Civilian Control and Modern Challenges

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And you know what that means Vacation Whether you've been planning it for months or you're ready to pack a bag and go on a whim, having a place you can rely on makes every trip feel that much easier That's where B Western comes in From scenic road trips to spontaneous adventures abroad You'll find welcoming stays wherever you land So you can focus on making memories, not managing the details This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points. So wherever you're headed, make the stay part of the trip. and make it count with this limited time offer Life's a trip Make the most of it at bestwestern. com No additional purchase necessary for swweeps. See bonus points, terms and conditions, and sweeps rules for details. And visit bestwestern d. com for complete terms and conditions The story of America and its impact on the world is not just told from capapitols, conongresses or command tenents. It is told from the ground and the boots on it. From wet leather sinking into Canadian mud in eighteen twelve from bare feet, bleeding in Mexico and soaked red at Antietum. from jungle rot in the Philippines Frozen socks in Korea Mud in Vietnam desert sand in Iraq, and dust choked mountain trails in Afghanistan The American Republic has changed beyond recognition since its birth weapons have evolved from smooth war muskets to drones and satellites boots themselves have changed beyond recognition the same person stands in them a young American carrying a rifle. How did this become such a key element in American history Let's find out Greetings, Hello everyone. Welcome. I'm Don Weilddman, and today we're bringing you a special celebratory episode. As the United States approaches its two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of independence and the Declaration that declared it to the world, we thought it fitting to ask a few of our favorite voices from past episodes to return. to come back and share what in their opinion are some of the most inspiring and compelling stories of the foundounding era The moments, the people The turning points, most revealing and defining in the making of this great nation. Joining me today is one of our stalw guides. Professor Cecily Xander, so recently transferred to the University of Wyoming Ceccily, you made it through your first rocky mountain winter. That's right. We didn't have much of a winter until now, unfortunately, but we'll take it when we can get it. So happy to be here, Don. Thanks so much. As we speak, we are a number of weeks out from july fourth What's been your general impression of the anniversary so far? I think people are really excited. What I've been most heartened by is lots of my colleagues out here in the kind of American West, which is typically a part of the country that's considered part of the national two hundred and fifty story. It's not part of the founding story. We got there Quite a bit later. Thomas Jefferson tried to get us there as soon as he could, but it took a while. People here are really excited in Wyoming and Colorado and the Dakotas. and that's really great. I like the kind of feeling of national unity that the two hundred fiftyeth is bringing about. I remember it well from being a thirteen or fourteen year old. I can't remember of in the nineteen seventy six bicentennial, which was big deal where I was in Philadelphia. So here we go again Now, as I say, we asked you and a few other guests to think about their defining two hundred fifty tailes What's yours? What does this anniversary mean for you? Yeah, so as a historian of The sort of nineteenth century United States and a historian of the United States military in particularly the U.S Army Obviously, that's a big part of the revolutionary story. It's a big part of the story of the two hundred fiftieth anniversary, but it's a story that I think would actually surprise a lot of listeners to sort of really understand in depth, which is to say that Even though the United States of America today boasts of having one of the largest militaries in the world, certainly one of the most expensive militaries in the world in the era of George Washington and the erir of the foundounding, that was certainly not a guarantee. And the story of sort of The rise of America's professional army is one of going from really a position of total disdain on the part of their civilian colleagues to the kind of story of support and exaltation that we see today in the modern period. It's important to keep in mind the backdrop of all of this revolutionary period is the leaving behind of tyranny, the resistance against tyranny And for that era, For those people of that time, tyranny was seen in the red coat uniforms of the British who were living in their homes, literally in Boston and so forth. And so that's an important factor to keep in mind as We then move into the founding, into the early Republic times, how people felt about the military in that time. Of course central to all of this is George Washington, who had already been quite a military man before the Revolution in the French and Indian War, we call it But he spent much of the American Revolution not only fighting the British, but also the American belieelief in the Congress itself that a professional standing army was incompatible with Republican identity. Yeah. And I think There's a few important threads to kind of pull on here when it comes to Washington. Washington was a trained British soldier. There's no getting around that He had the military experience