With a foreword by Colonel Robert M. Krone, U. S. Air Force
I was fortunate to be a member of the 1961 Naval War College student body when, on 3 October 1961, just nine months after President Eisenhower had transferred the title of Commander-in-Chief to John F. Kennedy, General Eisenhower addressed the faculty and students. Ike was no stranger to the podiums of the professional military schools but on this occasion he was speaking freely, without the constraints of public office or military responsibility. Furthermore, he was speaking under the traditional “privileged” sanctuary of the Naval War College and knew that his words would not appear in the following morning’s newspapers. And, also, he was speaking to his own kind. The predominantly military officer audience included Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, U. S. Navy (Retired), and Vice Admiral Bernard L. Austin, President of the Naval War College.
The General discussed the military-industrial complex and what he had meant a few months earlier when he coined the phrase. He talked of dissent within the military; of the race to the moon and national priorities; of the components of national interest; of the meaning of representative government; and the role of religion, morale, and freedom in the American way of life. He elaborated his views on strategy toward Communism, on decision-making in a democracy, on leadership and responsibility, and on the problem of classified information in a free society. He mused on the problems he faced in coordination of a joint unified military command, on the structure of the military services, and he gave us his ideas concerning political integration in Western Europe.
General Eisenhower’s comments on these issues and problems—which are still with us a decade later—help to place today’s debate into perspective.
Colonel Robert M. Krone, U. S. Air Force
Permission to publish these remarks has been given by Ambassador John S. D. Eisenhower and the President of the Naval War College.
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The reason that I have so much enjoyment in this kind of meeting is not that I think I can particularly give you any new ideas; I can only, as one of you, testify to my faith in the officer corps and the enlisted units of our great services and ponder with you briefly some of the problems that confront the armed services and our nation.
The most I can do is to emphasize such truths that may escape you, or give you some mental stimulus for thinking about these things in a slightly different light.
When Admiral Nimitz and I were youngsters, our only thought outside of the annual Army-Navy game was learning the techniques of our own service. And they were rather simple. The equipment we had, as compared to the equipment of today, would be like a bow and arrow compared to a machine gun. We lived in relatively simple times and it was a relatively simple life that we led. Even the War of 1914 did not fully awaken us to the tremendous changes that were then just over the horizon.
When we came out of that war, we went back into our narrow channels again. I happened to be a junior officer in the War Department in some of the years between the wars, and I was at times a party with the groups that were trying to arrange cooperation or coordination between the, then, two services. All of us had a hard time. And strangely enough—I think it is all right for me as a relatively old man to say this—we as young officers did not find the difficulty in getting along together as did our bosses. We got the orders from them, and, as young men will, we generally took a rather recalcitrant attitude—but that’s the way it was. Everybody had his job; the Navy was going to fight on the sea, and the Army on the land, and that was that. We looked upon the Air Force as a mere interloper—at least our bosses did. How this has changed!
Today, for anyone to be a good naval officer, an Army officer, an Air Force officer, a Marine officer, any kind of officer in the armed services, is to dedicate himself to a study of the world, its history, its situation as it now is, and particularly the conflicting ideologies in which most of the world lives. He must also study economics, particularly the economy of this country and of other countries that are independent of Communist domination. He has to think of the moral or spiritual side of his country’s strength. The military side comes almost last in his calculations.
Therefore, your research and your study means that you’ve got to understand what a new weapon or new weapons system means to the economy, what it does to the psychology of our people. To illustrate what I mean, we know that the Communists seek to break the economy of the United States—an economy that is based on free enterprise and a sound currency. If we, therefore, put one more dollar into a weapons system than we should, we are weakening the defense of the United States.
Consequently, an adviser to the President cannot say, “I am interested only in the Polaris or a new fighter, or a new bomb, a new missile.” He must ask himself, “What does this mean to the United States?” and “What does it mean to our psychology?” Because now we see in our magazines that we are going to fight wars by making an exchange of our nuclear stockpiles and that is called “war.” It isn’t war! Not as we understand it! That kind of war is not one opponent against the other; that is just potential destruction against survival.
