Wouk Backlash

In 1958, a young and fast-rising political scientist named Samuel Huntington was denied tenure at Harvard because of a book he wrote. Huntington had penned it in the wake of the Korean War, just as Americans were, for the first time in their history, reconciling themselves to the idea of a large peacetime army. For past wars, the country had mustered a large army, then all but disbanded it when the fighting ended. But the emergent Cold War seemed to call for a standing reserve of military might. Nervous Americans, ill-practiced at living in the shadow of a garrison army, wondered what to make of it. How might these peacetime troops be understood? How might these professional officers be controlled? In his book, Huntington aimed to give them an answer. He called it The Soldier and the State.