of the Redcoat officers that he would spend the entirety of the American Revolution fighting against. And he also had the experience of being a colonial soldier, a soldier on the frontier of what was then the British nation, what would soon become the American nation a general or an officer who had to rely on militia to get the job done And it turned out in Washington's experience over that period of the French and Indian War in the era before the Revolution Militia are not terribly reliable. On paper, militia are a great idea civilian support. These are American Cincinnatuses or Cincinnati. I don't know how we would pluralize it, but that great Roman soldier who had, when called from his fields, put down his plough and picked up a sword and then happily returned home to farm again, this is kind of the American ideal Washington comes to represent this in really important ways, but we also have to remember that Washington was a trained soldier and he was fighting to have trained soldiers under his command. And so in the early years of the revolution, when he's not getting the results he needs, when he's losing New York, when he's being put on his heels across the Delaware. He's trying to come up with a reason for these soldiers to want to fight and a reason he really ends up deciding on is that they need real training. They need real experience as soldiers. And if you give them that, if you give them some professionalization If you make them a real army and not just a sort of band of militia, they're probably going to achieve better results. And so that's what Washington is really fighting for. So much of this time is about precedent and references and history for these guys, especially neeoclassical references. Was there a time when a country existed ideally with just militias and no professional army Not really. And the sort of only example that the founding fathers could regularly return to Well, there were a couple. They could think about Oliver Cromwell in their own British example Not terribly great. That was a soldier who had used his sort of ragtag army to overthrow a government. But what they're really thinking about is ancient Rome And ancient Rome, the sort of shining example of democracy in the air of the Roman Republic What undoes the Roman Republic? It's the armies of Pompey and Caesar, these professional soldiers who come and kind of dismantle, take over, use military force and military power to end these sort of great democratic experiments And so the the only reference the founders have is that Militia are not a threat in that way because they are temporary soldiers. They are not regular professional soldiers. And so the big argument is not necessarily the militia are better but that they are less threatening in terms of historical examples than the professional military tends to be I have never underscored that so clearly as you are doing, which is that that pivot point for Rome is from that Republican army or those forces under the Republican rule versus the dictatorship that happens. So it is perceived that the army that ISIS take for granted, I think of Rome as that charging army, that organized thing. But in fact there was two different eras, of course to Rome. and we're relating to the second of those, you know, the later part of those under Caesar and Julius Caesar and all that. Two quotes from two important founders. I'll just read them. James Madison, june seventeen eighty seven The means of defense against foreign danger have always been the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans, it was a standing maxim to excite a war, wherever a revolt was apprehended Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending have enslaved the people. My goodness. I mean, it doesn't get more black and white than that, right? Yeah. I mean, they're essentially right relating sort of professional military power and the threats that they pose to slavery, which is something that these founders knew and understood intimately, right? knew what the institutions of slavery looked like. Second quote and then we'll I have something important to say. Samuel Adams seventeen seventy six. this is more than ten years before the Madison quote there. prorofessional Army quote always dangerous to the liberties of people. He just was short and sweet about this. Adams argued that soldiers would feel separated from the general populace. You can't have, you know everybody behind the flag if everybody's, you know, split up that way, h? Exactly. And that's why the professional army sort of, if we think forward into the Civil War period, We're going to have a union army that will eventually enlist two point one million men Only fifty thousand of those will be professional soldiers. There'll be about fif five hundred officers who come from the professional ranks. And you will see time and time again in the letters of Civil War soldier volunteers, they talk about their West Point trained or sort of professional military accademy trained officers as aristocrats. They say they don't really understand democracy anymore, right? They've lived in functions in these systems that have purposely kept them apart from the American people and they observe a chain of command that sort of Good Democratic Americans really fundamentally resist. They don't want to be ordered around. they don't want to be told what to do. And yet these martinettes, right, these aristocrats, these professional officers are different in every way from an ordinary kind of patriotic American. Yes, it's almost like a little feudalism within the