the smaller crew size will permit. The Department of Defense will save money on housing families, pensions, and post-service benefits that will make the price tag seem much smaller. The commodification of military and naval service would come as no surprise to Marxists.

Guns and Buttered Guns

Here is an excellent article about some of the more expensive weapons for which money is requested in the Bush Administration's FY2007 budget. The issue of cheaper weapons versus expensive ones rears its head at specific stages in the American procurement process. I liked the story of how the DDG 1000 started life as a proposal for a "low-cost destroyer", and then gradually had more and more tasks added to its capabilities. It begs so many questions. Was it a "trojan-horse" project, intentionally priced low and intended to be eventually a big ticket item? Or was it the brainchild of those naval officers who prefer a "mosquito fleet" (a term originating in the Jefferson Administration, as mentioned here), only to see their project taken over by "blue-water" navy enthusiasts?

Looking forward to possible threats is one of the jobs civilians demand of their military and naval advisors. It's a fraught business, and doesn't always lead to good public policy. I am reminded of the British planners who after 1918 decided that the most likely opponent for the Royal Air Force was going to be France! They didn't have to omit the fact that the probability of that was likely to be small.

Casey at the bar

I spent three hours today listening to part of the confirmation hearings on the appointment of General George Casey before the Senate Armed Forces Committee. I was a little surprised on how the questions focused so much on the planned reinforcement of the American troops in Iraq as a policy, as opposed to the situation in Iraq in relation to the wider role of the U.S. Army.

The only senators to address this issue in detail while I listened were Hilary Clinton (which surprised me) and Jim Inhofe. They did not quite have the same angle on this problem, but their comments stood out in thinking about Casey's future wider responsibilities, as opposed to his past narrower ones. Evan Bayh brought up the question of how willing Casey would be to challenge his civilian bosses if he thought they were wrong. Casey's answer did not suggest that he would see such a matter as a cause of resignation, but rather that he would return again and again to seek to adjust policy to suit his point of view.

I came away with two key thoughts about how the U.S. military sees Iraq over the coming year. Casey emphasized time and again that the capability of the Iraqis to take the lead in bringing order to the troubled parts of the country was crucial to the success of the American mission. This is Vietnamization all over again, although I suspect the prospects for success are better in Iraq than they were in Vietnam. The other key thought is that the Iraqi army is very much a mixed bag. An exchange with Bill Nelson brought out a figure of about 24,000 Iraqi troops being actually reliable, fully equipped and deployed in a significant war zone, in Baghdad. This is out of an army of 325,000.

What's Up in Iran

I don't particular like to speculate about strategy, but the steady drumbeat of news stories about the Bush Administration's intentions toward Iran has gripped the world of war analysis, so I thought I'd draw a couple of threads together. A U.S. Air Force study suggests that civil war is inevitable in Iraq, and the Air Force has a role to play in reconnoitring or even interdicting possible supplies from Iran to their Shia friends in Iraq.

However, we've been aware for some time of the movement of US aircraft carriers in the vicinity of the Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea. It could be that the administration's intention is to have plenty of forces on hand in case their efforts along the Iran-Iraq border lead to an incident requiring substantial retaliation. Of course, now one is in Gulf of Tonkin Incident territory.

For the Love of It

Some bloggers associated with the American Civil War, such as J. David Petruzzi and Brooks Simpson, have recently posted about some division between professional and amateur historians.

I have actually spent most of my working life not with academically respectable publishers, but those who produce "coffee table" books. When I worked at another place, I found myself beside a PhD candidate who had the worst possible opinion of any writer who signed a contract for a "coffee table" book (although he was happy to do them himself, under a different name). Far from wanting to appease this snob, he only made me more determined to bring the good qualities of book editing I learned with the mass market publisher into his snooty world. It's not easy producing a book for the Masses.

I'd go so far as to say that if one wants to spend time debating amateur versus professional, it's not just the historian's craft that needs to be categorized, but also the writer's. It's easily possible for a professional historian to be an amateur writer, the sort of person better off writing for the plaudits of their peers and not for real readers.

Hat tip to Civil War Memory.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 8

The sinking of the Lusitania in May 1915 gave birth to a synthesis conceived in policy choices made by key players in the Woodrow Wilson Administration during the preceding nine months. This synthesis determined that the United States would eventually enter the war on the side of Britain, France and Russia - unless Germany could somehow develop the sort of diplomatic package that would entice the Allied powers to a negotiating table.

