Army Polemic
Raymond, Jack
Army Polemic War and Peace in the Space Age, by Lieut. Gen. James M. Gavin. Harper. 304 pp. %b. Reviewed by Jack Raymond Too many Americans find the nation's military affairs a distasteful...
...He even forbade the wearing of shoulder patches...
...How the Defense Department reneged on a promise to provide money for the Army's intermediate ballistic missile Jupiter, forcing cuts in other projects...
...How after many hours of discussion, defense officials issued a statement to imply that certain missile limitations on the Army had been lifted when they had not...
...And the present Army Chief of Staff, Taylor, is portrayed as a weak man in the face of Defense Department pressure...
...Because of that, the Army—and General Gavin—argues that the ability to deal with limited wars quickly and decisively will make general wars less likely...
...The public may also be impelled to pay more attention to its vital national security...
...Even as his book was published, critical articles appeared in the nation's press condemning military deficiencies bared by the intervention in the Middle East...
...General Gavin ended his distinguished Army career last March in order to arouse public opinion to his arguments for a modernized, missile-shooting, space-conquering Army...
...He says the one-time General Motors chief treated his Chiefs of Staff "as though they were recalcitrant union bosses...
...He was the most uninformed man, and the most determined to remain so, that has ever been Secretary," Gavin quotes a Chief of Staff as saying about the man who presided over the Pentagon from the start of the Eisenhower Administration to last year...
...The book was written in a hurry and is not so well-organized as it might have been...
...His concern is for the lessons to be learned from the Decade of Dilemma (1945-1955) when the threat of nuclear holocaust became clear while our relations with the Soviet Union became perilous, and for the Decade of Decision (1955-1966) when "Democracy . . .must be more assertive...
...He reveals that former Secretary of Defense Wilson and Admiral Radford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, once told Congress during a Far East crisis that no reinforcements in Formosa were needed or contemplated...
...Limited wars are those in which specific, but moderate military gains are sought in a way that does not commit the national existence...
...The premises of the argument may be stated this way: U. S. policy makers believe that in the event of hostilities with the Soviet Union a general nuclear war is inevitable...
...Note the recent U. S. complaint about Soviet "indirect aggression...
...In view of that conviction they have created a massive nuclear power capable of destroying the enemy and warning him that aggression will be met with massive retaliation...
...It is the powerful Strategic Air Force that keeps the peace, the government emphasizes...
...General Gavin shows in this dedicated work on behalf of the Army that he was done a shabby turn by the Army when it allowed him to quit at the age of 55, amid headlines suggesting his disappointment in not being promoted...
...They behave as though interest in the military smacks of militarism and the study of contemporary war strategy and tactics may somehow awaken the devils of war...
...His departure is a loss to the Army, but a gain for the public which must be informed and which should now demand answers to many of the questions he raises...
...General Gavin, who ought to know, charges our government is behind the Soviet Union "technically and militarily . . . diplomatically and strategically...
...General Gavin's bitter contention is that this country has neglected to prepare itself for limited war situations...
...They cost enough—more than $41,000,000,000 a year, or more than half the entire national spending budget...
...Some of General Gavin's arguments on behalf of a powerful Army have become familiar recently, especially since Henry A. Kissinger dramatized the concepts of limited war in his Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy...
...General Gavin, like most Army leaders, contends that limited wars are more likely than general wars, since contact with the Soviet Union probably never will be direct...
...General Gavin says: "The Secretary solved his dilemma by ordering the Army to send bodies without regular organizational designation...
...Reviewed by Jack Raymond Too many Americans find the nation's military affairs a distasteful subject...
...If the public listens to him, it will be enlightened...
...In other examples, he describes: • How Army officials were tricked into recommending reductions in their programs, thus forestalling complaints before Congress...
...Yet General Ridgeway, the Army Chief of Staff, had recommended just that...
...It is time Americans knew more about their armed forces...
...However, General Gavin's demonstratively fertile and bold mind is always interesting even when it goes off on tangents that diffuse his arguments...
...One of the most disturbing elements in the book is his charge of "deception and duplicity" in the Department of Defense...
...General Gavin deals with more specific considerations in his outcry against existing American reliance on huge nuclear weapons...
...if it is to prevail against Communism...
...He had failed to win these arguments at the Pentagon, where he was head of Army Research and Development...
...Plainly, Gavin has little use for former Secretary Wilson...
...General Gavin also publishes the text of an Army memorandum, calling upon officials to conform to the official line when testifying before Congress...
...Moreover, as General Gavin emphasizes in this good, partisan book, "we are in mortal danger...
...Deputy Secretary Quarles and Admiral Radford also do not come off well in General Gavin's book...
Vol. 22 • October 1958 • No. 10