government. You know, we're going have our dukes and our generals. and that puts them apart as a sort of aristocracy, doesn't it? It's such a brilliant idea to put this in the context of two hundred fifty because you see, we will say by the end of this, I'm sure The growth of this idea throughout the entirety of the history of the United States, two hundred and fifty years, and what a completely different idea we have now of the military when in fact, it's bigger than ever, of course, you know, And we celebrate that. We think that's a sign of our freedom, not of our tyranny. It's a very interesting irony, isn't it? Yeah, absolutely. ye. There was so much sort of assiduous care taken. by the founders as they took in everything they did and thought about. to really define what this army would be and to keep it purposely as small as it could possibly be to still be functional. And they come to find out in the War of AT twelve They'd gone slightly too small. They needed a slightly bigger professional army to make that war more viable. They still managed to pull it off, but the militia again kind of failed on the job and that's where you start to get new conversations about this issue, but It affects every sort of military story of the American nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century. I There was so little care taken about what the army was doing or what they were up to at the turn of the twentieth century Many soldiers went to Cuba in the Spanish American War wearing wool uniforms from the Civil War. The army simply hadnt made new uniforms in the interim. Interesting And then it was such a quick war anyway we had lots of surplus. T know about the Army Navy store. I want to back up to the revolutionary period and talk about what happened in Boston, which was really so much the precedent for so much that comes after. And it's important it even shows up later in the documents. Standing armies using civilian housing as a quarter. You know, this was what happened. They moved in. they occupied Boston. talkalk about leaving a deep impression. Yeah. and you know, I think Sometimes we can encounter documents like the Bill of Rights or the Constitution and think that they were just sort of happenstance. There's a reason that the firstirst Amendments in the Constitution deal with military issues. I mean It seems to us sort of silly that the quQartering Act or the provision against quartering troops in civilian homes is, you know, like the third thing that the founding fathers cared about when they wrote the new Constitution, but it shouldn't be surprising at all It was galling to them, right? It was exactly this example of what standing armies do is they take advantage And they push people around. Had the British arrmy evolved to a point where it was such a negative, I mean, they've got their own history of this, right? This is a new practice at this point of moving in or not? I'm sure that they had done it sort of in their sort of colonial endeavors in places like Ireland as well. But I think in the new world, right, they just don't have as much infrastructure here in in the United States. So I think it's just trying to make do, but it really comes about because in the aftermath of all of those what the colonists referred to as intolerable acts and the resistance that the colonists put forth to all those new taxes and things, the British sent more troops than they had ever quartered or had here in the New World. And I think it was more of an exigency there. It still was really important to the colonists. Their reputation was was made with the Seven yearsars War with the French and Indian warar I mean, the colonials concluded that the ranks of British redcoats were filled with coar drunkards. I mean, this the behavior amongst in this rather small world of colonial America back in the seventeen fifties had a big impact. I mean, the British crrown, this is a huge engine, of course, for so much of this history and so many of the attitudes amongst Americans. The British crrown had borrowed massively to finance the Seven Wars It doubles the British debt. And by the late seventeen sixties, half of British tax revenue went to pay interest on this loan. So I'm talking about that entire era not only creating the engine for the controversies and the taxations and so forth that happen, but also this attitude towards the British, which is really a seed planted at that point. Yeah. And the colon is saying over and over again, we're paying for this army, this British army that sort of is unable to do us any good. And this And I think especially when we think about the seeven yearsars war and military issues, that proclamation line of seventeen sixty three is so important This line that the British government draws right at the Appalachian mountains and it says, colonists, please don't go west of this line becausecause we can't protect you. We can't give you any security. And the colonists are saying, then why are we paying all these taxes on this army that's just sitting here on our coasts and doing nothing to protect us canan't they help facilitate our movement west? That's where we want to go. And so again, I think you're pointing to that precise of problem that the colonists hate the British army, this professional army, and they're going to come to be very suspicious of their own professional army in turn. Washington's experience as a citizen, as a soldier, as the future leader, his wartime experience is so microcosmic of all of this, right? in that he knows right away this is a war that can't be fought with raagtag