The Nation: The Sukhomlinov Effect

An Army may travel on its stomach, but defeat or victory rides on the generals' epaulets. The Sukhomlinov Effect —named after the sartorially smashing but strategically stumbling World War I Czarist War Minister, V.A. Sukhomlinov—suggests that the winners wear the least flashy uniforms. In the current issue of Horizon, Scholars Roger Beaumont and Bernard J. James review the dress of military leaders from bedraggled American colonists to pajamaed Viet Cong. With the exception of the drably turned-out forces on both sides of the Korean War, the gaudier the officers, the surer the defeat. Jump-suited Churchill was ordained by the Sukhomlinov rule...