t he p erils of o ptimism 285his tenure. Much the same pattern characterized Donald Rumsfeld’s
management of the Defense Department. He arrived with a mandate
from the president to pursue a thoroughgoing transformation of how
the American military fought wars. In the process, he would reestablish
fi rm civilian control of the military, a principle that neoconservatives
felt had eroded under recent administrations. Rumsfeld intended to
solidify these twin themes—military transformation and civilian
authority—in the preparation for war against Iraq.
From the perspective of neoconservative defense intellectuals, Amer-
ican military leadership had been permitted too much of a policy voice
during and after the Gulf War and remained wedded to outmoded
ideas about how best to wage war. Neoconservatives, as noted earlier,
believed the unsatisfactory outcome of the 1991 Gulf War resulted from
the willingness of political leaders to cede too much control over when
and how the fi ghting ended to General Schwarzkopf. Military asser-
tiveness continued through the Clinton administration, when
uniformed commanders pushed back hard against proposed military
interventions in Rwanda and the Balkans. To discourage intervention,
for example, the military tended to overstate force requirements.
Hence neoconservatives welcomed Eliot Cohen’s defense of hands-on
political control of wartime military matters and made certain it came
to the attention of Clinton’s successor in the White House.
Meanwhile, both reform-minded offi cers and many defense experts
argued that the American military had adapted grudgingly and incom-
pletely to the revolutionary potential of new weapons and communica-
tions technologies. Senior commanders still planned for confl icts fought
with massive armies that diff ered only in degree from those Eisenhower
had commanded a half-century earlier. Advocates of military transfor-
mation insisted that the United States could use its vast technological
edge over potential adversaries to wage lighter, faster campaigns that
would yield victory at a much lower human and fi nancial cost. When
Rumsfeld interviewed for the position of secretary of defense, he per-
suaded Bush that the emerging revolution in military aff airs needed a
revolutionary leader—a strong civilian head at the Pentagon who could
overcome the military’s entrenched habits.
Rumsfeld and his top civilian aides set about to remake the military
virtually overnight, taking no prisoners along the way. Th e secretary of