army. It's got to be professionalized. He brings in foreign Europeans to work on this with him and drill them and so forth. He creates this group the order that's necessary. and that in the end has a lot to do with the ability to fight this war, sort of the French and all the rest of it. But the idea of a professional standing army is central to this idea and his lessons that are learned from that to have to be logged, right? He registers this as the future leader as the future president. Yeah, he does. and he's really pushing during his presidency for that to be sort of formalized for there to be a kind of professional army that exists. He doesn't really care about its size, but he says like we have a lot of knowledge here. We have people with experience. Let's try to keep them kindind of in the ranks. let's try to keep them. and a functional And after several defeats in what was called the Old Northwest, St. Clair and Parmar and others, the Contental Congress finally agrees. And Washington gets by the end of his presidency this Kind of a small professional force. The origin point for the United States Army, which is called Wayne's Legion. and they spend most of their time in what is now Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana kind of helping pavave the way for American expansion into that part of the country. And three years after Washington's death in eighteen oh two Thomas Jefferson, who was really no fan of professional armies, he was very much an anti Washingtonian in this sense. does decide to found West Point. So in eighteen oh two just shortly after Washington's death. They do in New York where Washington had spent so much of the war trying to establish an American foothold place back West Point associated also of course, with the most famous traiter. in American military history that is Benedict Arnold. So sometimes professional soldiers do go bad. Go wrong, oh my goodness, do they ever It's such an interesting idea. I want to get this in a few minutes because it really underscores everything we're talking about. There was an emerging New worldorld order going on at this moment. I mean, Americans are so focused as we rightfully should be on the revolution on this founding period, especially in this year But the fact is there was an enormous amount of dynamics coming from the other side of Atlantic in a whole new way. I'm going to hold on that for a moment, but this is why you're bringing this up as a subject of two hundred fifty is so fitting because it exposes this entirety of the world and all the dynamics that are in play, not just what's happening here on our continent Militias in the buildup of war, it was very difficult to raise them. I mean, that's the other thing is the mechanics of recruitment, which we today sort of take for granted, still a problem in our country really didn't exist in those days. You totally depended on the states to send people. There was no central mechanism was there? No, not at all. and Washington confronts this early on in his presidency with little bit of chaos going out on in Western Pennsylvania. There's a sort of rebellion of farmers in Western Pennsylvania who don't want to pay tax on the whiskey that they're either legally or illegally making, you know, it's not important. The point is they're upset that the government wants to tax them and And they're rebelling. They're sort of attacking goovernment property, forts, things like that. And Washington as the president of the United States with no real army under his command, even though he is commander in chief, is asking other states. this is in the era of the Articles of Confederation Please send me troops so that I can go deal with this crisis. And Massachusetts says, I don't care what's going on in Pennsylvania. I'm not sending you men. That's not in my interest, right? There's not a sense yet that these individual states are part of one country. And that's another problem you get with the militia, right? They're militamen from Massachusetts, and they have no interest in helping Pennsylvania And so Washington's in this crisis. He needs a mechanism to be able to call out the militias as, commander in chief And he needs to know who's in charge of it because for a good bit of that rebellion in Western Pennsylvania Washington thinks he's actually going to have to ride out there on a horse as president of the United States and command this militia force. And everybody's telling him, that's ridiculous. That's absurd But there was so little guidance that he had no ability to kind of enforce federal power. And so The army will ultimately become I think over the course of the nineteenth century, we think of wars like the US Mexico War and like the Civil War, these sort of more conventional European style conflicts, but actually for the most part, what the professional army that comes out of the Constitution, that comes out of the establishment of West Point is going to be is an army that on the frontier tries to install and then enforce sort of American federal order. They're really the arm of federalism on the frontier. And so that's how Washington originally sees them And it's really nice because what Washington and then his successors can also say is that They're no threat to the east. If we keep them out here in the West, if we keep them out here serving on the frontier They're not going to march on Washington. They're not going to try to take over the government, right? They're doing this job here They're doing a diplomatic job when it comes to dealing with native nations, when it comes to pushing out