Bob Neer is a historian, attorney, and entrepreneur. He teaches global business and law as an Associate Professor at the Hult International Business School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is a summer Lecturer in the History Department at Columbia University in the City of New York.
This interview with Robert Neer, a professor and scholar of U.S. Military History, was conducted and condensed by Tatti Ribeiro for frank news. This interview was originally published 4.26.18
1.
My name's Bob Neer. I'm a lecturer at Columbia University and teach a class there called Empire of Liberty: A Global History of The U.S. Military, which I've been teaching for the last several years. So I have a little bit of a perspective on how history of the U.S. military has been taught. Naturally when I first started teaching my course I started looking around at other universities to find a syllabus that I could copy, because that's the easiest way to get started teaching a course. And I was absolutely stunned to discover that at the top American universities, the most selective ones, had almost no courses focused on the U.S. military. There were military history courses about, for example, the campaigns of Alexander, or the way that the German army was successful at the beginning of World War II. Things like that. But if you wanted to understand the U.S. Army as an institution in the context of the history of the United States, at those schools, it was very, very difficult to find out much about that part of our past.
There are places where one can learn that history, West Point for example, the service academies, and some state institutions that are centers of excellence for the Study of Military History. Ohio State University for example. But at the institution I was teaching at, Columbia, and other similar elite universities there was very little. Which I found really quite striking because historically American universities have taught a lot of military history, and it's been a very popular subject for people to learn about. So I've talked to people and tried to understand why that might be.
It would seem that one aspect of that change is that there's been a broad shift in the role that universities play. In the past in this country, they would educate a kind of social elite in many respects, and that was often very closely related to the officer corps. I'm talking about 200 years ago, or 150 years ago, a considerable period of time ago. So a smaller fraction of the overall population went to college and the officer corps, as in Europe, was a place where people from socially elite families could often find a socially elite position.
Those classes were very focused on the actual practicalities of military history. Why Napoleon lost the battle of Waterloo, or how it could be that Britain ruled the seas. Not so much the way that history is taught today as a broad inquiry into the past, and the forces that shaped the present. So one thesis was that the role of American universities has changed ,and therefore the subjects that they teach have changed, and therefore, especially at these elite schools, there wasn't such a demand for that kind of practical military history.
Another thesis was that in the wake of the Vietnam War, American academia in general had turned away from the military. So historically, in this country, there's been quite close connections between institutions of higher education in the military, and certainly that continues today. The tremendous protests that convulsed these institutions of higher education, especially the most elite institutions, were dramatically affected by these protests. The reaction has been in many cases to turn away from the military.
“I ain’t gonna study war no more”. The thesis is that somehow by studying this subject you empower it, or encourage it in some way, which many people haven’t wanted to do.
And finally I guess you could say that although in many respects American universities are meritocratic and have generous financial aid policies often in practice, they generally serve the people who already have money and resources.
And the professional military, as it's developed in the United States in the wake of the Vietnam War and the ending of the draft, is in general an institution that doesn't draw its base from economically advantaged sections of the country.
Most people who have to have a job, and find that to be a job that is relatively remunerative and attractive financially, end up joining the armed services.
I think it's a very important aspect of our past because studying the past is really kind of a way of studying the present. For example, the United States each year spends more money on its military than of all of its institutions of postsecondary education. So all the colleges, all the business schools, all law schools, all the Ph.D. programs, all the community colleges, everything after high school combined — is less than the spending on the military. So that's kind of a lot of money, and an important sort of statement of the country's social priorities. And it's beneficial to learn where it came from as a way of understanding the present.
2.
Let's talk a little bit about how it might be useful or valuable to study the history of the U.S. military. As I mentioned before, history is really just a way of talking about the present.
If it wasn't, then presumably somebody could just write the history of World War II and be done with it. But since the importance of World War II keeps changing, and what was significant keeps changing, people's minds and the issues that they're concerned about today keep changing. People keep writing new histories of World War II.
And if you go and look at the history shelves in a bookstore or on Amazon, I think you'll see that the vast majority of history books that are sold have been written in the last 10 to 20, years as opposed to 100 years ago. Even though the past hasn't changed. So in that sense, it can really illuminate the present.
