Civil-Military Relations at the Melting Point
BOOK REVIEW: The Melting Point: High Command and War in The 21st Century
By General Kenneth McKenzie, Jr., USMC (Ret.) / U.S. Naval Institute Press
Reviewed by: Ben Griffin
The Reviewer — Ben Griffin is an Army officer and the Chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is the author of Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency from the Naval Institute Press which examines the role of popular fiction in developing and implementing policy. He is currently working on the sequel, Imagined World Orders: Tom Clancy and U.S. National Security. The thoughts and opinions expressed are his own and not necessarily reflective of the US Government, Department of Defense, US Army, or United States Military Academy.
REVIEW — In The Melting Point: High Command and War in the 21st Century, General Kenneth McKenzie, Jr. provides a thorough, engaging, and forthright account of his time as the commander of the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM.) McKenzie centers his account around three main themes: the importance of civilian control over the military, the uniqueness of the job of a combatant commander, and the difference quality leaders make. The book proceeds mostly chronologically, beginning with the start of McKenzie’s tenure at CENTCOM with occasional flashbacks to his previous experience in the Pentagon and in Afghanistan. It provides firsthand insights into the withdrawal from Afghanistan, the raid that killed Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi and the strike that killed Qasem Soleimani, and the policy making processes of the Trump and Biden administrations. All of this makes The Melting Point a deeply relevant and important book in understanding contemporary national security policy and US relations with the nations that fall under CENTCOM’s remit.
Fortunately, it is also an enjoyable read. McKenzie provides significant detail about the decisions he faced, his approach to developing solutions, and insights into how many of the top national security leaders between 2019 and 2022 thought and operated. His candor about both his own actions and his perceptions of others is welcome and adds needed nuance to discussions about US policy in the Mideast during the period. The Melting Point is also impressively specific in its recounting of events. Readers for example will never have to wonder about the call quality on McKenzie’s many meetings. While at times this can be a bit much, the attention to detail burnishes the account’s credibility and effectively anticipates reader questions about the events covered by the book. McKenzie’s eclectic references, ranging from the Counting Crows, Ghostbusters, Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians, and T.S. Eliot, reflect a creative and thoughtful approach to presenting material. Combined with the rich detail and McKenzie’s straightforward prose, the book manages the difficult task of being both in-depth and approachable.
The most important argument The Melting Point makes is about the state of civilian control of the military. McKenzie repeatedly, and rightly, emphasizes the criticality of civilian primacy and supports Eliot Cohen’s articulation that the relationship between civilian leaders and the military must be uneven. Throughout, it is clear CENTCOM leadership recognized its plans had to be responsive to the policy requirements of the administration in charge. McKenzie often voices his appreciation at being heard out even if the policy option chosen was one he disagreed with. This is most clear in the book’s treatment of the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan where across successive administrations McKenzie oversaw the implementation of policies he often believed mistaken.
Accounting for four of The Melting Point’s thirteen chapters, McKenzie’s description of the negotiations, planning, execution, and aftermath of the US departure from Afghanistan is an important contribution to the emerging histories of the event. While his conclusions for why the US failed in the conflict and why Afghanistan collapsed so rapidly are not novel, the description of the process that led from Doha to Kabul is deeply interesting and offers new perspective. McKenzie notes he agreed with the framework negotiated with the Taliban to end the war but expresses his bitter disappointment that the US did not attempt to forcefully hold the Taliban to the terms throughout the process. The account gives an inside look at the generation of different options for force numbers and basing in the country and how both the Trump and Biden administrations prioritized ending the conflict. He also offers a dramatic recounting of the frantic evacuation of Kabul, including a description of McKenzie holding his headset out so President Biden could hear the refugees crowded in the back of the C17 carrying the CENTCOM commander out of Afghanistan.
The development of plans for Afghanistan and other events, such as the killing of Soleimani, further The Melting Point’s thesis about the health of the civilian-military relationship. However, McKenzie’s accounts of the end of the Trump administration and the start of the Biden administration belie this otherwise happy depiction. The book describes an environment after the 2020 election where McKenzie argues a series of unconfirmable and unqualified individuals exercised significant control of policy and attempted to blatantly draw the military into a partisan environment. In his telling, only the design of the bureaucracy of the Defense Department and a lack of time remaining in the administration prevented the success of these bad actors. While the Biden administration represented a return to normal policy-making processes, McKenzie describes a lack of trust from civilian leaders toward the military that he believes distracted from crafting a strategic vision. Both situations raise serious questions about the state of civilian-military relations and more of McKenzie’s thoughts about the risks represented and possible solutions would be useful.
Iran is the central antagonist of The Melting Point. McKenzie effectively shows the tenuous nature of the peace in the region and how easy it could be to stumble into a major regional war. In his telling, Iranian leaders do not understand the likely American response to casualties and the US is failing to provide enough resources in the region to deter Iran from aggressive behavior. He also argues that Iran’s missile program is as important to it as its nuclear one. McKenzie’s belief that any conflict in the region would likely be one heavily reliant on long range fires is something the Iranian strike against Israel in April suggests is true. McKenzie’s insights into working with the Israelis, after responsibility for the country shifted from the U.S. European Command to CENTCOM, and other US partners in the region is interesting and deeply relevant to the contemporary environment in the Middle East.
The Melting Point’s arguments about the need to have resources present on the ground as the only way to effectively deter aggression echoes the arguments put forth by General David Petraeus and Andrew Roberts in their recent book: Conflict. Eliot Cohen’s Supreme Command is a cited influence on the book and McKenzie’s framing of the civilian-military relationship clearly matches that of Cohen. However, while The Melting Point shares arguments with both of those books and many others on contemporary national security problems, it best matches a different genre. It is a welcome throwback to the early and mid-1990s command studies that saw Tom Clancy partner with recently retired generals. The Melting Point is the spiritual successor to Into the Storm and Battle Ready for how it places the reader into the mind of a senior military leader and offers greater understanding of the role of the military and what it can do. It is a welcome contribution of supreme relevance and will be of use to policymakers, military leaders, and historians.
The Melting Point earns a prestigious 4 out of 4 trench coats
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