the Spanish and the French and other claims to these territories That's the best job they can do That's what the professional Army is for. It's right. It's to establish a sort of bulkhead of American authority in a new area. He wasn't alone in thinking about this. Of course, you have Alexander Hamilton writing about this in the Federalist papers, specifically twenty three I think about twenty six for sure. I quote The idea of restraining the legislative authority in regard to the common defense considered. He makes a defense of the Constitution's provisions allowing the legislature to raise and fund a standing army in times of peace, even It's better to risk the abuse of that confidence than to embarrass the government and endanger public safety. So all this thinking is going on in terms of the military, as you are pointing out, as we are creating the ideals behind this country and you know, the give and take in that process because you got to sacrifice something to get another thing. And so if you want to safve country, as Alexander Hamilton is doing, you' got to fund it manage it from the central place And I think another thing we sort of lose perspective on in twenty twenty six is that Alexander Hamilton and the federalists when they were envisioning how this army would work It was it slotted in just as every other issue did in the foundounding period into the separation of powers. becausecause what you said right there, right is that the president is commander in chief. Yes, okay, he has the sort of chief military authority in the country, but he can't just ask for an army. He has to get Congress's permission. He has to go to the legislature and they have to decide how much they're willing to pay that army And there truly was for most of the nineteenth century, really up until the mid twentieth century, a real commitment to that separation of powers when it came to military authority. It's only in the last really eighty years or so of American history where presidents sort of unilaterally declare police actions or say that they're going to do something and Congress sort of has to agree in hindsight to this that we get kind of change in our perception of the military. But for most of American history, there was that real separation of powers. which allowed for additional security when it came to managing this professional army. This episode is brought to you by Best Western Hotels and Resorts Summer is upon us. And you know what that means Vacation Whether you've been planning it for months or you're ready to pack a bag and go on a whim Having a place you can rely on makes every trip feel that much easier. That's where Best Western comes in. From scenic road trips to spontaneous adventures abroad You'll find welcoming stays wherever you land, so you can focus on making memories, not managing the details This summer get one thousand bonus points and a chance to win two hundred fifty thousand bonus points So wherever you're headed, make the stay part of the trip and make it count with this limited time offer L lifeife's a trip M the most of it at bestwestern. com No additional purchase necessary for sweeps. See bonus points, terms and conditions, and swweeps rules for details and visit bestwestern. com for complete terms and conditions Ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseseum Find out on the Ancient podcast from History Hit Twice a week Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago, from the Babylonians, to the Celts, to the Romans And visit the ancient sites which reveal who and just how amazing our distant ancestors were That's the ancients from History Hit. hundred and fifty years ago. They were hunting us down to kill us and now They're hunting down immigrants to deport them This is First America, the true story of how the United States came to be and how we got to this present moment Listen to First America wherever you get your podcast. or two will have everything to do with justifying this kind of military we live in before prior to that World War O and prior is these enormous fault lines through our society having directly to do with the military, how it's raised, how it's funded, how it acts, all of this. And the go to position, as you're pointing out, was always to, we don't want the military. let's let that go away again, you after a war fought only to sort of have to rebuild it again. And again, I have always looked at that as a practical consideration, whereereas you're talking about it more of idealistically, more theoretically as far as how do you govern this country through having a military? Its interesteresting. This is the question that I referred to, I hinted at before. And I want to ask you this, as I was doing the notes for this interview, it sort of occurred to me A question I'd never considered before, how geopolitical was George in those days? How much did he see a new era unfolding before him and his fellow Americans a new scale of global warfare and violence. Higher stakes, I'm thinking of course of the Napoleonic wars, which are coming right around the corner. How much is a guy like George Washington thinking about that? I think he's thinking about it a lot and I think there's a really good reason for it. We sometimes forget that George Washington was the first president. I mean, we don't forget but we forget what that means And it means that there was no precedent for anything he was doing. And for those who have read the Constitution, and if you haven't I would suggest reading Article I, the Article of the Constitution that outlines the duties of the