(5 of 10)
Nonetheless, it is becoming increasingly clear that U.S. power has distinct limits, which must be better recognized than in the past. That power, often with absurd reliance on technology, is badly suited to guerrilla warfare, as in Viet Nam. It cannot be used to keep balky allies in line, as Russia did in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, because American values and politics would not permit it. It is unsuitable for ready use against mischiefmakers, whether in North Korea or Peru, because heavy ripostes to such irritations usually entail intolerable military or political risks.
While U.S. strength cannot enforce a universal Pax Americana, however, the nation's muscle has done a reasonably effective job of protecting the balance in areas crucial to world stability, such as Western Europe and the Far East. For the time being, a strong military machine is essential—although not necessarily at its present size, or guided by its present axioms.
A vexing question is whether the military has become the master of political policy rather than its instrument. Historically, the U.S. military as an institution has kept out of politics to a remarkable degree. One reason perhaps is that until the late '40s Americans never tolerated a peacetime military force large enough to be influential. That has changed radically. What Dwight Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex* constitutes an enormous power bloc that now embraces manufacturers, organized labor, local business interests, many scientists and nonprofit organizations that get defense contracts (see box opposite). Yet it is difficult to show a precise cause-and-effect relationship between the defense complex and the generation of a specific conflict.
Never Again Club
Certainly neither the U.S. military nor U.S. militarism could be blamed for Korea, which was a clear case of Communist attack. The Truman Administration had been in the process of reducing military forces before the war started. After Korea, most high-ranking U.S. officers, including Douglas Mac-Arthur, opposed any future involvement in an Asian land war. The philosophy of the "Never Again Club" dominated planning through the Kennedy years.
Though Shoup maintains that many U.S. officers saw the Viet Nam war as a chance to field-test new weapons and season a generation of career soldiers, the experience seems more an example of military—and political—misjudgment than of calculated aggressiveness. The military, which oversold Lyndon Johnson on the efficiency of air power against North Viet Nam, can be faulted; so can the State Department, which insisted that Ho Chi Minh, despite his Soviet training and his country's history of resistance to Chinese influence, was little more than Peking's puppet. But the final decisions lay with the Chief Executive. When it came to the point of choosing between certain defeat of the South Vietnamese armies and the introduction of U.S. ground combat units, Johnson chose to fight. Except for such critics as General James Gavin, the never-again club was disbanded. As Professor Hans Morgenthau puts it: "No