JHU SAIS Professor Eliot Cohen Publishes New Book on Civilian Leadership in Wartime
Washington, D.C.-06/11/2002 -Eliot A. Cohen, professor and director of the Strategic Studies Program at the Johns Hopkins University Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), recently published Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesman, and Leadership in Wartime. The Free Press released the book today.
Supreme Command is about leadership in wartime, or more precisely about the tension between two types of leadership: civil and military. Cohen humanizes the highest levels of strategy making by focusing on four great democratic statesmen during times of war-Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and Ben Gurion-and how they dealt with the military leaders who served them. His surprising conclusion is that the conventional wisdom is wrong: the job of politicians is not to set objectives, provide resources and get out of the way. Instead, he describes the "unequal dialogue" between statesman and general-an uneasy relationship based on questioning, probing and testing as the key to victory.
Cohen explores the problem of how national leaders confront the greatest challenges that befall them. After explaining the conventional wisdom of civil-military relations, he shows how each one of the four great statesmen turned that wisdom on its head. He also looks at what happens when "leadership without genius" is at the helm, rendering controversial but convincing accounts of how Vietnam and the Persian Gulf wars were not, as they have been so often portrayed, cases of ruinous civilian micromanagement on the one hand and judicious delegation on the other.
A member of the Defense Policy Board, Cohen previously served on the Policy Planning Staff of the secretary of Defense and directed the Air Force's Gulf War Air Power Survey. He also has written numerous books and articles on strategy, public policy and military history.
SAIS is one of the country's leading graduate schools devoted to the study of international relations. Located along Embassy Row in Washington's Dupont Circle area, the school enrolls more than 450 full-time graduate students and mid-career professionals and has trained more than 10,000 alumni in all aspects of international affairs.
Members of the media who want to cover this event should contact Felisa Neuringer Klubes in the SAIS Public Affairs Office at 202.663.5626 or [email protected].