Op-Ed
Ain’t Gonna Study War No More
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In some circles, it is fashionable to believe that war doesn’t solve anything, or that it is a dirty business of questionable morality. As a result, military science and military history are seldom taught in American universities. Those are awkward and technical subjects, reserved for those poor unfortunates ignorant, desperate or brutish enough to join the armed forces. Privileged liberal arts students need not learn anything about the unpleasant business of armed force.
This attitude is wrong, and dangerously so. Every serious observer of history is aware that sometimes the whole course of events can pivot on a single battle. War matters, and governments rise or fall depending on the fortunes of their arms. As a result, deciding when and how to use military force is one of the most grave decisions the nation can make. Our Constitution, by requiring civilian control of the military, puts this decision in the hands of politicians who may not have any military experience. For civilian control to be effective, our leaders, and the voters who elect them, need a real understanding of war.
Alas, a serious and rigorous education in the history and practice of warfare is difficult to acquire at America’s elite civilian universities. King’s College London has a Department of War Studies; none of our American Ivy League competitors have a comparable program. There are hardly any prominent academic military historians in America, even though there are a large number of professional writers who devote themselves to the field. In contrast, military history is a prominent discipline in the UK and elsewhere.
Correcting this problem would require American universities to hire faculty, and alter course offerings. The general public is fascinated by warfare and military history; courses on the topic would likely be very popular. Cornell, if it chose to expand its offerings in military history, could educate and stimulate its students, do the country a service and steal a march on the competition.
Cornell already has some military science and history course offerings. Thanks to Prof. Barry Strauss and one or two other history professors, at least one course in military history is offered most years. In contrast, there are several times as many faculty and courses offered on the history of science, and on the history of gender and sexuality, even though military history is at least as important as those topics. Cornell is fortunate in that a number of general-interest courses are offered through ROTC and are open to non-ROTC students. Here too, there is great room for improvement. Courses on military or naval science ought to be available for credit to Arts College students; there is no good reason why, say, the history of queer performance (FGSS 325) deserves Arts credit, and the history of amphibious warfare (NAVS 410) does not.
Offering more courses in military science and history would be straightforward. There are many historians, veterans, military analysts and others with PhDs who would be qualified to teach as adjunct or tenure-track faculty. In contrast to the academic world’s disinterest, many books on military history and warfare are published each year. I believe it would be easy to get 100 students to enroll in military science and history courses per semester; surely enough students to justify hiring a few additional instructors.
There are reasons beyond student interest to offer military education. There is a tendency, these days, to assume that only generals are qualified to critique military plans, and that “not listening to the military” is an unpardonable sin in a President or a Congress. This attitude needs some correcting. There is no reason why an intelligent Cornell student couldn’t learn enough to have informed opinions on military matters. War was quite complicated in the late 19th century, yet not too specialized for non-specialists to practice it on occasion. During the Civil War, Bowdoin College assistant professor Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain took a leave of absence and enlisted in the U.S. Army. He and the troops under his command saved the Union left flank at Gettysburg, and perhaps the country, despite his civilian background.
We are not all Colonel Chamberlains, and warfare today is somewhat more technical than it was during the Civil War. Nonetheless, many people would benefit from understanding more about the art of war and the experience of warriors, even if they are fortunate enough to never have to fight. Many Americans without military experience are involved in deciding when and where the country should deploy military force. A solid grounding in strategy and tactics is necessary for us as citizens and voters to know what we can reasonably ask of our armed forces, and for us to put news in perspective. For instance, one might have a better perspective on mistakes made during the Iraq war from knowing how well — or how badly — American governments prepared for previous wars. Particularly those who are skeptical of the military ought to learn about war, in order to properly evaluate claims made by military professionals.