president. It's remarkably short George Washington had essentially six paragraphs to go on. And one of the things that he knew he could do as president, one of the clearest sort of sanctions in Article two of the Constitution is diplomacy. He has the power to make treaties. He has the power to deal with foreign entities. And so I think Washington's presidency is in many ways defined by his thinking about the United States on a foreign stage. This is a new country. It's just getting its feet under it It needs to present some kind of military capacity. It's not going to be massive But Britain and France and Spain have some of the greatest armies and navies in the world I don't think George Washington is terribly concerned that the United States is going to be invaded by a foreign power. It's a big country. They have points of control But you can't sort of succeed in this world where these militaries are getting bigger. Wars are becoming more totalizing, right? The Napoleonic wars are kind of a revolution in this regard And you can't go into sort of a global conversation without having some semblance of an army. And the American army is always going to be treated as a joke, reggardless. They're tiny. They're really insignificant by European standards, but at least it's something. And I think George Washington has a stake in that. I just never thought, I mean, today we hear about cyber war and the space force and all these kind of new thinkings about the challenges ahead I just never really thought about George Washington thinking that way whichich of course, he had to do, especially to do with the Navy. I mean, there are things that are obvious and necessary if you're surrounded by oceans. I never thought about him like staring at a map of the world and saying, oh my goodness, you know, all this stuff is going to go. there's going to be a conflagration over there, which indeed is what happens, you know in the from eighteen twenties onward, it goes crazy over there. eighteen fifteen on. How would he overcome this challenge? This continental Army, I'm just going over basics here Lexon cononquered, april seventeen seventy five, the Continental Army is created with him in command Congress keeps Washington on a short lease throughout the war He spends the war struggling. You can see it in the letters, lobbying Congress for longer enlistments, better pay, professional training Finally, Von Stuben, I mentioned, shows up at Valge Forge. I don't how did that happen? makes the troops suddenly march and get disciplined and so forth. There's a few other ones are not coming to mind. His resignation of his military commission to the Continental Congress in seventeen eighty three is everything when he switches over. But again, this is a general idea. We take it for granted. What a great guy. No. He knows how important this this institution that he was just running is And for him to leave this go is the ideal of having a federal government that isn't going to be plagued with tyranny, you know, corrupt and so forth That's how bold that choice is, isn't it? Yeah, And it's again, it's a place where we kind of have to say nobody but Washington. I't I don't really know of another person who would have had the foresight but also just the sort of personal capacity, right? It's hard for people in power to give up power. and Washington did it constantly. He had this sort of confidence. Maybe he knew that everyone else knew that he was really the only person for the job, But for him to make that choice, and I think It's also important there are moments throughout the war where this professional army gets a little squirrely For those reasons you pointed out, they're not getting paid They don't get enough food, right. They're uncomfortable, they're cold. It's especially the pay issue And there is a minor mutiny in the army toward the end of the war where the soldiers say they're going to march on Philadelphia. they're going to confront with arms the Continental Congress. and Washington Basically, this is one of the biggest moments of his real career. He throws himself in front of these men and says, You can't do this. We will lose everything we have worked for. if you mutiny in this way, just please Please let me advocate, but please don't do this because we will lose everything if you go forward with this mutiny. Newberurg, Shise Rebellion, all kinds of moments when rightfully so, these people are like, are we getting some compensation for what we were you know promised or is it coming And it isn't. And so they're finally forced to march and do all kinds of things We've had several episodes on this in time Was the event you were talking about out in the Midwest? Was that Saint Claire's defeat? Yeah. Can we get a little more detail about that? I'm just curious how this affects him. I' haveiction It's been a long time since I heard that term. Saint Claair's defeat. seventeen ninety one happens in the Northwest Territory, correct? Yeah, it does. It's a sort of confrontation between a small U. S force and sort of a Native American kind of Confederacy and It's an absolute embarrassment for the Americans. They just get overrun by these native forces and You know, it's funny, there are several moments in American history and they come at these inflection points where sort of someone, whether it's Congress or the president or the American people, have become quite sort of lax or even resentful toward the professional army I'm thinking of the fight at Fort Fetterman here in Wyoming after the Civil War, right? That's eighteen sixty eight. The United States