Therefore, as you become one of the leaders, one of the teachers of your fellow military men, and one of the teachers of your compatriot lay citizens, you have got to think of all of these different factors—different influences—if you are truly going to lead. This applies as much to anyone who is in the State Department, or the AEC, or the CIA, as it does to the uniformed services.
It is not enough that we just have weapons. The mightiest armaments in all the world cannot themselves assure the successful defense of the things in which we have the greatest interest. We are not defending merely territory, not even homes, not even our lives; we are defending a way of life, and it can be destroyed in more ways than one.
This is the kind of burden of responsibility which is upon you as a member of the great group—and in some direct or indirect way, you will always be part of that group—to give the product of your thinking and your brain and your heart, to your next superior so that the most broadly-based advice possible is given to the Commander in Chief.
This brings me to another point: America long ago rejected the theory of superman government. We distrusted the despots of Europe in the 1760s, ’70s and ’80s, and we established what we call representative or self-government.
As Americans, you must have a comprehension of human psychology; you must have a knowledge of our free enterprise systems, you must understand the different types of threat to our way of life—and you must understand how all of these factors relate. You naturally cannot be an expert in each of these. The only answer is to have a general understanding of these things. We have certain people in the military who are experts in these fields and we blend theirs and others thinking together to make one, great, orderly exposition to our chiefs so that they can make the decisions. What you, the leaders of the armed services become, then, is this: the hinge. You are the hinge between the great body politic, the 180 million people that make up this nation, and the top leaders who finally have to make the decisions controlling your destiny. You, of course, have to be masters of your profession. You have to know how to run the ships and fire the missiles and all the rest. But, you will not ever be doing your complete duty if you desire only to be the greatest navigator or the greatest bombardier, or the greatest technician in your own service. The challenge is larger than that; for, in a very real sense, the struggle is spiritual.
Frankly, gentlemen, I think we would be a stronger nation if we examined ourselves a little bit closer about religion. If there is one certain difference between Communism and representative government, it is that we believe in a Supreme Being of some sort, while they say we are cattle. I think, therefore, we ought to think about this great difference. None of us would stand up here and say, “I am nothing but an educated mule for my government to use as it sees fit and with no other end in life except extinction.”
What I am trying to say, again and again—probably very awkwardly but nevertheless very sincerely—is that we, as military men sworn to defend our nation, must constantly remind ourselves that we are dedicated to the defense of something that is even more precious that [sic] life itself. We must recall from time to time the majesty of Patrick Henry’s statement in the Virginia Convention, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
We must also muster our material strength—all of the capacity of this great industrial and agricultural productive machine that is the United States—to support us in our struggle for long periods of time. When we talk about crisis, we must think, not in terms of a war of three or four years or seven years, we must think about defending our way of life for years and decades if we are going to win. Therefore, we must so pace ourselves that we do not destroy the systems and the beliefs that we have held which have made America great.
These are the things that I would urge upon you—they are facts, they are merely stated in generalizations. I see no reason for talking about Berlin, because Berlin itself has become not only a place but a symbol of our determination, of our dedication to freedom, of out devotion to principle rather than a place. It is not merely a spot on the earth that we are going to fight about. We must think of it in terms of moral values and basic institutions of freedom. So I say again, if we do these things, I believe we will have no real differences among ourselves arising out of the different colors of our uniforms, or even differences between ourselves and the population of which we are a part. We will be dedicated to seek undying values and we must so condition ourselves in our thinking, our beliefs that we shall never let down the nation that we so dearly love.
These were the thoughts that I wanted to express to you this morning, gentlemen, and I would rather subject myself to climbing the cross of trying to answer questions than go further with my own philosophizing.
Question: General Eisenhower, could you comment on any problems of co-ordination among allies in a joint unified military operation?
Answer: I ought to start by reminding you of a statement that I saw a long time ago in a Staff College study. The author started this study off with the statement, “I have always admired Napoleon very extravagantly, and I thought of him as the greatest soldier the world ever knew until one day I looked through all his history and saw that he fought only allies.”
