Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T13:04:50.686Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Staying the Course: Presidential Leadership, Military Stalemate, and Strategic Inertia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 March 2010

Andrew J. Polsky
Andrew J. Polsky
Affiliation:
Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. E-mail: apolsky@hunter.cuny.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Military stalemate in Iraq and Vietnam presents a puzzle: why do presidents persist in a strategic course that has failed to secure the goals they defined when they chose to embark upon war? In the face of a quagmire, presidents might choose among three broad strategic options—disengagement, escalation, or continuity. I argue that the first alternative, to withdraw, is made impossible by the inflated rhetoric presidents invoke to sell a skeptical public on the necessity for a limited war and by their own conviction (reinforced by core supporters) that the price of defeat is too great. At the opposite pole lies the possibility of full-scale mobilization. But because presidents during the Vietnam and Iraq wars believed they could also pursue expensive domestic agendas, they did not reserve the resources needed for large-scale escalation. In the both cases, too, civilian leaders were deeply skeptical about their military counterparts and discounted their caution that a greater military commitment would be needed. Finally, as wars drag on, public disenchantment prevents presidents from mustering the political support escalation would require. Their early decisions thus leave them with no alternative to their current strategic commitment.

Type
Research Article
Information
Perspectives on Politics , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , March 2010 , pp. 127 - 139
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bacevich, Andrew J. 2005. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Begley, Sharon. 2007. “The Truths We Want to Deny.” Newsweek, May 21.Google Scholar
Berman, Larry. 1989. Lyndon Johnson's War: The Road to Stalemate in Vietnam. New York: W. W. Norton.Google Scholar
Berman, Larry. 1992. From Intervention to Disengagement: The United States in Vietnam. In Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflic, ed. Levite, Ariel E., Jentleson, Bruce W., and Berman, Larry. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Biddle, Stephen. 2006. Seeing Baghdad, Thinking Saigon. Foreign Affairs 85 (2): 2–14.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bornet, Vaughn Davis. 1983. The Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Brigham, Robert K. 2006. Is Iraq Another Vietnam? New York: Public Affairs/Perseus Books.Google Scholar
Brooks, Risa A. 2008. Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bumiller, Elisabeth, and Landler, Mark. 2009. “Civilian Goals Largely Unmet in Afghanistan.” New York Times, October 12.Google Scholar
Bush, George W. 2003. “President Discusses Beginning of Operation Iraqi Freedom.” President's Radio Address, transcribed and released by Office of the Press Secretary, March 22, 2003. [http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/03/20030322.html]Google Scholar
Bush, George W. 2007. “President's Address to the Nation.” January 7, 2007. http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/01/20070110-7.html.Google Scholar
Campbell, Karyln Kohrs, and Jamieson, Kathleen Hall. 2008. Presidents Creating the Presidency: Deeds Done in Words. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Cohen, Elliot A. 2002. Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesman, and Leadership in Wartime. New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Desch, Michael C. 2007. Bush and the Generals. Foreign Affairs 86 (3): 97–108.Google Scholar
Downs, George W. 1992. The Lessons of Disengagement. In Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict, ed. Levite, Ariel E., Jentleson, Bruce W., and Berman, Larry. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, George C. III 2009. The Stategic President: Persuasion and Opportunity in Presidential Leadership. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fallows, James. 2004. Blind Into Baghdad. Atlantic Monthly (January/February): 52–74.Google Scholar
Fearon, James. 2007. Iraq's Civil War. Foreign Affairs 86 (2): 2–15.Google Scholar
Galbraith, Peter W. 2006. The End of Iraq: How American Incompetence Created a War Without End. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2006.Google Scholar
Gardner, Lloyd C., and Young, Marilyn B., eds. 2008. Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam: Or, How Not to Learn from the Past. New York: New Press.Google Scholar
Gelpi, Christopher, Feaver, Peter D., and Reifler, Jason. 2009. Paying the Human Costs of War. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Goodwin, Doris Kearns. 1976. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: New American Library.Google Scholar
