“By no means am I suggesting that the U.S. Army will – or should – turn into a Victorian nation-building constabulary – designed to chase guerrillas, build schools, or sip tea. But as the prospects for another head-on clash of large mechanized land armies seem less likely, the Army will be increasingly challenged to justify the number, size, and cost of its heavy formations to those in the leadership of the Pentagon, and on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, who ultimately make policy and set budgets”
–Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, West Point, NY, during a speech delivered February 25, 2011
You can’t help but regret that Secretary of Defense Gates decided to deliver his speech of February 25th on a Friday, rather than on a Monday.
In the paragraphs cited above, he delved into issues that deserve airing among the wider public, not just picked over by former diplomats, or resident scholars of think-tanks and other foreign policy wonks.
If he’d spoken on a Monday, even in competition with the dramatic news from Libya, some strategic leaking of the speech would have given it a fighting chance of getting more news play. Delivered on a Friday, it didn’t have the opportunity to get much traction – which is a real shame.
In particular, Gates’ swipe at the tea-sipping British soldiers and defense bureaucrats who tangled the British Empire into dozens of “little wars” during Queen Victoria’s 64 year reign should have received more attention.
As one historian of the Victorian period has written, “simple possession of power, and the ability to use it, always provides a powerful temptation to exercise it.” I believe this is temptation that Gates is warning about when he dismisses the idea of the US Army becoming a Victorian-style “nation-building constabulary.”
Unfortunately, there are some in President Obama’s inner circle who take a far different view. These individuals cannot wait to see Americans dust off and wear the Victorian pith-helmet of more frequent intervention abroad (perhaps starting off with Libya).
Secretary Gates’ speech might been seen as a timely throwing down of the gauntlet to those neo-Victorians who wish to see the US engaged in more, not fewer, conflicts abroad.
In his speech, Secretary Gates referenced General Douglas MacArthur and President Kennedy.
Although he did not mention him, I believe there is another American leader who influenced those crucial paragraphs of Gates’ remarks cited above – President John Quincy Adams.
If not in language, there’s more than a little overlap in the intent behind Gates’ remarks and parts of Adams’ 1821 Fourth of July speech, excerpted below:
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