The greatest problem that faces any commander is to teach his own staff and his own army group that they must divorce themselves from the traditional command channels that they have known. If each man, for operational problems, writes to, or telephones, or telegraphs his office at home, soon there is no unified plan and no unified direction. This is indeed difficult and I think the difficulty probably goes up in geometric proportions according to the number of nations you have in the command.
The first problem is to make certain that all of the commands look to the commander for their direction in the fighting of the war. Now this presents the problem of differentiating when it comes to logistic support, because, naturally, the recruits from Britain have to come from Britain, and the supplies have got to come from Britain because they are of the calibers and makes that only the British use. Thus, you have the very many complicated problems that give the commander a reason for staying in close touch with his own government.
But the biggest problem—and I think all the other problems you could possibly conceive flow out of this one—is that any time that you do not have the military loyalty and operational loyalty of the command, you will be in trouble. I could give you many examples. I think, though, that if I stated that one truth, you would find all the other problems would soon be solved by getting that kind of operational subordination from your allies.
Question: General, due to the problems of security, can there be a meaningful public debate on military policy and military posture in a democratic society?
Answer: Like most problems that involve vast numbers of humans you have to find a proper, logical, middle ground. I might add, parenthetically, my conviction that, except in the field of morals, there is no extreme that is ever correct. So what you have to do here is to find the middle way. The populations must be informed, because we have self-government. Even in time of war we have to have our elections. How can an individual make a reasonable, logical selection of the people he wants to represent him in the highest office or down to the councilman unless he is informed in some way? On the other hand, I think the revealing of secrets that we know to be secrets is almost the worst crime that anyone can commit. Consequently, it is a job that can be solved only by the rule of reason. Every one of them, within broad limits, presents a problem of its own. We were all shocked in World War II when one newspaper put out the news that the Navy had broken the Japanese code. To this day I think this is one of the worst things I ever heard in my life. On the other hand, to keep secrets that a country ought to know is almost as bad. We are still not able, except for the most tortuous process, to get some of our papers of World War II made public. I think the worst of all the secrets that you can divulge are sources of information, because then you can break down an entire intelligence system.
Question: General, would you recommend any changes in the present-day command structure of the military service?
Answer: I think not particularly. I believe greatly in organized study. I believe that this derogation of staffs on the theory that they are making committee decisions is tommyrot. But, by and large, the system of command we have set up for our several services and for our unified commands is very satisfactory. It comes back to this: no detail of organization is really too important if you’ve got the right men. The right men can make any organization work.
Question: General, the Grand Strategy of the United States, NATO, and the Free World is a defensive one. In view of the Communist doctrine of world domination should not the Grand Strategy of the United States and the Free World be changed to a more offensive one to protect our rights and values?
Answer: I think in the moral field, it should be. We have not been sufficiently articulate in expressing our true dedication to the high ideals that our Founding Fathers spoke about. They said that we are endowed by our Creator with certain rights. That was the explanation they gave for our kind of government. In other words, they said this: unless the human has a soul, our kind of government doesn’t work. Now, when we speak of the Soviet Union, we are talking about an aggressive philosophy that seeks power for its own sake, and, although I think there are dedicated Communists, I think they, too, pursue power for its own sake. When they talk about the dictatorship of the proletariat as an interim measure, they are really saying that “through our lifetimes, we will be dictators.” The theory that someday Communists will be dictators of Americans’ lives is a dream that will never come true. Consequently, in the field of moral values, we can be far more aggressive than we are. But when we come to the physical—the use of threats and so on—I ask you, how do we do this? Because the advent of the bomb, the guided missile, and the Polaris, and all the other deadly weapons has constantly accentuated the element of surprise. How can a democracy carry out surprise unless its leader says, “All right, I will defy democracy. I will make myself superman and I’ll push the button and that will be that.”