In the wake of the sinking, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan issued the first Lusitania note on May 13, 1915. This focused on the immoral character of an attack without warning on a passenger liner. A second note, issued on June 11, reiterated, more strongly, the administration's view that the sinking had an immoral quality and in so posing a threat to American lives represented a provocation Wilson would not ignore. This anti-German tone adopted by this note provoked the resignation of Bryan, who believed that the American government's national interest was better served by a more even-handed response. American citizens sailing on Allied vessels into a designated war zone were taking on a certain amount of risk that the American government could not offer protection against. For Bryan, the problem was not the manner of making war, as emphasized by Wilson's notes, but the war itself.

To replace Bryan, Wilson appointed the State Department counselor, Robert Lansing. Lansing, in his memoirs published in 1935, clearly stated that he believed the American interest had more in common with Britain than with "German absolutism". Much of his activity prior to his promotion had been to protest violations of neutral rights by both sides, but to stretch out the negotiation of these points with Britain as long as possible in order to gain time for the rest of America to come round to his view.

A third note, issued on July 21, described the sinking of a liner without warning as a "deliberately unfriendly" act. Although the sinking of the liner Arabic in which three Americans died followed on August 19, Wilson withdrew from making further public protest, although his private comments led the Germans to abandon the sinking of liners without warning.

However, reviewing earlier parts of this series, in particular part 5, we see here how the American Way of War works. The initial response focuses on a general statement of American interests. However, the course of subsequent responses will be determined by lower-level functionaries in the Administration who, by being less visible to the general public, can pursue their private agendas more energetically than they might be able to in higher positions. The president retains a degree of control over the overall direction, but the policy's implementation owes more to the men (and nowadays women) he has appointed. When the crisis erupts, what has gone before will influence what comes after. The losers in the debate over American policy drop out of the picture, and the new synthesis subsequently adapts itself to future situations, but without overturning the broad policy position that has been established.

In this specific case, Wilson tried to balance neutrality with American interests, as was demanded by his political situation, while Lansing pursued a more biased strategy. "German absolutism" is perhaps best seen as a code reflecting his negative characterization of a system of economic organization in which the state played a larger role than Americans were necessarily comfortable with, at least superficially. British liberal capitalism had much more in common with America's business structures. To adopt a pseudo-marxist phrasing of the situation, Lansing acted as the agent of American capital, which preferred to see the victory of its British relative than its German rival.

Bryan would move into the anti-war movement, and it is to this oft-forgotten collection of strange bedfellows that I will next turn.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 7

Leon C. Thrasher probably never would have acquired historical fame had he not booked passage aboard the steamer Falaba in early 1915. The ship was torpedoed on 28 March, and he died, the first American victim of German unrestricted submarine warfare.

The event stimulated a great debate between State Department counsellor Robert Lansing and the Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan. Lansing followed the view that Germany had violated traditional methods of warfare resulting in the avoidable death of an innocent neutral, while Bryan argued that Thrasher had been negligent in choosing a British vessel sailing to a designated war zone where it was at risk of being attacked and sunk. Wilson took his time in deciding between these two views of the incident, in part because Colonel Edward House, his personal envoy, was in Europe seeking to attract the warring nations to the idea of a mediated peace.

While President Woodrow Wilson pondered his response, the Germans made two further attacks that challenged neutral rights in the war zone. An American freighter, the Cushing, was attacked by a German aircraft on April 29, while on 1 May the tanker Gulflight was torpedoed by the U-30. At the following cabinet meeting, on 4 May, Bryan found the mood of the cabinet was for a protest. Wilson stated: "It may be that there is no way to meet a situation like this except by war. It is important that we should show how sincere is our belief that there are other ways to settle questions like this." The tension in the Democratic party and the Progressive movement could not be made any more clear. To threaten war was the traditional response, but the Democrats had hoped to avoid "bad" European traditions in the creation of new, "good" American ones. However, there was no guarantee that the rest of the world would go along.

The sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915 was the turning point for American diplomacy in the war, although it was not apparent in the days immediately afterwards. That the Lusitania was carrying ammunition, a legitimate target as contraband of war, is not disputed. However, sinking a passenger liner without warning, which is what U-20 did, was at the time an action that was open to question as to its legitimacy. Therefore the Wilson administration's response was bound to be stern.

