Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power

Abstract

Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power By Rachel Maddow New York: Crown, 2012 276 pages $25.00 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Rachel Maddow is probably the best well-known woman commentator in the twenty-first century. Host of The Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC, her brand is one of biting humor and striking analysis from a liberal perspective. I expect she would be amused and flattered that a review of her book, Drift, is included in Parameters. To dismiss Maddow out-of-hand as a liberal policy wonk would be imprudent given her credentials as a Rhodes Scholar who holds a Doctorate of Philosophy in Politics from Oxford University. Drift is her first book and could easily have been written as a string of half-hour commentaries on the state of the US military. Given the nine chapters with prologue and epilogue, this would fit the format of a week-long series for her news show. As the "Unmooring" title suggests, Maddow's premise is the manifestation of American military power is insufficiently linked to the national discourse on its use. Her concerns are American military power has migrated from that envisioned by the founding fathers, debate between the executive and legislative branches on its use is ineffective, and, perhaps most important, there is a dangerous lack of engagement and accountability with the American people. Accordingly, Maddow opens the book with a 1795 quote from then-Congressman (and "Father of the Constitution") James Madison, "Of all enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded.... War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes.... In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people." Her focus is on military power that emerged with the national experience of the Vietnam War. Two key items sprung from that conflict--the restructuring of the Army Guard and Reserve by then-Chief of Staff Creighton Abrams and the War Powers Resolution of 1973--serve as the foundation of Maddow's discourse on the American attitude toward persistent conflict and war. She contends it is, "as if peace ... made us edgy, as if we no longer knew, absent an armed conflict, how to be our best selves." Her analysis of modern US history has four main tenets that interested this reviewer, which individually and collectively decoupled the US military from its society. The reforms of General Abrams were designed to ensure that citizen-soldiers were inextricably bound to deployments for major military operations, such that when the president and Congress committed to war, the nation was also committed across a wide swath of its population. Concurrently, the War Powers Resolution was a clear attempt by Congress to check the presidential power to commit US forces without informing Congress and obtaining its authorization. While enacted during the term of a Republican president (Richard Nixon), the challenge to executive power existed prior to and since with presidents of both political parties. Maddow provides several examples from Grenada, Iraq, and Bosnia to contemporary operations. The restructuring of the US military as a volunteer force with limited numbers to perform the "inherently governmental in nature" functions of warfighting led to the understandable emergence of outsourcing other functions with programs such as the Logistics Civilian Augmentation Program (LOGCAP). …