But, the question, I think, was: “How are we going to defend our rights and values?” Well, the answer is that we can’t defend our values if we have destroyed them by our own acts. So therefore, democracy, even one democracy, cannot be aggressive, as I see it, because you have to make decisions that are represented and reflected by the action of the President and of the Congress. While that is going on, what is the enemy going to do? Because now we are talking about minutes, not about the time when you had sailing ships and cannons that would shoot one mile. I don’t believe that, in the military field, we can take an aggressive, positive action other than that of making certain of our own defense. But from this position of confident strength, we can both morally and economically act more intelligently and more aggressively than we have in the past.
Question: General, would you give us your opinion on the political and military significance of the race to the moon?
Answer: Are the doors locked so no one can get out? This is what I believe: The United States has got priority tasks, and we ought to keep our minds on those tasks. In the defense field, they are strong enough to command our greatest effort within the services and in our productive capacity. I believe that someday humans are going to circle the moon, take some pictures of it, and maybe even get to a planet and back if there’s time—I don’t know—but I believe those things ought to come about as a by-product of all the research we are doing today in missiles and in bigger engines and so on. I think to make the so-called race to the moon a major element in our struggle to show that we are superior to the Russians, is getting our eyes off the right target. I really believe that we don’t have that many enemies on the moon.
Question: General, you established certain institutions as President which have since been removed. Do you consider that action justified or wise?
Answer: I wouldn’t want to comment on anything that has happened since my tenure of office that would indicate some repudiation of some of the things I instituted. I think there are different methods for achieving our aims and consequently I would certainly uphold the right of any President to organize his staff, his own personal staff, his whole system of study and work to get what he needs and therefore to make decisions. I do not, however, believe that any man in the office of the Presidency can act efficiently unless he is very careful in the kind of organization he sets up for himself and the aims he sets, including the fighting of the Cold War. Those aims he must set up very clearly for himself and he must find the highest type of individual that the nation affords to help him out. So, I wouldn’t want to comment specifically on the action to which you speak.
Question: It has been said that the Free World’s method of decision-making which involves considerable consultation and deliberation puts us at a disadvantage with the Russians who can make decisions unilaterally. Would you comment on this?
Answer: I think all of you, from the day you entered the military service, have learned to distinguish between those things which have to be decided this moment, and those things which can take a little consultation.
I believe that you reach the best conclusions when you have the atmosphere in which real analytical study takes place. I believe that finally we must insist that one man makes the decision. But I do say he should be compelled to make immediate decisions only when the situation demands it. I would assume that the naval officer, in fighting his ship, has to make decisions probably every two or three minutes. Everything from changing direction to changing range to changing targets. I don’t know—I haven’t been one. But I do know that, when you’ve got time to study a problem, you should use all the brains God gave you, use all your training, use your staff, make your decision, then don’t be afraid to stick with it.
The same applies to our allies. Insofar as I know, and certainly in my time, the agreements of our allies were that we did certain things in consultations. But, always, there was a proviso that in an emergency everyone would take care of himself, whether he was abroad or at home. He would have to make that decision, and we would assume that the others would approve it. But I really believe that the people who write about these things in our columns and so on, have really never had to make a decision. And they never even understood the word “organization.” They think of organization as something static, routine, stogey, that brings everything down to the mediocre. We, as people who have commanded squads or sections, have learned that organization for all human affairs is absolutely necessary.
Far from delaying proper decisions, it facilitates them.
I think most of the understandings we have with our allied nations are about as good as they can be made so as to permit action in emergency but to give us opportunity for consultation when times are normal.
Question: General, do you have any comments on the status of the Atlantic Alliance?
Answer: Yes, indeed I do. As a matter of fact I can quote myself. I made a speech on 4 July 1961 at the Pilgrims Club in London in which I pointed out that in Western Europe we have some 225 million highly educated and cultured people. We have a group there that has a skilled labor force something almost double ours. Combined, they are a tremendous power and products of the same culture. They are as dedicated as ourselves to human dignity and freedom. If those people unite and realize their true potential—economically, militarily, and spiritually—there will be two great forces in the world confronting the single, atheistic, dictatorial, aggressive ideology that we have to look at unafraid and firmly. However, in our case, we also have to be conciliatory. But with those two powers I think that our security would be vastly increased.
