Civil-Military Relations In Elliot Cohen's Supreme Command

There is one truth in war…good men will die, sent to the front by their senior civilian and military leadership. Throughout the short history of the United States, many published works put forth a counter position to Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. All attempt to find the “right” answer and balance to the civil-military relationship; with each essay, it seems a new conflict is on the horizon and the question is more difficult to answer. In Elliot Cohen’s book, Supreme Command, he examines the tension between these two kinds of leadership, civil and military. Here, we will examine two accounts of civil-military relationships: the Civil War and Vietnam War, and determine which case best support Cohen’s general argument in his book. Cohen’s thesis, used as the base model for comparison in this essay will be his normal theory of civil-military relations. In this theory, he states, Officers are professionals, much like highly trained surgeons, and the statesman is in the position of a patient requiring urgent care. Essentially saying the patient is in the
history than the Vietnam War era…the effects of which are felt today. According to Cohen, the legacy of bitterness and suspicion resulting from that war persists in America today. Using his thesis of normal theory of civil-military relations and an examination of the Vietnam War, it is apparent, the model did not fit this conflict or vice versa. According to advocates of the "normal" theory, the wisdom of this approach was in the negative sense during the Vietnam War. “Abnormal" interference by civilians supposedly tied the hands of the military by limiting the geographic scope of the conflict, picking specific bombing targets from the White House, and so on . Cohen goes on to state that the pervasive belief is that the United States failed to achieve victory because it made the military fight with one hand tied behind their