We're right now in these very long conflicts in Afghanistan and greater Iraq, let's call it against Daesh. It's useful to consider whether that's unusual in our past, or consistent with earlier precedents in the United States. It's popular in many respects to call this current conflict a new type of war, or a forever war, or a conflict which is unprecedented. And it is unprecedented in certain respects. I would say for example, in its global reach, in the thesis that we can use military force almost anywhere in the world without having a specific declaration of war against that particular country, which was characteristic of U.S. military engagements earlier in our past in many respects.
But in fact, the history of the United States, and part of the United States is success I would say, is because of its exceptional ability in warfare, and in the exceptional achievements of its armed forces - dating back to the inception of the country. So if one considers the conflicts with the Native Americans to be a kind of generalized Indian war, as it's sometimes described, then that might really seem to be like a much longer conflict than even the current war in Afghanistan.
And if you look at American history, one characteristic presentation of it, the one that I was taught in high school, was that the United States was essentially a peaceful country that was forced into certain wars at limited times in its past because of perhaps misunderstandings, or the bad behavior of others.
But I think if you examine the past objectively it seems that in fact, the United States has been engaged in wars for most of its history, and that the standard type of existence for this country has been one of fighting various enemies in various places. For the early part of the country's history, as I mentioned, there were constant conflicts with Native Americans in different locations, as well as more precisely defined wars with European powers, for example the Revolution, the War of 1812, the Spanish American War. So in that sense it helps to appreciate the current conflict, perhaps not so unusual, and that in turn for people who want to modify it in various ways, arms them you might say. If you think that this pattern is objectionable, you need to be aware that it is perhaps characteristic of the country and people will react accordingly if you try to modify it. If you think that it should be encouraged, you have great resources to draw on ,where you say that one reason the country is the way it is now is because of this past practice.
That's just one example of how studying the broad scope of the history of the military in the United States helps to understand contemporary events at a level of detail and context which is extremely empowering, but which you really can't get if you're not familiar with the fact that there were dozens of wars against Native Americans, that the first time that U.S. troops were ordered abroad was by Thomas Jefferson against the Barbary pirates, that was a war fought in North Africa. I mean maybe many Marines know that because of the song, but most people who live in this society don't know that.
To open them up to that kind of knowledge is, I think, both valuable and important. It's also worth considering the extraordinary power of the military in this society right now. If you look at how we spend our money, which in any family, or for any individual, is is a strong statement of what's important to them. We spend more money each year on our military than on all postsecondary education combined. Maybe by necessity, maybe because it leads to our success. Maybe it's a good thing or a bad thing, but to put it in the context of the relative importance of these different fields, suggest to me that everybody in the United States should be familiar with this history, as much as they're familiar with works of literature, or the basic principles of physics, and mathematics, or all the other things our students are taught, because it's such a critical part of our contemporary existence. To shut yourself off from that leaves you almost blind to that important area. And when you're blind, intellectually blind, other people make the decisions for you because they are informed and they know.
We can think about how we got here, and what some of the driving factors for that were. This is an illustration of why it's helpful to study the broad sweep of U.S. military power and U.S. military successes and failures.
For most of the country's history, the military has had an almost uninterrupted string of successes. One victory after another, from early struggles against the Native Americans, to the revolution, to the War of 1812, and straight through. I mean the power that defines itself as the United States, won in the Civil War and continued on to victory in World War I and World War II, and had an extraordinary series of successes. More recently that hasn't been the case. We mentioned Vietnam before, but even prior to that, the Korean War produced ultimately a kind of stalemate. And it included arguably the worst defeat of the U.S. military since the revolution, which was the Chinese surprise attack on MacArthur's army that produced this devastating retreat, and terrible, terrible conditions for the U.S. soldiers in the northern part of Korea.
