Mobilizing for Modern War: The Political Economy of American Warfare, 1865-1919

Political Economy of American Warfare #2

by Paul A.C. Koistinen

Although the military-industrial complex became familiar to most Americans during the Cold War, Paul Koistinen shows that its origins actually go back to the dawn of this century. Mobilizing for Modern War, the second of an extraordinary five-volume study on the political economy of American warfare, highlights the emergence of this pivotal relationship. In this volume, Koistinen examines war planning and mobilizing in an era of rapid industrialization and reveals how economic mobilization for defense and war is shaped at the national level by the interaction of political, economic, and military institutions and by increasingly powerful and expensive weaponry.

Covering the Gilded Age and Progressive Era through the Spanish-American War and World War I, Mobilizing for Modern War shows how a partnership evolved between government and business to prepare for and conduct modern warfare. This partnership was an extension of Progressive regulatory reforms, but it had to include a professionalized army and navy in order to handle the new technology of war. Koistinen traces the origins of the military-industrial complex to the emergence of a modern navy at the turn of the century, when building a new fleet of steel, armor, and ordnance required a production team of political leaders, naval officers, and businessmen. A similar team was brought together again between 1915 and 1918 as the War Industries Board to mobilize the economy for World War I, and it became the model for subsequent industrial mobilization planning.

Koistinen shows how mobilizing for World War I left an indelible imprint on twentieth-century life. By accelerating the emerging Progressive political economy, it strengthened the cooperative planning ethic within business and government and introduced the concept of industrial preparedness, carried out largely under military leadership. Relating events of this period to what preceded and followed, Koistinen convincingly argues that in this century warfare has shaped the nation's social institutions and ideology even more than reform. Mobilizing for Modern War is marked by outstanding research and cogent analysis and yields fresh insights not only about the conduct of conflict, but also about war's effects on peacetime affairs.

Genres: History, Economics, Nonfiction

408 pages, Hardcover

First published November 15, 1997

About the author

A specialist in the political economy of American warfare Paul A. C. Koistinen taught US history at California State University, Northridge, from 1963 to 2002, retiring as professor emeritus.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The second volume of Paul Koistinen’s history of the political economy of American warfare starts in the aftermath of the Civil War, a conflict that demonstrated for the first time the economic might the United States could employ in waging war. Not only did they vastly outproduce their Southern foes, they did so with a far less complete mobilization of their economy than the one undertaken by the Confederacy. Though this immense supply of men and materiel could not and did not in itself win the war for the Union, it foreshadowed the attritional conflicts that would characterize America’s military successes in the next century.

No sooner had the fighting ended, however, than the United States scaled back its commitment of economic power to military might. Koistinen judges this a wise decision, as in the aftermath of the war, Americans faced no threats requiring a similar scale of mobilization. While rapid industrialization during the Gilded Age stimulated the creation of both the modern political economy and a new American ruling elite, the army and navy were both reduced to a fraction of its wartime strength. Yet Koistinen does not regard the late nineteenth century as a fallow period for the nation’s military, as during this period the services began a process of professionalization that paralleled the rise of the new elites. Given its requirements, this proved easier for the navy than for the army, yet by the start of the twentieth century both branches had evolved in ways that prepared them for the industrial warfare that was to come.

This process would not reach its fruition until the First World War. In the interim, the United States was able to wage its wars using the methods common during the pre-Civil War era. Even the mobilization for the Spanish-American War made only a modest demand on the nation’s economy, one minimized by the brevity of the conflict. This was fortunate, as the army’s chaotic conduct of operations demonstrated both the limits of Gilded Age professionalization and the need for more effective reforms. Under Elihu Root, the new Secretary of War, the United States Army undertook wide-ranging changes that transformed it from a scattered collection of units stationed on the Western frontier into a force that planned and prepared for war on a regular basis. The Spanish-American War also stimulated the development of the navy, an effort which predated the conflict but received a new impetus with the acquisition of overseas territories that required a fleet capable of protecting them.

These advances were put to the test during the First World War. Much as his coverage of the Civil War had in his first volume, Koistinen’s description of the economic mobilization for the “war to end all wars” takes up the majority of his book, as he details a process that began soon after the outbreak of fighting in Europe. From the start the demands of industrialized war created a partial mobilization of the American economy, as orders for goods and raw materials flooded across the Atlantic. This was facilitated by J. P. Morgan and Company, which became the financial agent in the United States for Great Britain. While Americans welcomed the economic boost this activity provided, they were far more reluctant to prepare themselves for a possible intervention into the conflict, with national conscription embraced only after America entered the war in 1917.

Intervention forced President Woodrow Wilson’s administration to take economic mobilization more seriously. While organizations such as the Council of National Defense and the National Defense Advisory Commission had been created prior to April 1917 to determine the means it might be achieved, their authority was undermined at every turn by a military leadership committed to controlling wartime procurement. The War Industries Board was an improvement by comparison, yet it too lacked authority at first and was only strengthened in order to address a mounting economic crisis that demanded more effective coordination. Nevertheless, by the end of the war a mobilization scheme was in place that, while improvised and in need of further improvement, worked effectively enough to address the immediate problems posed by the competing demands wartime production placed on the economy.

By the end of the war, Koistinen sees two important developments emerging: the creation of a “government-business planning partnership” that paralleled the prewar “government-business regulatory partnership” that had formed during the prewar Progressive era, and the integration of the military services into the mobilization system. His coverage of the role played by such private groups as J. P. Morgan and Company and the United States Chamber of Commerce is particularly effective in demonstrating the first point, which compliments his description of the well-documented involvement of “participating businessmen” such as Bernard Baruch in the government’s mobilization effort. It helps to underscore as well his overall argument in the series that the emergence of the military-industrial complex was evolutionary rather than revolutionary, the product of decades of adjusting economic mobilization to the increasing demands of modern industrial war. It’s a convincing assertion thanks to the clarity of his analysis and the impressive breath of research on which he bases it. For anyone with a serious interest in the subject or in just the political economy of the United States during First World War, Koistinen’s book is essential reading.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

Volume 2 of the five-volume "Political Economy of American Warfare". Fascinating, in that through Koistinen's analysis, you can see in outline the key features of what would become the Military-Industrial Complex, clearly in formation late in the 19th century, and early in the 20th century. Again, Koistinen importantly identifies U.S. colonial expansion (sometimes called "internal colonialism") as a key mechanism which shaped the warfare state. "After the Civil War, the transcontinental railroads gave the westward push the proportions of a stampede. Indian resistance naturally grew, especially when the government adopted the policy of confining various tribes to reservations. This action resulted in a state of nearly constant 'warfare' from 1866 until the Indians were collectively ground down by 1891. ... [T]he majority of troops served on the frontier, where the Indians absorbed most of their attention" (p. 59).

This home-grown militarism, nurtured in the genocidal wars against First Nations, came into its own in the First World War. Key to this was the development of a modern navy. "[T]he building of a new fleet required a production team composed of government officials, naval officers, and industrialists that eroded the barriers between private and public, civilian and military institutions. On a limited basis, personnel began to circulate among the various institutions because of their interrelationship and the need to fulfill special functions. The institutions in question were huge, modern, complex bureaucracies. Relating them – the federal government, the navy, and the corporate structure – to one another in order to construct a new navy generated enormous tensions that would take decades to resolve. Once resolved, however, disengaging the various institutions could be at least as difficult as engaging them" (p. 56).