[NB - This strand has become longer and longer as I study more about it, and it might be argued I have lost my way somewhat. However, I think the extensive background will help when I come to the anti-war movement.]

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 6

The crisis for the Woodrow Wilson administration came in February 1915, when the Germans declared a war zone around the British Isles in order to prosecute an unrestricted submarine blockade. The Germans warned that the British use of neutral flags to disguise their merchant ships placed all shipping in the vicinity in peril. The British had imposed a blockade on Germany at the war's outbreak, and the war zone was an attempt by the Germans to affect British imports similarly.

The problem for the Germans lay in the limitations of the submarine, their only feasible choice of a weapon to impose a blockade. Their fleet, while large, was outnumbered by the British and unlikely to win a battle between the two. The recent defeat on 24 January 1915 of a small German squadron by a slightly superior British one at the battle of Dogger Bank seemed to demonstrate the proof of this situation. The submarine, however, could evade superior British surface forces using its ability to travel submerged. This advantage came at a cost. Submarines were small, slower than many small surface ships such as cruisers and destroyers, and unarmoured. Nor did they carry much heavy weaponry, at best a single gun. Their weapon was the torpedo.

Under the rules of naval warfare, ships en route to a blockaded country could be stopped by warships and searched. If carrying "contraband", they could be seized or sunk. However, merchant ships were allowed to be armed, although the British did not have enough guns to arm all that many. So there was some risk for a submarine trying to stop a merchant ship. The captain had to decide the likelihood of it carrying a large enough gun manned by an efficient crew that could sink his vessel. Furthermore, in November 1914, the British had begun employing Q-ships, merchant vessels turned into warships specifically intended to decoy German submarines. As of February 1915, the Q-ships hadn't actually sunk a submarine, but the threat was there.

In these circumstances, the German declaration made some practical sense. The British had already made their own adjustments to the London Declaration of 1909, an adjustment the Wilson administration had accepted. Why should they not also agree to a German adjustment of the rules governing stopping merchant ships? The American merchant fleet did not play a substantial role in American commerce, as only 10 percent of American trade was carried in American vessels. This would not stop Woodrow Wilson from allowing the German declaration to determine the broad direction of American foreign policy in response to the war.

Battle of Windsor

I grew up in Detroit, and it is often forgotten by non-Canadians that this is a border city. Yesterday, I discovered (or possibly rediscovered) that there had been a Battle of Windsor, just south of Detroit in Canada, in 1838. It was part of the Patriot War, a conflict that attempted to blow at the embers of Canadian republicanism after the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837. The most complete account of the Battle of Windsor that I have found on the Web is in this biographical article on the Canadien Francis Baby.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 5

The administration of President Woodrow Wilson immediately faced important questions about American interests in the months following the outbreak of the major European war in August 1914. The United States was already a significant economic power in global terms, although it owed more money to foreign creditors than it was owed, and largely was a big economic power because of its sizable domestic market - foreign trade, while significant, played a much lesser role in the Gross National Product than in Britain, for example. However, the American economy was in recession, and the business opportunities offered by the war tempted American manufacturers and exporters. One of the most seriously affected regions of the country was the South, a key element in the coalition that elected Wilson in 1912, and of the Democratic party at this time generally. Unable to export their cotton to Europe, farmers faced ruin.

For William Jennings Bryan, the secretary of state, the sinews of modern war were provided by finance. Cut off the supply of money to belligerents, and the war might stop. But while the U.S. government was willing to cut off the public finance of loans or credits to European states, the free enterprise ideology that was one of the Gospels of Americanism at this time (and remains so) would not allow the government to halt initiatives by private financial institutions. Although Bryan exhorted American banks to refuse to lend to the warring nations, some saw a useful opportunity and took it. By October 1914, the policy of exhortation had been set aside by Wilson and the Counselor at the State Department, the Anglophile Robert Lansing, one of America's leading experts in international law.

A month after the outbreak of war, and a month before the abandonment of the exhortation policy, the Wilson administration chose not to impose an arms embargo, allowing American manufacturers to sell weapons to anyone who could afford to buy them and ship them across the Atlantic. Given that the British had imposed a fairly tight blockade on Germany, this meant that only the French and British were able to take advantage of the American decision.

