Donald Kagan - While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today

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Contents

For Myrna and Kim

Preface

In 1940 a young man published what had been his college senior thesis, entitled Why England Slept. In that year, German armies destroyed those of France and England, conquered France, and subjected England to the most terrible and destructive bombing campaign the world had ever seen. Why England Slept aimed to explain to an America just beginning to wake up to the danger it faced why England had failed to protect the peace of the world, or to ensure its own security. It was too lateone year later as Japanese bombs shattered the American battle fleet at Pearl Harbor, the United States was drawn willy-nilly into yet another war it had failed to deter and for which it was woefully unprepared. The book was reprinted in 1961 when its young author, John F. Kennedy, was President of the United States.

Two years before Kennedy had written his thesis, Winston Churchill, long out of favor and out of control of British politics, published a collection of his speeches given from 1932 to 1938 under the title While England Slept. Those speeches pointed to the rapid rise of Germany as a major threat to England and to the peace of the world. In them he called for a foreign policy to deter German revanchisme and for military preparedness to support that policy. His advice, and those of others similarly minded, was ignored consistently by a British government preoccupied with domestic concerns and both afraid and unwilling to face the new realities. As a result, it was clear not only to Churchill that by 1938 England had let slip by her best chance either to deter or to prepare for war. Thenceforth it would be Hitler who would call the tune, and for a time it looked very much as though England would have to pay the piper.

The present work harkens back to these earlier efforts to warn unwilling democracies to prepare for the dangers of war, fully aware that the situation America faces today is by no means so dire as the one she faced in 1940, or the one England faced in 1938. Few today would agree that Americas current situation is in any way dire. On the contrary, it is almost an article of faith in the few public discussions on foreign policy that one can find today that America is in the most secure of all possible positions. Since the United States desires nothing but peace and stability in the world, it is most difficult to imagine that any other state might threaten us. Since our armed forces are so powerful, it is hard to believe that any enemy could defeat them or be so foolish as to try. Above all, since the world is now so peaceful and prosperous, and our military preponderance apparently so great, we can hardly conceive of any major state desiring or daring to upset the world order.

It is our aim in this work to challenge such complacent and comfortable opinions, and to do it before it is too late to repair the deficiencies in our foreign and defense policies and address the dangers that we see ahead. In our view the peace that concluded World War I was lost not in the 1930s, when the British allowed their leading position in the world to deteriorate through inaction and so set the stage for disaster in the following decade. The neglect, wishful thinking, and self-delusion of the 1920s, the years of the locust, so undermined Britains position as to make the task of its leaders in the 1930s too great for them to manage. For the history of the 1930s shows that democracies almost inevitably act too slowly, even when the danger is upon them. The warnings Churchill and Kennedy issued in 1938 and 1940 came far too late, even if they had been heeded.

Our hope is to provide warning early enough to bring about a necessary change of course, even in a democratic state concerned, as democratic states usually are, with domestic preoccupations. Major war need not be just around the corner, as it was then. If the United States assumes the true burdens of world leadership on which peace depends and that it alone has the resources to bear, major war may be put off for longer than it has ever been. But the military preparations on which such an undertaking must rest are inadequate today, and will be less adequate in the future, if the current insufficient and confused direction of our policies continues. Unless we change them soon our efforts to deter aggression and to maintain world stability will fail. As a vital first step Americans must stop thinking and acting as though there can never be another war. We must understand that the world and the United States, as they have always been up to now, are simply in an interwar period. It is up to us to determine how long it will last and how well it will end.

We could not have completed this project without the support and encouragement of many people. First and foremost, we must thank Robert Kagan. His work, his thinking, and his constructive criticism have been an essential part of the development of our own thoughts. The excellent faculty, past and present, at the Department of History of the U.S. Military Academy have played an invaluable role in educating us and helping us to see the strengths and weaknesses in our arguments. In particular, the support and encouragement of Colonels Robert S. Doughty and Cole C. Kingseed, as well as the intellectual support of Lieutenant Colonel Conrad Crane, have been extremely important. We are also indebted to Lieutenant Colonels David T. Fautua and H. R. McMaster for a series of conversations long ago that helped to spark this project in the first place.

In the course of our work, we have had several opportunities to present our findings to audiences whose questions helped us to sharpen our thinking. For this we are grateful to Professors Paul Kennedy and Charles Hill of Yale University and Aaron Friedberg of Princeton University for inviting us to speak to their organizations.

This project could not have been completed without the support provided to Fred Kagan by the John M. Olin Foundation. The authors are grateful to the foundation and to its executive director Jim Piereson for the vital support they give to scholarship in the fields treated in this book, fields largely neglected by others.

This work was the product of a team that consisted not only of the two authors, but of their wives, Myrna and Kim, as well. Their patience in the face of many, no doubt wearisome, historical conversations and arguments, their insightful contributions to those discussions, and their support and encouragement throughout, have made the completion of this book not merely possible, but enjoyable.

Any flaws, errors, or omissions in this work are, of course, the responsibility of the authors.

Introduction

America is in danger. Unless its leaders change their national security policy, the peace and safety its power and influence have ensured since the end of the Cold War will disappear. Already, increasing military weakness and confusion about foreign and defense policy have encouraged the development of powerful hostile states and coalitions that challenge the interests and security of the United States, its allies and friends, and all those with an interest in preserving the general peace. Without American support, the friends of democracy and human rights will cry in vain for protection against the forces of repression, which persist and will intensify in areas from which American power will have to be withdrawn for lack of strength and will. Despite that withdrawal, those forces will continue to identify the United States as the source of a modernization that threatens them, as the propagator of values they find evil and abhorrent, as their principal enemy. Over time the technologies of which the United States and its allies are the chief possessors will fall into these unfriendly hands and may be used against them directly.