Bret Devereaux

My own take for why this is a problem has to do less with the abilities of any particular SecDef or fears about the increasing politicization of the military and more to do with long-term norms about control and direction. 1/14 https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1336308529695760391 …

There is a trap and it is relatively easy to slide into where the normative assumption (among the public and elites) is that civilian leaders ought not interfere with military leaders due to the latter's superior expertise. 2/14

That risk is particularly acute in a society which generally assigns high moral qualities to service personnel and low moral qualities to politicians (as we do). There is already a lot of 'if only the politicians would let the generals do the job' popular discourse. 3/14

The thing is, states where the military has effectively insulated itself from civilian control have pretty consistent records of awful decision-making. The classic examples of this are Germany, 1871-1919 and Japan 1920-1945. 4/14

The thing is, civilian leaders have a very different job then military ones. As Clausewitz notes (drink!) the political leaders manage the 'when/why' of war (the political object) whereas the military leaders manage the 'how' of war (dealing with friction, etc.). 5/14

Addendum: bit of quote, "The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose…war should never be thought of as something autonomous, but always as an instrument of policy" - Clausewitz (drink!)

Refutation: “War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.” - Heraclitus (475 BC)

That's not a refutation. Clausewitz wouldn't, I suspect, meaningfully disagree with that sentence. Heraclitus is noting that war is important, not offering a theory of how it should be conducted.