The British blockade of Germany created yet another problem for Bryan and the administration, in that they followed, but not quite to the letter, an agreement concerning shipping in time of war. The British amended the definition of contraband that could be seized to suit themselves, expanding it slightly. Wilson, under Lansing's influence, agreed to go along with the British interpretation, in spite of the existence of an internationally recognized agreement that the British had helped negotiate, although one that had not been ratified by the British government. One major reason for this was the relatively small size of the American merchant fleet. American shipping was unlikely to be affected significantly by the British interpretation.

Finally, at the outbreak of war, the British began arming their merchant ships. Under international agreements, warships were not allowed to remain in a neutral port for more than 24 hours. But the British insisted that these armed vessels were not warships, because they were only armed for self-defence, and would be hopelessly outclassed by any but the weakest naval vessel. In practical terms, the Germans did not have the naval force on the high seas to make the matter significant. A few cruisers were based in the Pacific, and another in German East Africa. At this stage, British ships ruled the waves, especially the Atlantic between Europe and America. Lansing again pointed out the practical effect of the British policy, and set aside German insistence on the principle.

In each case here, the American Way of War, at least in the diplomatic dimension, is shown. American public policy is traditionally built out of practical responses to immediate problems, tending to favour the dominant interest group on the issue, rather than implementing an idealistic philosophy. Bryan represented a genuine American enthusiasm, at this time another of the Gospels of Americanism, for pacifist ideals. However, a search for practical responses to problems set aside the ideals. The Wilson administration could have imposed an arms and loans ban on the belligerents, insisted on the sanctity of international agreements, and required that the rules of war be implemented to the letter. They did not, and each step taken antagonized one side in the European conflict. When the next major crisis came, the Germans were hardly surprised by the American response, but the consequences fatally undermined the strong anti-war movement in the United States.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 4

Woodrow Wilson appointed as his secretary of state a three-time presidential loser, William Jennings Bryan (Illinois College, '81), defeated in the campaigns of 1896, 1900 and 1908. Bryan, in spite of this record, was a major power in the Democratic party, and his endorsement of Wilson in the 1912 election would have done much to help Wilson gain support of Bryan's constituency - populist, moralist, anti-imperialist, suspicious of the Eastern Establishment. However, another member of the State department under Wilson was its Counsellor, Robert Lansing (Amherst College '86), who was appointed in April 1914, following the resignation of his predecessor. Lansing was an acknowledged expert in international law, while Bryan offered passionate leadership in support of pacifist causes such as the use of arbitration to resolve international disputes instead of war.

Complicating this picture was Wilson's close associate, Colonel Edward House (Cornell, did not graduate). House held no official position, but was an important member of Wilson's administration nonetheless. He was an intimate of the president, especially after the death of Wilson's first wife on 6 August 1914, just days after the outbreak of the First World War. Wilson valued House's opinion as an unbiased perspective, unlike that of his rival Bryan. House had been to Europe in the spring, to sound out the possibility of some kind of agreement over naval strength between Germany and Britain. House had played a part in securing Lansing's appointment to the State Department, and represented the more conservative wing of the Democrats, while Bryan was known as the standard-bearer of the radical faction.

The interplay between these four men played an important role in developing the American response to the war in Europe. As the July Crisis of 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, developed, Wilson was coping with the grief consequent on the death of his beloved Ellen, who suffered from Bright's disease. Bryan was more concerned with cutting the kind of public figure he had done all his life, and also was aware of Wilson's view that the presidency ought to be the focus of international initiatives, such as Wilson's offer on 4 August to find a peaceful resolution to the crisis. Accepting Wilson's attitude freed Bryan to pursue his own agenda from a pulpit at the pinnacle of American politics.

Military Capitalists

According to American officials, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard has gone into business for itself. Nor would the Iranians be the largest military force to start a new front in the field of commerce. Definitely a case of life imitating art.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 3

To resume my Woodrow Wilson series, it's important to note that the position of the United States itself had changed during his lifetime. When he was born in 1856, the United States was a regional power, having defeated its closest rival Mexico in war only eight years before. America in 1856 was much more like the the Protestant, largely British, society of the newly independent colonies than the superpower of 2007, teeming with liberated huddle masses drawn from all over the world and following many different religions. Given its size and population, it had a tiny army and navy, and was regarded as a minor threat by most European powers, and really only had overseas interests in East Asia and the Caribbean basin.

The Civil War changed this. The demands of the Federal war effort led to a massive expansion in the industrial base, funded by government debt, led by a grasping managerial class that seized control of Congress in the late 1860s. The legal and fiscal policies that protected their interests continued for another forty years, maintaining their wealth and power, while the kind of immigration that had provoked the bigoted anti-immigrant Know-Nothing movement in the antebellum years continued. Although America continued to have a tiny army and navy, it's growing wealth was an obvious harbinger of the future. During this time, Wilson resided in the defeated South, failing at a law career, until in 1883 he began studying for a Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. From this point on he would reside in the industrialized northeast.

Spain's troubles in Cuba, in one of America's traditional areas of interest, resulted in one of the most popular foreign wars in American history. Wilson's response to the aftermath of this war has an important bearing not only on his future policies in relation to World War I, but also to his potential electability. In the end he lent his support for the annexation of the Philippines and a more prominent role for America in foreign affairs. These issues were more dear to the Northern victors among whom he dwelled, than the Southern defeated, among whom he ahd been born and raised. More importantly, as the linked article shows, he believed the authority of the president had been substantially increased by the war, and even goes so far as to say, "As long as we have only domestic subjects we have no real leaders."

Wilson had turned his back on the principles of the Founding Fathers, who were suspicious of concentrating power in the hands of an individual, in the course of writing his book Congressional Government in which he wrote: "It is, therefore, manifestly a radical defect in our federal system that it parcels out power and confuses responsibility as it does." In this context, how mindful was he likely to be of sage advice from George Washington's Farewell Address? "Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification."

The Trial of Saddam Hussein

The execution of Saddam Hussein is firmly with a long tradition in the history of the aftermath of wars. Although parallels with the Nuremburg Trials might come to mind, the fact is that Saddam Hussein was found guilty and executed by a domestic court, trying him for domestic crimes. To some degree, this represents a kind of "victor's justice". The postwar trials of Pierre Laval and Marshal Petain in France in 1945 may offer a better comparison. (Although the notorious Riom trial might be a more appealing parallel to Saddam sympathizers.) Had Critias survived the Athenian revolution of 403 BC, he might too have been subjected to a trial by his conquerors.

The absence of a widespread urge to subject Saddam Hussein to an international tribunal is of more interest here. No doubt political reasons were involved, but the inability of the "Hang the Kaiser" movement in 1918-19 to achieve its goal is instructive. The fact is that Saddam Hussein was often acting in his capacity as the sovereign authority of the Iraqi state. At the time of the exile of Napoleon to St Helena, similar questions were raised and answered, as this quote, drawn from Chapter Two here, illustrates.

In this letter the Lord Chancellor outlines the legal status of the imprisonment of Napoleon for the private information of the Prime Minister. He frankly admits that the imprisonment of Napoleon is not a legal matter. To the contrary, he saw it as an act which in terms of the "Law of Nations" would be "excessively difficult to justify", primarily a violation of French sovereignty, made necessary in order to secure the safety of the world.

However, had Saddam not been president of Iraq, (say he had been prime minister) it's quite possible we'd be facing a very different situation.

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 2

For the second part of this ongoing series, I'd like to look at the second half of the title, "the American Way of War". Without doubt, all foreign wars in the history of the United States between 1783 and 1917 generated serious opposition among Americans. You don't have to look hard:

War of 1812: The Hartford Convention threatens the secession of the New England states.

Mexican-American War: This fellow made a name for himself as an opponent of the war, but he represented the views of a couple more key party associates. See documents 1 and 10 here.

Spanish-American War: Support for this relatively popular war demanded Congressional legislation that formally renounced any intention to annex Cuba. The war might have proved less popular without it. The legacy of the war, the annexation of the Philippines, was a different matter.

Even after 1918, the only near-universally supported foreign wars are the Second World War and the Korean War. (Although I wonder if the latter had lasted one more year whether serious opposition to it might have arisen. There's a sort of four-year rule related to American involvement in war.)

Woodrow Wilson and the American Way of War, Part 1

I've been involved in a debate over Woodrow Wilson and America's enthusiasm for war in 1914-18, that has absorbed a lot of my blogging energy. I'd like to rehash the debate here, if only to clarify my own thoughts a little. What I would call the Conventional Interpretation goes something like as follows:

During 1914-16, the vast majority of Americans wanted to stay out of the war, as did Wilson. He genuinely thought he could do so, and was very lukewarm toward the Preparedness Movement. Wilson's patient efforts at trying to solve things by diplomacy rather than war continued even after the Lusitania sinking, efficient Allied propaganda within the USA, actual German "atrocities" like Edith Cavell shooting, German sabotage in America, and the Zimmermann Telegram had certainly convinced the vast majority of Americans that war was now the only option. Once Wilson had decided war was inevitable after the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare by the Germans in February 1917, he was able to carry with him an (almost) united nation.

