Sun Tzu's work was aimed at nobled who had zero experience and knowledge in warfare; a lot of it is low-hanging fruit, but you have to build up the basis for these things like "make sure your soldiers have food" and "don't tell your opponent what you're up to" in these people.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
> It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander.
Somebody has to be in charge of the military. If that person is just someone promoted from within, you're never more than one person's decision from a coup d'etat, "A republic, if you can keep it". So, an elected leader it is.
Of the three branches of the US government, only one is intended to provide an executive function, to decide, in an instant where necessary, without deliberation and compromise. The President. So that's the right person for the job of ultimate military commander, and it's one of the few things about that job which the voters seem to actually have some idea about.
Both the US and UK systems are under-staffed. The UK shares the job of executive leader and legislative leader (very different skill sets) under one role "Prime Minister" - while the US shares the job of executive leader and head of state (a figurehead) which also require totally different skill sets under the role of "President". This would make sense with a very small population, but it's crazy to imagine these huge countries couldn't find two people to do these very different jobs even a little better than one man (and in the US it has always been a man somehow) can do both.
According to the wiki, it's the chancellor in wartime (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bundeswehr). Either way, it's a civilian position that's temporarily filled by the ruling government which was democratically elected.
What counts as "war" though? Technically every President since Roosevelt has used military force without a formal declaration of war by Congress. And modern Germany is not a military power projecting hegemon. I can't imagine a civilian defense minister (who in a coalition government maybe isn't even the party of the chancellor) is ordering politically important drone strikes like the US President. If Germany was in similar role the system would quickly evolve that the Chancellor would order the military.
It's traditionally the head of state, so King makes sense. In Bulgaria the president is mostly a figurehead with very limited power (basically easily repeatable veto, appoint ambassadors and temporary cabinets when there's no active government pending elections), but is still the commander in chief of the armed forces.
The UK - as usual - is a patchwork of conflicting traditions.
There is no Royal Army. But all members of the armed forces, police, and certain prominent political appointments, swear an Oath of Allegiance to the monarch.
Note this is not to the country. And certainly not to the people. Not even to the Crown, which is a kind of abstract superclass of British monarchs in general.
The Royal Navy does not have to swear this oath. It exists by direct Royal Prerogative which means it's assumed to be loyal, pretty much by definition.
Indeed, my understanding is that the British Army was created by and legally answerable to Parliament, unlike the other armed forces. As you mentioned, a remain of mistrust after the monarch was restored to the throne after the civil war (though the navy did remain under the monarch's control). Also, there are royal units within the Army, but the whole of the army is not regimented in this way.
> It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
War is ultimately a political endeavor; the goal of a war is to compel, by use of military force, some sort of political objective. It only makes sense then that the person in charge of directing when and where that military force is used is also the person who is empowered to carry out the political policy of the entire country.
For people who rise to the top of the military from within, every political problem becomes a nail in want of the military hammer for a solution, and thus the default answer to every crisis tends to become war. The Cuban Missile Crisis was defused without a war because both Kennedy and Khrushchev couldn't bring themselves to push the button marked nuclear war, while virtually the entire military establishment was convinced, and forcefully arguing, that the only way out of the situation was to be the first to push that button.
I’m not sure about the “military hammer for a solution”. At least not these days. Sure there are some- Wesley Clark’s push into Kosovo seemed suspect to me at the time. But there are many of the Colin Powell types who resist these unnecessary entanglements.
I wouldn’t be surprised if back in the Grenada/Panama era of the 80’s that there may have been many chomping at the bit. These days, I’m guessing not so much.
Not sure why you are using Colin Powell as an example. He’s one of the worst stooges, helping both covering up the My Lai massacre and presenting false evidence for the UN regarding the Iraqi WMDs.
I’ve never heard about Powell and My Lai. Feel free to point me in the right direction.
As to Iraq and WMDs, you could prob call him a “stooge” if you wanted to. But the little I know from a distance, that was something that racked his conscience for the rest of his life.
A relative told me in the 70's that I never had to worry about WW III until Yugoslavia disintegrates after Tito dies. He said all the realistic war plans revolved around that, which is why all the NATO cadres were all hysterical in the 90s.
Grenada, they never had time to think about it - it took three days for the most mighty military in the world to secure one of the tiniest nations in the world.
After 9/11, Rumsfeld asked the Army for their plans. They gave him a stack of plans on occupying Afghanistan and requirement for 600K troops (per doctrine) - they had no intention of volunteering. He was furious to be sidelined when the CIA guy convinced W it could all be done with small teams and airpower.
For Iraq, Rumsfeld agreed to all their plans and they saluted happily when he said to not make any occupation plans...
> the president is also the top military commander
It's also true in quite some other countries, and it is to ensure that the military remains subordinated to the civil government, after the many examples of military coups in History.
They can, but you have over a million members of the military who have all sworn an oath that they will "obey the orders of the President of the United States." If they had all sworn an oath that they will "obey the orders of General McEvilFace," it would be a lot easier to maneuver all your coup pawns into place even over the protestations of the president, even without those soldiers needing to fully realize that a coup was being set up.
Americans disagree about a lot, including how to interpret the Constitution and which parts of it are more or less important. But I would really hope that myself and any other random American can at least agree that our Constitution is the rule book that we must all live by and that it is ultimately what binds us as a nation.
It's interesting that this shared allegiance to the Constitution was still strained to the breaking point 160+ years ago. I wonder how U.S. military leaders must have felt when huge swaths of the military (and military leaders) decided that bond was no longer strong enough for them to maintain their loyalty to it.
I agree that's what Americans should agree on, but did you miss the part where certain very prominent Americans have been vocal about how inconvenient the Constitution is and that any provision of it which they disagree with should be 'terminated'? I'm afraid we're not all on the same page wrt the Constitution.
> did you miss the part where certain very prominent Americans have been vocal about how inconvenient the Constitution is and that any provision of it which they disagree with should be 'terminated'
Those prominent Americans include the original authors of said constitution: they always knew it would be a living document to be modified via amendments. Constitutional "originalists" who believe we should be totally beholden to a 240-year-old document with no changes are the ones who are not following either the spirit or the letter of the constitution.
I'm not talking about originalists, and I'm not talking about amending the Constitution through legitimate political process. I'm talking about people who feel that parts of the Constitution that they do not like they simply don't have to follow. That's about as unAmerican as it gets.
They can, of course, but it's harder for coup-ing superior officers to make dozen of thousands of 20y.o. Grunty McGruntFace follow them to overthrow the government when the very oath they swore was to that government, and that this oath explicitly states they don't have to follow General von Teufel orders in this case.
> It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander.
Simple: the founders of the US thought it would protect our democracy to ensure that a elected civilian was in charge of the military. It's mostly worked.
Isn't there an even simpler answer? Back then most countries had their king ad their top military commander and the president of the US had a very similar role to a king.
Nope. There's a lot of writing about this issue from various founding fathers. There was great desire to avoid the President appearing to be a king or turning into one.
But it was still the model they were working from, the way of organizing state power that they understood and were familiar with. The three branches gov is in a lot of ways a secular and formalized form of the constraints religious and aristocratic political influence had on european monarchy in the era just preceding the revolution.
Plus what they say they wanted to achieve is not necessarily what they did achieve. That's not to say they failed and the president is a king, but the president is not entirely un-king-like either.
"Commander", yes, but they command very little. During World War II, President Roosevelt gave exactly two direct commands to the military - that they had to divert 50 long-range bombers to help protect Atlantic convoys, and that North Africa be invaded in 1942. In a four-year-long war, he gave two commands. Contrast that with Hitler, who micromanaged his military, and did them no good by doing so.
So, yes, he does have final command (subject to "legal orders" and similar restrictions). But he's not commanding in the normal sense of a military commander.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.
Because technocracy is an awful form of government. In s democracy the buck has to stop with a politician, otherwise its tyranny.
They're not, really. The way that you advise the president on military issues is you give them prepackaged "decisions" that are limited variations on the same choice. The president's authority over the military is a legal fiction much like many other legal fictions that keep the system going.
> The president's authority over the military is a legal fiction
No, its not; and its kind of odd to say that during the era when not omly does the President fully exercise that power, they have for all practical purposes had it augmented by delegation (substantively on paper, and even more broadly in practice) of Congress’ power to declare war.
It’s true that most Presidents don’t micromanage the military, but they very much do command it, and a power generally used with some discretion and reserve is not the same as a legal fiction.
But the important thing about the President’s Commander-in-Chief role is not that it is a power (though it is), but that it is a constraint on the Congressional power to orgabize and set rules for the military.
I can guarantee you that there have been times where the top military brass walked into a meeting with the president with 3 options and left with an order to come up with something better. I have no insider knowledge but at the end of the day the president has the final say. Now I don't know how frequently the president overrides his military advisers but it must happen.
Not only that, but it's not like the head of state is alone with the military brass in such meetings. There will be people there both from the permanent civilian bureaucracy as well as advisors of some type from the party in power.
Ultimately, military grand strategy is a domain of politics as much as it is about how to wage war. The agendas and objectives are ultimately continuations of political goals of whoever is in power. During a war, the fighting must be coordinated with diplomacy, economy/trade/manufacturing and public relations/propaganda, all of which generals tend to know little about.
And even if the President is not the one making the micro decisions, he/she definitely is responsible for making sure the war is waged in a way that is aligned with the general objectives of the administration.
This means defining objectives, access to resources as well as defining the rules of engagement. And equally importantly, listen to the military and determine when the time is right to actually provide additional resources or permissions, despite political costs.
Perhaps. But it does prevent Latin America (and elsewhere) style military rule.
Instead we get military generals who act more like politicians the more senior they get (proven by study). And it seems that often politicians with little to lose and a lot to prove are often more hawkish than the military around them (Hilary Clinton, Wolfowitz, et al).
That's true in practice. So in theory, if the president wants things badly enough, he can keep push harder and also keep firing and hiring people until he gets what he wants.
Of course, that style is a lot harder, and thus consumes a lot more limited attention.
It's why I don't understand why in the US, the president is also the top military commander. I'm sure they have good advisors and the good ones have done their homework, but it's not their profession in the end.