Sublime

Roger Beaumont’s classic exposition, Military Elites (Beaumont 1976)

As did military command for Lincoln, who knew without having to read Clausewitz that wars, however ferocious, must serve, not consume, the states waging them. War could never be an end in itself, but it could be the means by which an endangered state saved itself. And Lincoln saw that a civil war—which he’d allowed to be forced upon him—might also

To oversee the development of the US Army’s first commando unit, Marshall reluctantly assigned Colonel Lucian K. Truscott, Jr., a gravel-voiced, goggle-eyed, rock-jawed horse soldier from Texas who offset his saturnine appearance by routinely wearing the high-leather boots of the cavalry, a polished helmet, a striking red jacket, and a yellow scarf

Woolls-Sampson

Marquis, Susan L. Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operations Forces. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1997.

Lincoln’s goal, in each of these instances, was to balance law against military necessity, in the expectation that the passage of time and the success of his armies would stabilize the equilibria. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong,” he wrote in 1864. “I cannot remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet, I have never understood

General Marshall, who had been installed as chief of staff nine months earlier, was already trimming deadwood root and branch. His first target was the bloated square division of World War I.25 As early as 1920, General Pershing had urged the square division be scrapped in favor of a 15,000-man “triangular” structure of three regiments, which he

His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.