My debate is with the underlined portion. I'm not convinced the evidence that the vast majority of Americans thought war was the only option. My reading of the evidence is that most Americans remained unwilling participants in the war, but that they went along with government policy because that's what they do. The idea that there was a strong anti-war movement that possibly reflected a plurality passively opposed to the war just doesn't fit with our National Myth of America's progress to Superpower Status, which replaced our original, more isolationist, National Myth. I'll publish what I've found over the next few days, together with any new stuff I uncover as well.

The New Galley Warfare?

I've always been interested in galley warfare, more than any other kind of naval warfare. During the confirmation hearings of Robert Gates to be the new Secretary of Defense, my ears pricked up when I heard him refer to the Littoral Combat Vessel. Now, if you take a map of a sea area, and superimpose a grid on it of some defined area - one mile squares for example - you can quickly see where littorals arise. I once did it for southern England and Wales, and basically there are three large areas, in the mouth of the Thames the Solent and in the Bristol Channel. Smaller areas can be found around Poole, and the south coasts of Devon and Cornwall. However, in the Mediterranean, especially around Greece and Asia Minor, there are lots. Thus, galley warfare could be thought of as another name for littoral warfare.

The first ship of this type, the USS Freedom (LCS 1) was launched on 23 September 2006 at its builder in Wisconsin. It displaces 3,000 tonnes, on a length of 377 feet, which is bigger than a J-class destroyer of the Royal Navy during the Second World War. These seem to be more of a sea control ship in narrow waters than actually reflecting the nature of combat in a littoral area.

A galley in the Mediterranean was predominantly a means of delivering fighting men. While some fleets, notably the Athenians and Carthaginians, relied on maneuver to ram and sink enemy vessls, boarding and capturing tactics were far more common throughout history. (Click on the link for "The Agony of War Under Oars" for a good description of Athenian galley tactics in the context of the crew's experience.) Furthermore, what is often overlooked is that galleys are effectively amphibious warfare ships. Their large crews can easily take up arms and fight ashore, in a relatively short space of time. Guilmartin's book Gunpowder and Galleys highlights this, and I view the Periclean strategy in the Peloponnesian wars as one to be analysed in terms of amphibious warfare, not sea control.

To move toward a galley model, the Littoral Combat Vessel needs support from something more like a floating armored personnel carrier or even an armoured cross-Channel roll-on, roll-off ferry. This would imply a heavy dual-purpose gun armament (firing both armor-piercing and high-explosive) or rocket artillery and the ability to carry a large number of men, such as a platoon or even a company of marines. Given the likely scenarios of naval combat facing the US Navy in the foreseeable future, this seems an interesting avenue for further prototypes to explore.

Vietnam Study Group

The recent publication of the Iraq Study Group report has drawn parallels with the famous conclave of "wise men" to advise President Lyndon Johnson on his Vietnam policy around the time of the 1968 Tet offensive.

Johnson had been making use of a circle of non-administration foreign policy advisors for some time. A "Vietnam Panel" met on 8 July 1965 and offered an assessment of future policy. The most famous such meeting was held under state department auspices in November 1967 (document 377). However, at a subsequent meeting in March 1968 (document 142), it appears as if Johnson has lost confidence in the "wise men" approach. It's not clear if the comment referring to it being "a mistake to get a new super-Presidential board" should be attributed to him or to Dean Acheson (or maybe both). Twelve days later, Johnson made his dramatic announcement that he would not seek re-election.

1917-18

This is news is a little old, but a museum about America's experience in the First World War has opened in Kansas City. I'm hoping to attend a conference in St Louis next summer, so maybe I can convince the family to make the relatively short drive up to Kansas City to take a look. I've always been a little disappointed that the Great War is a relatively low profile conflict in the United States. More than the Second World War, the First World War created America the Superpower, although the fact that American politicians retreated into unilateralism almost immediately after the war's end kind of hid that. As we approach the centenary of this conflict, I hope Americans will notice the important role the war played in the destiny of our country.