Since World War II, the U.S. military has taken a keen interest in shaping press coverage and, through it, public perception and democratic oversight of the armed forces. After misjudging the domestic political landscape during the Vietnam War, Army leaders embraced media management, recognizing that control over information had become central to how wars are fought. Even as the Army presented itself as a scrupulously apolitical organization, its leaders strove to reshape their political environment through public relations.
This book tells the story of the U.S. Army's deepening involvement in media management over six decades and offers new ways to understand the military as a political actor. Thomas Crosbie examines how the Army gradually transformed its relationship with the civilian government and the public by engaging with the press. He traces Army media management from its origins as an ad hoc task to its professionalization and formalization, alongside the Army's rise as a political force, its precipitous fall in the Vietnam War era, and its renewed ascent after learning key lessons from the experience of Vietnam. The Political Army draws on the records of Army leaders, archives of major public affairs figures and organizations, and extensive interviews with war correspondents, public affairs officers, and senior Army staff. Demonstrating how the U.S. Army gained, at great expense, potent political sway, this book provides a theoretically rich account of military politics and what it means for democracy.
By:
Thomas Crosbie
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
ISBN: 9780231219778
ISBN 10: 0231219776
Pages: 280
Publication Date: 11 March 2025
Audience:
College/higher education
,
Further / Higher Education
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction: The Democracy of War Part I. The Birth of the Political Army 1. The Army Ascendant: Marshall’s Media Management, 1939–1945 2. Army Overreach: Domestic Politics and Command Culture, 1945–1963 Part II. The Fall of the Political Army 3. Outpaced: The Press and Public Affairs in Vietnam, 1963–1968 4. The Tet Paradox: Media-Management Regimes in Vietnam, 1968–1975 5. Tet Suppressed: Army Doctrinal Innovations, 1976–1982 Part III. The Rise of the Political Army 6. Recovery: Small Wars and Organizational Renewal, 1983–1989 7. The Test: Media-Management Regimes in the Gulf War, 1990–1991 8. Lessons Learned and Not Learned, 1991–2000 Conclusion. The Birth, Fall, and Rise of the Political Army Notes Index
Thomas Crosbie is associate professor of military operations at the Royal Danish Defence College. He is the editor of Berghahn Books’ Military Politics series and Military Politics: New Perspectives (2023), among other books.
Reviews for The Political Army: How the U.S. Military Learned to Manage the Media and Public Opinion
Crosbie’s book is a thought-provoking, theoretically informed, and politically relevant account of the transformation of military media management over the course of six decades. Through detailed archival and empirical research, Crosbie elucidates the complex and ""messy"" progression of military media strategies as simultaneously responsive, adaptive, at times disastrous, but always political. What emerges is a logic of political, military, media relations that raises important questions about the implications of a political military for the democracies of war. -- Sarah Maltby, University of Sussex The Political Army is a major contribution to the study of the relationship among the military, the media, and society. It should be mandatory reading for senior military leaders who would benefit from Crosbie’s penetrating analysis of what the army has done right and wrong when dealing with the press. -- J. P. Clark, author of <i>Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815-1917</i>