Army has to abandon its entire Bzeman trail Concentration because they get defeated, US forces massacred at Fort Fetteran. And then of course, in the aftermath of reconstruction, when there's so much hatred for the soldiers who had been in the American South sort of upholding martial law, you get the defeat of George Custer at the Little Bighorn just two weeks before the national one hundredth anniversary, it hits newspapers in Philadelphia that July R Th these moments where On the back of triumph the American army sort of lapsed into this position of really inadequacy and it can't hold its own. And so Someone like Washington, someone like Grant, right is going to point to these and say, I understand you don't want a large professional army, but we need at least some kind of commitment to training these soldiers, to keeping some men in these ranks as a profession Otherwise, we're going to see the Stain. Clair's and the Fettermans and the littleittle Big horns time and time again nine hundred professional soldiers of the American forces were killed or severely wounded, huge amount of casualties included the men, women and children that accompanied the expedition. This was a total wipeout. Anybody my age grew up in the Vietnam era and we all you know, talked about that and lived with that sort of dark cloud until desert storm comes along. There were many of these situations, of course, through the Civil War, you know, where we questioned our military like we never do today. And that's what's so interesting about that. how again, we take for granted and a lot of this has to do with World War II how powerful we are, how all ubiquitous we are around the world, et cceta, et cetera That was not the case And we need to own that to understand the journey that this country really went on in terms of the military, know, essential to it all. Yeah, I mean, I think you can see it in the certainly the twentieth century, you know, when the United States begins to become more involved in these European wars, I think I think like a real linchpin moment there is World War O, when the Americans show up and the British Army says, great, we'll just sort of fold you into our infrastructure and we will be in charge of you And Pershing says, lookook, I'm here to help, but I'm afraid that's not going to work. The Americans are going to hold their own. And from really that point on, when Pershing asserts, that the United States Army is not going to be commanded by any other foreign power, you get the kind of changing of the tide in terms of American kind of military culture. Exactly I suppose the Pentagon had a lot to do with the building of the Pentagon in terms of the you know autonomy of the military and also the checks that were necessary against it. And the identity of military officers not being considered political the civilian versus military. All that stuff really happens again, out of World War two, this huge amount of growth and expansion is very carefully managed, I must say I think one of our proudest moments where despite the fact that we saw this new world that needed to be managed with our presence everywhere and huge amounts of spending, there was still great care taken to make it constitutionally fit. and to strike the pe tone. We're lucky the soldiers who have become presidents are the ones ones who did. I think the Grants W right and the Eisenhowerers Who are men in Washington's image, right? that they can They can truly sort of say, I have all this knowledge just as Washington did of diplomacy and world affairs and how the military should work But I am president as a civilian, and I am going to run this country as a civilian We're fortunate as a nation that those are the men who have stepped forward to sort of take on that role. And these days, that's why it's so much in the news that there are the blurred lines now between you, where those checks and balances would have been. enacted are now could have blurred, and it's not just the present administration that goes back to Kennedy. acts that were these actions of the presidency becoming larger and larger in terms of military power and choices to use it are consistent throughout everything from really World War two and FDR onward It's a tribute again to those early founders that there was such a baked in feeling that we understood the military, we knew where it was, and it wasn't going to cross that line. or else we' become a whole different kind of country. Yeah, we'd become that monarchy that they were sort of rebelling against. and You know, I would just encourage listeners to go back and look at those founding documents and see how often the army comes up. It's just like, it's not something we're training to look for We're trying to look for these soaring ideals, these declarations of liberty and independence, but really there are also sort of huge complaints and questions about the role that soldiers should play in any nation and especially in this new nation ever wondered what it feels like to be a gladiator, facing a roaring crowd and potential death in the Coliseseum? Find out on the Ancient podcast from History Hit Twice a week Join me, Tristan Hughes, as I hear exciting new research about people living thousands of years ago Babylonians, to the Celts, to the Romans And visit the ancient sites which reveal who ust how amazing our distant ancestors were That's the ancients from History Hit hundred and fifty years ago They were hunting us down to kill us and now They're hunting down immigrants to deport them. 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