Sunday, December 2, 2012

Amazing Quotes 22: Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and The State


One of the most impressive work of Huntington is "The Soldier and The State." This book analyzes the relationship between military profession and politics. This book is ALWAYS referenced whenever anyone want to speak about military institution. Some of its best lines: 

This [military] professional bias, or sense of responsibility, leads him to feel that if he errs in his estimate, it should be on the side of overstating the threat. Consequently, at times he will see threats to the security of the state where actually no threats exists.
-- Page 66.

He [the military men] is afraid of war. He wants to prepare for war. But he is never ready to fight a war.
-- Page 69.

The military ethic is thus pessimistic, collectivist, historically inclined, power-oriented, nationalistic, miliatristic, pacifist, and instrumentalist in its view of the military profession. It is in, in brief, realistic and conservative.
-- Page 79.

for the American a war is not a war unless it is a crusade.
-- Page 151

The trouble with the United States as a country was that „we are perhaps the least military, thought not behind the foremost as a warlike one.“
-- Page 221.

Military men criticized the rash and adventurous psychology, typified by the "On to Richmond" slogan of the Civil War radicals, and urged the primacy of prudence over courage and the necessity of accepting a "patient and costly defense." Some military men almost seemed to regret that the United States had “never known a Jena or Sedan“ to curb national arrogance and complacency.
-- Page 266

The professional officer exists in a world of grays. MacArthur's universe was one of blacks and whites and loud and clashing colors.
-- Page 370.

Speaking less and smiling more than MacArthur, he [Eisenhower] appeared the embodiment of consensus rather than controversy. MacArthur was a beacon, Eisenhower a mirror.
-- Page 370

The tension between the demands of military security and the values of American liberalism can, in the long run, be relieved only by the weakening of the security threat or the weakening of liberalism.
-- Page 456

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