Greenstein, Fred I. 1994. The Hidden-Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Greenstein, Fred I. 2004. The Presidential Difference: Leadership Style from FDR to George W. Bush, second edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Halberstam, David. 2002. War in a Time of Peace: Bush, Clinton, and the Generals. New York: Simon and Schuster/Touchstone.Google Scholar
Herspring, Dale R. 2008. Rumsfeld's Wars: The Arrogance of Power. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Hess, Gary R. 2001. Presidential Decisions for War: Korea, Vietnam, and the Persian Gulf. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Howell, William G. 2003. Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Ivie, Robert L. 1980. Images of Savagery in American Justifications for War. Communication Monographs 47: 279–94.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivie, Robert L. 1982. The Metaphor of Force in Prowar Discourse: The Case of 1812. Quarterly Journal of Speech 68: 240–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ivie, Robert L. 2005. Savagery in Democracy's Empire. Third World Quarterly 26: 55–65.Google Scholar
Johnson, Dominic D.P. 2004. Overconfidence and War: The Havoc and Glory of Positive Illusions. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kearns, Doris. 1976. Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Kimball, Warren F. 1993. Franklin Roosevelt: ‘Dr. Win-the-War.’ In Commanders in Chief: Presidential Leadership in Modern Wars, ed. Dawson, Joseph E. III. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Laird, Melvin R. 2005. Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam. Foreign Affairs 84 (6): 22–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Levite, Ariel E., Jentleson, Bruce W., and Berman, Larry, eds. 1992. Foreign Military Intervention: The Dynamics of Protracted Conflict. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
Lyall, Jason, and Wilson, Isaiah III. 2006. “The American Way of War and Peace in Comparative Perspective.” Presented at the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA.Google Scholar
McPherson, James M. 1991. Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Merom, Gil. 2003. How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Meyers, Peter Alexander. 2008. Civic War and the Corruption of the Citizen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neustadt, Richard E. 1960. Presidential Power: The Politics of Leadership. New York: Wiley.Google Scholar
Owens, Mackubin Thomas. 2006. Rumsfeld, the Generals, and the State of U.S. Civil-Military Relations. Naval War College Review 59 (4): 68–80.Google Scholar
Pillar, Paul R. 2006. Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq. Foreign Affairs 85 (2): 15–27.Google Scholar
Polsky, Andrew J. 2007. “The Presidency at War.” The Presidency and the Political System, 8th ed., ed. Nelson, Michael. Washington, DC: CQ Press.Google Scholar
Polsky, Andrew J. 2008. Collective Inaction: Presidents, Congress, and Unpopular Wars. Extensions (Spring): 4–8.Google Scholar
Reagan, Ronald. 1983. “Address to the Nation on Lebanon and Grenada.” http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2004/reagan/stories/speech.archive/lebgre.html.Google Scholar
Record, Jeffrey, and Terrill, W. Andrew. 2004. Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights. Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army War College Strategic Studies Institute.Google Scholar
Renshon, Stanley. 2005. “Presidential Address: George W. Bush's Cowboy Politics: An Inquiry.” Political Psychology 26 (4): 585–614.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ricks, Thomas E. 2007. Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Ricks, Thomas E. 2009. The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American Miliatry Adventure in Iraq, 2006–2008. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Rottinghaus, Brandon. 2007. Following the ‘Mail Hawks’: Alternative Measures of Public Opinion on Vietnam in the Johnson White House. Public Opinion Quarterly 71 (3): 1–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr. 2004. War and the American Presidency. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.Google Scholar
Sherry, Michael S. 1995. In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s. New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 1993. The Politics Presidents Make: Leadership from John Adams to George Bush. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Skowronek, Stephen. 2008. Presidential Leadership in Political Time: Reprise and Reappraisal. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Stolberg, Sheryl Gay, and Shanker, Thom. 2008. “At White House, a Second Look at Iraq Troop Cuts.” New York Times. January 20. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/30/washington/30military.html?scp=10&sq=Iraq%20United%20States%20Army%20chief%20of%20staff%20worried%20surge&st=cse.Google Scholar
Vandiver, Frank E. 1993. Lyndon Johnson: A Reluctant Hawk. In Commanders in Chief: Presidential Leadership in Modern Wars, ed. Dawson, Joseph E. III. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob. 2006. State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Woodward, Bob. 2008. The War Within: A Secret White House History 2006–2008. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar