Institutionalizing supreme command: explaining political–military integration in the Vietnam War, 1964–1968 |
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Authors: | Spencer D Bakich |
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Institution: | 1. Department of Government and International Affairs , Sweet Briar College , Sweet Briar, VA, USA sbakich@sbc.edu |
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Abstract: | Under what conditions can leaders achieve wartime political–military integration? In the Vietnam War, political–military integration exhibited dramatic variation: in the air war, the US was able to tightly integrate its political objectives and military conduct, but in the ground war, the American military prosecuted a strategy that was both divorced from broader political objectives and was immune from Washington's influence. I argue that the nature of information management between the military and civilian leadership explains the pattern of political–military integration in the Vietnam War more completely than do explanations that focus on the organizational cultures of professional militaries. |
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Keywords: | Vietnam War civil–military relations information structure organizational culture supreme command political–military integration |
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