John Adams once wrote: “I must study politics and war [so] that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy.” It is likely that the United States will continue to be involved in significant armed conflicts over the coming decades. Our parents may have had the luxury of disregarding war for mathematics and philosophy, but we must turn back to the study of war. Understanding war is a civic responsibility, and we as Cornellians ought not shirk it. It would be easy for Cornell to expand military science and history courses, by hiring military historians, and offering academic credit for more ROTC courses. This would leave Cornell graduates better equipped to serve their country and to understand the world around them.
Bringing the study of war to center-stage at Cornell
I applaud the suggestion that Cornell undergraduates have the opportunity to participate in serious courses about the nature and conduct of war. At one time world-class military history was available on tap for every undergraduate at Cornell. Before we foolishly lost him to Yale, where he is now the the Hillhouse Professor of Classics and Military History, Donald Kagan took young Cornellians through the battle-by-battle details of the Peloponnesian Wars or the finer points of Jomeni’s principles of strategy in the Napoleonic wars.
Kagan should have stayed at Cornell – he was demographically so much more like a Cornellian than like the Eli he became. Don was a Jew born in Lithuania, raised in Brooklyn and educated first at Brooklyn College. With a little more enterprise on our side, Don’s masterful four volume history of the Peloponnesian wars and his On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (which more or less tracks with his core undergrad course on War at Yale) might have been written in Ithaca and published under the Cornell imprint.
While applauding his enthuisiasm, I would, however, take issue with Ari Rabkin’s suggestion that Cornell open more ROTC courses to general undergraduates on a for-credit.
The uniformed services do, in fact, teach military history very well at their senior schools (National War College (where I taught at one time), Naval War College, and their kin). And they do so fairly well at their mid-level institutions like the Command and General Staff College and the Naval Post Graduate School.
Unfortunately, the services do not endeavor to ensure that their ROTC professors (even at Cornell and MIT) are qualified to teach at a level of rigor commensurate with an upper-tier university. This is why schools like Cornell hesitate to give credit for ROTC courses while schools like Syracuse happily do so.
What I would suggest is that Ari talk with the Cornell History department about putting some pressure on the services to each supply one fully qualified professor for their detachments in Barton Hall (drawing from their very considerable pools of talent) in exchange for making some of their offerings for-credit courses.
There are well-qualified professors (both uniformed and not) at the National War College in Newport or the Naval Post Graduate School at Monterey who would be delighted to take a three year posting at Cornell to teach real military history course accredited by Cornell’s history department.
General Petraeus, who did his PhD at a military-friendly Ivy (Princeton) is building a team of PhD Colonels as his advisory team in Iraq. It would be nice to think that Cornell might, with some effort and foresight, be producing graduates who would be welcomed in these circles as well.
John Stuart Blackton
Cornell ‘66
Washington DC
Military History Professors
The problem is not a lack of qualified instructors; the problem is an anitpathy toward all things military at most upper echelon universities. You need to change the mindset of university administrators and professors before military history can again be studied in a signiifcant way on American college campuses.
Why Harvard/Yale/Princeton do military studies&Cornell does not
"You need to change the mindset of university administrators and professors before military history can again be studied in a signiifcant way on American college campuses"
I sympathise with the previous writer's frustrations, but the problems isn't "American Campuses".... it is Cornell.
Yale has a robust military history program.
Princeton is a very military-friendly place. The Woodrow Wilson school has dozens of Colonels and NavyCommanders/Captains studying in its midst.
Harvard has a superb mil program at the JFK school.
Fletcher has a wonderful counter-insurgency institute with some really capable former Generals teaching alongside regular academics.
There is something in the air above Cayuga's waters that seems to make professors and administrators uncomfortable with studying war.
John Stuart Blackton
Washington DC
Thanks for the update abput
Thanks for the update abput the fine programs at those other schools, but I do not believe the problem is limited to Cornell. I read an article recently -- I do not recall where or the schools cited -- reporting on unused endowments for military history professorships at various colleges, the death of military history curricula as currently tenured professors pass on, etc. I hope that the programs you have cited do not fall victim to similar developments.