Book Review: Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine
| Published date | 01 March 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00207020241234875 |
| Author | Jeffrey Rice |
| Date | 01 March 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Book Reviews |
Book Reviews
Lawrence Freedman,
Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022. 589pp. $36.50.
ISBN: 978-0-24-145699-6
Reviewed by: Jeffrey Rice, (ricej26@macewan.ca), Department of Political Science, MacEwan
University, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada
DOI: 10.1177/00207020241234875
“Ifired him because he wouldn’t respect the authority of the President. I didn’tfire him because
he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that’s not against the law for generals.”
So reflected Harry Truman two decades after dismissing one of the most admired
generals in American history. The decision to relieve General Douglas MacArthur
of command was a highly contentious issue at the time—so contentious, in fact, that
it elicited rare input from the Supreme Court of the United States on military
matters, in an effort to avoid a constitutional crisis. Truman’s personal feelings
towards MacArthur aside, MacArthur’sfiring was undoubtedly political, resulting
from an inability to reconcile the political ideas, held by Truman and MacArthur,
about what it means to command, and by extension, what it means to be in command.
This book is ambitious, as is to be expected from Sir Lawrence Freedman, to say the
least. And, because of the ambition that underpins this book, it is helpful to start at t he
very beginning. In doing so, somewhat unusually, I will begin with my biggest gripe:
the title. ThePolitics of Military Operationsimplies an exploration into the civil-military
relations and various political dynamics of militar y operations. While it does cover these
dynamicswell, the title simply does not do justiceto the scale of theoretical and empirical
insight that is present. Freedman’s book is less about the politics of military oper ations
and more about the foundational power structures that underpin what it means to
command in the first place and the individual personalities thatnavigate those structures.
Being decidedlyuncreative, I have no suggestions for an alternative title, but this is cer-
tainly an extremecase of adhering to the strategy of “underselling”and “overdelivering.”
To that end, Freedman’s book is both theoretically and empirically rich. Fifteen
cases from 1945 to 2022 are examined in depth, with case studies ranging from
International Journal
2024, Vol. 79(1) 160–166
© The Author(s) 2024
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