When you have a combination of wars that don't produce unambiguous victories - and I think I would include the second invasion of Iraq, the current fighting in Afghanistan, and this sort of amorphous global campaign against affiliates or sympathizers of al-Qaida, which is authorized under the resolution passed by Congress after 9/11 - none of those conflicts seem to be producing a kind of clear victory, where the other side signs a document, and a new political order can be imposed, and a new economic system imposed. So if the military doesn't, or can't produce unambiguous victories like that, and yet the country continues to fund it on a sort of historical understanding that those victories are what helped to make us so powerful, and wealthy, and filled with so much promise and achievement.Then as that gap widens you may see stresses start to emerge that will affect everybody in the whole society.
Another historical parallel which bears study, and which could be relevant is that we were recently treated to the example of a superpower which became militarily overextended.
It neglected its domestic economy because of the requirement that it imposed upon itself of providing a great deal of funding to its military power, and ultimately collapsed in a political convulsion, which wasn't a war like a civil war, but was tremendously impactful to the people who lived there - which was the Soviet Union. I don't perceive any direct parallel between the Soviet Union after the fall of the Berlin Wall and its empire and so forth in the contemporary United States. I'm just saying that that's an instance in which you had a very powerful country which was regarded over history for numerous military successes, and then found that to be unsustainable and had a dramatic kind of consequence.
Where does our history suggest we are going?
Bodies in motion tend to stay in motion, and bodies at rest tend to stay at rest. There is a new direction of the current U.S. military which is bigger, better, stronger, faster. The course that I teach, the last lecture that I give I call, To The Ends Of The Earth, and I think if you look at the broad sweep of U.S. history as I said, it's one of general military success.
As far as I can tell the Europeans hit the beaches at Cape Cod in Virginia, and they started fighting, and they kept expanding and growing, and they've been fighting ever since.
If you want to understand the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, the places where the drones and the Special Forces are implementing U.S. power, there is a continuing arc that you can trace of expansion and military power, which we've run continuously from that early time, all the way to the present. And it will continue to grow until it's checked.
Countries that are allied with the United States, systems of government, the acceptance of market economies, a global financial system where you can transfer funds from one country to another and everybody sort of treats them in general in the same way - these kinds of systems are reflections in part of military success. And if that military success is becoming more tenuous for a whole variety of reasons, that will have consequences which are still being played out
The coming decades will be a real challenge for the United States, relative to the kinds of expansion and the way that it was able to militarily triumph over all opponents in the 19th century.
Is there a defined version of success in the conflicts the US is currently engaged in?
I think war is a tragedy. General Sherman who was one of the Union's greatest generals, and very familiar with war, described it as hell, he said, "War is hell". I find that very powerful and useful in the way that I think about our military past. I mean it is just an absolutely devastating, disastrous state of the human condition. But having said that, it is characteristic of human society for all of recorded history. And it has profound, profound consequences on people who experience it directly, but also people who are influenced by it.
Of course everything has got two sides. So one side's victory is another side's defeat, one side's tremendous success is another side's devastating failure. So I'm just describing this from the perspective of the United States, and that cuts to the situation that I described at the beginning, which is that the United States as a national entity, in general for most of its past, has been one of victories or successes as they are defined militarily. What those look like is a situation in which the defeated party stopped resisting and allows the victorious party to impose its will to a greater or lesser degree.
The Vietnam war I think is a pretty conclusive defeat for the United States.
People will argue that it really wasn't a defeat, that the United States just didn't try hard enough, that we could have won if we had tried harder. I find those analyses to be actually a little bit disrespectful for the Americans who fought there because, actually, they did everything that they could. They fought as much as they could. And the reason they didn't do more was because they were constrained. I mean if America had used nuclear weapons against North Vietnam, maybe that would have produced a use of nuclear weapons by China against the United States, or by the Russians against the United States. I mean there were risks and reasons that the people who were fighting that war didn't fight it in other ways.
The conflicts that we're talking about now have been more tenuous. So the conclusion of the Iraq War was quite unambiguous initially with the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, and ultimately his execution. That's about as sort of unambiguous as you can get when the guy is hanging. But as a practical matter, the ambitions of the United States that I described before, which was at least stated by the president, a "wholesale reconstruction of the Middle East on political and economic terms", certainly didn't happen. And the cost of the war was great.