MIA > Archive > Draper > Militarization
From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 51, 19 December 1949, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
|
This is one of a series of articles on the militarization of American government and life, based on the findings of a committee of nationally known liberals. This committee, organized as the National Council Against Conscription, in February of this year published the booklet New Evidence of the Militarization of America. (A previous booklet, entitled The Militarization of America, had been published in January 1948.) All the information and quotations used in the present series of articles comes from the first-named booklet. The NCAC publications are sponsored by a group including: Pearl Buck. Louis Bromfield. Albert Einstein, Victor Reuther, President James G. Patton of the National Farmers Union, Prof. P. A. Sorokin of Harvard, former Secretary of Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, President W.S. Townsend of the CIO Transport Service Employees, President C.S. Johnson of Pisk University, President W.J. Mlllor, S.J., of the University of Detroit, and many other prominent individuals. |
Not only does the size of the military establishment and its proportion of the budget reflect its growing influence in .American affairs but the number of military men, in important government posts reveals the influence of the military in traditionally civilian spheres.
The two most influential men in the government have been Admiral William D. Leahy, President Truman’s chief of staff, and General George C. Marshall, the former secretary of state who has shaped a good portion of current U. S. foreign policy. General Marshall’s assistant was Brigadier General M.S. Carter. An assistant secretary of state, John E. Puerifoy, attended West Point. Serving under General Marshall abroad were: Lieutenant General Lucius D. Clay as military governor in Germany; General MacArthur in control of Japan; Lieutenant General Bedell Smith as ambassador to Russia; Admiral Kirk as ambassador to Belgium; General Holcomb in South Africa.
The men who surround Truman on his trips and vacations are for the most part military men.
For example, on his August 1948 trip aboard the official yacht, he was accompanied by Brigadier General W.H. Graham, his physician; Captain Robert L. Dennison, his naval aide; Admiral Leahy, his chief of staff; Colonel Robert Landry, air force aide; Major General Harry Vaughan, his military aide; and two civilians—his press secretary, and his special counsel.
Congressman R.J. Twyman of Illinois in the April 30, 1948 Congressional Record listed a number of military and retired military men who are holding government posts in the field of foreign affairs, stating that the president “has seen fit to staff the traditionally civilian positions of government, particularly in the diplomatic and consular service, with retired army and navy officers.”
Another member of Congress, former Senator William Langer, chairman of the Senate Committee on Post Office and Civil Service, told the Senate on June 4, 1948 about "military men who were taken out of the army by the high military authorities and placed in the civil service of the United States where we cannot get rid of them without changing our entire civil service structure ..."
Military men are also being appointed to jobs in the Economic Cooperation Administration, the Marshall Plan’s ECA. Two examples at the higher rungs: Colonel Arthur G. Syrian was appointed as chief of the Transportation Division, and Edward Gould, a colonel who served on Eisenhower’s wartime staff and was with the AMG in Berlin until his appointment to ECA, was named assistant to the Comptroller for the ECA in Europe. Military men also honeycomb the Marshall Plan missions to the various countries.
The State Department likewise is honeycombed with military men in positions of influence. One of the most important positions, that of director of United Nations Affairs, has been held by Colonel Dean Rusk, who was nominated in February by Truman as an assistant secretary of state. General Marshall not only received salary from the armed forces while serving as secretary of state but also had three military aids furnished him by the army.
Here is impartial list of State Department functions filled by military men: director of the Office of Departmental Administration (described by the New York Times as the “Executive Secretariat in the State Department”); the executive officer of the above; executive assistant to Assistant Secretary of State Peurifoy; the executive officer of the Office of Far Eastern Affairs; the chief of Foreign Service Administration; the special assistant to the Undersecretary of State; the chief of the Division of Communications and Records; the head administrators in the Office of Foreign Liquidation; the chief of the Acquisition and Distribution Division; the assistant secretary of state for transportation and communication; etc., etc.
When General John H. Hilldring was made an assistant secretary of state, according to the New York Times of May 8, 1947, "he brought with him in the State Department 26 of his assistants in the War Department." When General Hilldring resigned, General Charles Saltzman, vice-president and secretary of the New York Stock Exchange, took his place. The executive officer to General Saltzman is a major.
The exact personnel as named above shifts from time to time, but the tendency is a definite one.
A device whereby military men exercise tremendous influence over groups that by law must be partly or entirely civilian is the Military Liaison Committee. Such a military committee was authorized by the Atomic Energy Act. It became so powerful and was so devoted to the idea of military control that it exercised behind-the-scenes pressure for giving the military establishment custody and maintenance of all completed atomic bombs. (Hanson Baldwin, in the N.Y. Times, June 10, 1948.)
The Military Liaison Committee prefers either to be eliminated and have military men serve directly on the Atomic Energy Commission, or to have the commission eliminated and the whole project turned over to the military establishment. Despite the military's desire to have complete control, there is already enough acceptance by the commission of military ideas that not one appeal to the president has been taken by the Military Liaison Committee from any action of the commission, though the law provides for such an appeal.
And the Atomic Energy Commission placed Brigadier General James McCormack Jr. in charge of research, development and application of atomic energy for military purposes. “The commission,” said the Army and Navy Journal for October 30, 1948, ’“has given a soldier complete supervision over one of the most important phases of its work.”
(Next week: Military influence and the Marshall Plan)
Last updated on 25 February 2023