Question: General, in one of your final speeches you warned of the dangers of a military-industrial complex. What can the military do to prevent this from happening?
Answer: I think that my earlier little sermon was about as good an answer as I could give you on that question. What I did say was this: it wasn’t merely the armament industry. I said that we are getting such combinations of influences which affect our own interests in so many places that we must be very, very careful that we don’t go on the wrong path. For example, if, as an Army officer, I am offered more armies or more missiles, I will consider this as double insurance. All the other services certainly feel the same way. We want all we can get. The JCS constantly would tell me that the sums placed before Congress for our defense were quite ample. But each always said that he needed a little bit more of the pie.
If we are going to solve this particular problem, we have got to recognize that the nation’s resources are not unlimited. The congressman who sees a new defense establishment in his district; the company in Los Angeles, Denver, or Baltimore that wants an order for more airplanes; the services which want them, the armies of scientists who want so terribly to test out their newest views; put all of these together and you have a lobby. This lobby has not necessarily been formed deliberately, but it is a lobby which has been formed out of a community of interests—and it touches almost every individual in the United States. This is the thing we have got to watch out for. And I think all of us must be very, very careful not to let those unconsciously formed lobbies influence our thinking too much. The heavy responsibilities that fall upon you as advisors must be carried out with complete disinterest and disassociation from your own personal ideas. You cannot permit yourselves to ask, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have another half dozen carriers, or a hundred more Polarises?” This is what I was talking about six months ago.
Question: [Admiral Nimitz:] “General, we frequently have heard that wars are too important to be left to the generals and admirals. Do you agree with that?”
Answer: Well, Chester, I think you might make a corollary and say that peace is too important to permit the diplomats to lose it. If we are thinking only in the military fields, then we shouldn’t be allowed to run the wars, because war is not just the fighting forces on the battlefront. The armed forces are simply the cutting edge of a machine; a tremendous machine, as I said before, which is made up of the spiritual, intellectual, economic, and military power of this whole country. The morale of your ship is more important than her guns. The same applies here. There is a power which this nation needs. Therefore, Admiral, I will say this: if we can make sure that all of our officers are growing up to understand the problems of the citizen and the citizen leaders, as well as military tactics and strategy, then I say the generals and the admirals ought to be, while subordinate to their commander-in-chief, running the war, rather exclusively.
Question: General, do you have a concept as to how a United States of Europe could come about?
Answer: I believe that it will eventually come about by necessity. You must remember each of our colonies was very proud of its own traditions and history. The Puritans were religiously widely separated from the Maryland colony. Georgia was made up originally of debtors from prisons. We had all sorts of differences. As a matter of fact, at times Washington despaired of getting the cooperation of these different peoples in winning the war. The federation of states then, was very unsatisfactory, but it was our first recognition that certain functions had to go to the nation as a unit. The treaty of 1783 was with the British. In return for paying debts we owed them, the British were going to abandon the forts, particularly around Detroit. Well, the colonies wouldn’t pay the debts and the British wouldn’t abandon the forts, so we were almost at war again. Now, the United States of Europe is going to come about in the same way. Maybe their differences are founded in greater, older traditions and different languages—that’s one thing we had in common, although some people have said “a common language separates the English-speaking people.” There have been a number of separate movements bringing them closer together, and you, I think, are asking “can they be brought together politically in a tight enough federation that they can have a common foreign policy, etc.?” That will take some years because it will have to be a generation that has grown up under the constant influence of these centripetal forces. It won’t occur, in my opinion, suddenly.
Question: General Eisenhower, in our present form of government, is there any effective way to nullify or negate the influence of pressure groups that operate not in the best interests of our nation?
Answer: This is a question that has certainly plagued presidents—including me. I don’t know exactly how this can be brought about. But I do know this: successful democracy implies self-restraint. Now, I thought when a president finally had a congress that by composition was politically compatible, he could go to the committee chairman and say, “I hope you will not create dissension by asking to get every single individual in the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines who happens to differ with the Administration’s plan to appear before your committees simply because he does differ; under the guise of free speech and speaking his own convictions to a committee, he will get publicity which is not warranted by the importance of his particular conclusions.” I believe that the people who find themselves differing with the decisions of their chiefs, owe it to their chief to say, “Sir, I differ; I ask to be sent to line command,” instead of getting some columnists to publish these differences. It’s all right for the officer to have his own ideas which differ with the admiral, the general, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but I don’t believe he should go down to the Hill and say that, out of his personal wisdom, he disagrees completely.
I think until we can inculcate this self-restraint among our people we will have problems in this democracy. There is nothing a Congressman likes better than to get his name in the headlines and for it to be published all over the United States. And maybe sometimes others of us like it, too. But the point is, we have a higher duty than just to air our own personal convictions when we are part of the body that has laid its recommendation before the Chiefs, after they have modified them or approved them, and then, sent them to the President. I do not believe it is our duty to go down before the Congress and show they were wrong.
Question: (Asked by an officer of an allied country) Will men ever be able to live together in peace?
Answer: This is a problem that has engaged the attention of philosophers for so long that I feel almost embarrassed to attempt to give an answer of any kind. Because we have known so long that man’s genius for inventing things which were evil created for him problems of control, sometimes it seems that his spiritual strength is not up to the task. I believe that in a way the military forces are a priesthood. I cannot tell you how deep is my respect for the responsibility they carry. Our problem of course is this: we have an intransigent enemy. He is going to bluff, to threaten, and to use everything that will divide us or our nation from yours. He has no spiritual values. I think the best thing we can do is for us and all those nations with which we are allied or are our friends, to realize that the forces that bind us together are far more important than the little problems which divide us. We have problems about buying cotton and subsidizing cotton, and trade, and all those forms of problems involving prestige. If we will put our eyes on the values that bind us together, then I think we may at least control our side of this material destructiveness, and this may be the strongest element we have in making the other fellow be very careful himself. This is the best defense we have both against the other fellow and against ourselves.
Question: General Eisenhower, do you consider the Russian economic growth a serious challenge to the United States.
Answer: We are far more productive than the Russians, but since they started from a very low point their rate of growth is quite good. The big danger is this: they, by their dictatorial methods, can direct all their productivity toward the particular things that they want to use. It is interesting, for example, to talk to a Russian about automobiles. I think, as I recall, that they produced about 100,000 last year, we produced 6½ million. I took Mr. Khrushchev for a chopper ride around Washington, and he was amazed at the number of big roads running out of the city. He said, “We don’t need roads like this.” And I said, “How do your people get around?” and he said, “They don’t want to travel.” Then I very proudly showed him all the housing developments, each with its own individual yard, and he said, “We don’t believe in individual houses; they’re very expensive and our people don’t want them. They want to live in apartment houses.” Those of you who have been to Russia have seen how far they have gone in building these great apartment houses. So, when you talk about the Russian economy, it’s an economy directed to the particular things the government thinks should be achieved. And we can’t do that. Ours is a free thing and we each want to satisfy our own wants.
You can be sure that the things toward which they are directing their productivity are those things which they think will frighten us, that will tend to divide us from our allies, or that they can use in uncommitted countries. They will probably give a sufficient amount to consumer spending in their own country, to show that there is a little bit of reason for hope and satisfaction. I am sure that in certain phases Russian morale is quite high, but by and large this country can outproduce them, and certainly will for decades—very very materially. The only thing is that if they finally get us to responding so much to every threat that we hysterically raise our spending and spend ourselves into bankruptcy—this will be the biggest victory they will ever need, and they can stack their arms. So I think this contest between economies must be such that we stay faithful to our system, get the things we need and give them first priority—the old saying “guns before butter.” The Russians are bound to do that. Their system does it, so we have to be careful for that reason—not for the overall productivity of the nation. That contest won’t come for a long, long time, but the use you make of the productivity really does pose a problem. We must accept only those things we know we need and we must look at every other dollar of expenditure and ask, “Was this dollar necessary?”