“Who Wins Wars
By ML Cavanaugh
Matt Holt, 256 pages, $30
At the height of World War II, students in Miss Lillian Craig's fifth-grade class in Roanoke, Va., wrote to America's top soldier, Gen. George C. Marshall: How did he select the nation's senior generals? "What are they like that makes you know they will be good ones?"
Kings, presidents and military academies have wrestled with versions of that question for millennia. In "Who Wins Wars," retired Army Lt. Col. ML Cavanaugh tackles the subject by studying three legendary American generals: George Washington, Ulysses S. Grant and Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The three leaders fought their signature campaigns under vastly different conditions. Washington launched his Delaware River attack in 1776 with armies marching at the foot speed of Caesar's legions. Grant used the destruction of railroads and logistical networks, and superior manpower, to smother the Confederacy during his 1864 Wilderness Campaign. Eighty years later, Eisenhower owned the skies over Europe and leveraged the power of a vast coalition to conquer Hitler's Fortress Europe. Mr. Cavanaugh reviews their thinking from the strategic heights and asks, "who wins wars, and what can we learn from those who do?"
In 1776, Washington was an insurgent leader who understood that survival meant victory. After the disastrous Battle of Long Island in August, Washington faced a tough decision: defend New York, burn it to keep it out of British hands or simply retreat? "Washington had to think about more than just winning battles," Mr. Cavanaugh writes. "He had to keep the army together and maintain support from the people and Congress." The Founding Father worked closely with the Continental Congress and balanced the conflicting demands of military officers and civic leaders. "By handling these disagreements carefully, he gained the trust he needed from Congress and kept his officers loyal," Mr. Cavanaugh writes. "In short, Washington listened."
His surprise move against Trenton, N.J., at Christmas did more than notch a local victory against King George's Hessians. It "broke the idea that the British couldn't be beaten," we are told, and "helped the colonists believe in the rebellion again."
Grant's strategy against the Confederacy in 1864 was, the author says, "not only military -- it was political, too. Victories needed to boost Union morale, but they couldn't be so costly that the public turned against the war." Though at first Grant suffered more casualties than Robert E. Lee, "Grant didn't stop. He kept moving forward."
While Grant remained aloof from politics, he "believed strongly that politics matters at war." With Lincoln's re-election prospects teetering in the fall of 1864, Grant, Mr. Cavanaugh writes, "viewed the election as a potential battlefield opportunity." He provided his soldiers access to the voting process, and ensured that the men were shielded from the pressures of political harangues or campaigning.
The Union won, Mr. Cavanaugh writes, "because Grant listened, learned, and adjusted his approach. Because he chose constant, multifront pressure. Because he was persistent after setbacks. And because Grant wore Lee's Confederates down."
Eisenhower's path to victory was more overtly political.
He pushed back, when necessary, against political leaders, including Winston Churchill, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles de Gaulle. Eisenhower's agonizing responsibilities required him to make many critical decisions: Launch D-Day on June 6, 1944? Drop paratroops behind enemy front lines? Bomb French railways before D-Day? Capture Berlin, Prague and Vienna -- or leave them for the Red Army?
We can "learn a great deal from Eisenhower's strategic leadership -- particularly, some of the traits he demonstrated," Mr. Cavanaugh observes. "Like humility. One of Eisenhower's early biographers was struck by how Eisenhower never saw power as belonging to him personally (in contrast with Hitler). Instead, he treated it as something he was responsible for -- but not entitled to."
What do these generals teach us? "When it comes to strategy, it's not whether strategic leaders win or lose a given battle, but how they change the game," Mr. Cavanaugh writes. "The aim of all strategic leadership is the application of superior judgment."
Technology is a part of war's landscape; it separates the 21st century from the eras of the Brown Bess musket, the bronze cannon and the M-1 Garand rifle. Noting the ubiquity of drones on the battlefields of Ukraine and Russia, one general consulted by Mr. Cavanaugh asked, "how many senior leaders have drones in their home? Little drones they play with?" The author adds: "Which of our senior strategic leaders are experimenting, getting hands on, developing a fingertip feel for this new warfighting tech?" Mr. Cavanaugh concludes: "Curiosity is a strategic advantage here."
Humility also counts, he adds. "When you're spending human lives -- part of a system that orders some into extreme risk -- it matters that you actually believe the lives you're spending are as important as your own." Yet optimism must counterbalance humility and realism. "Hope must be in the strategic leader's DNA -- without it, the whole enterprise would rot from the top down."
"You can never learn how to 'win wars.' You can only hope to win the war you're in," Mr. Cavanaugh argues. "But we can create a 'variety' of experiences that ensures we find someone better than anyone on the other side of the field. All roads lead to the mountaintop -- you've just got to be smart enough, strong enough, and brave enough to make the climb."
These are sensible prescriptions. The difficulty is that "Who Wins Wars" seldom ventures far beyond them. Its strategic lessons -- balance differing viewpoints, understand politics, remain humble and optimistic, change the game -- are difficult to argue with, because they operate at such a high level of generalization.
Which brings us back to Miss Craig's fifth graders. Eight decades later, their deceptively simple question -- "What are they like that makes you know they will be good ones?" -- remains harder than it looks.
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Mr. Jordan is the author of "Ike and Winston: World War, Cold War, and an Extraordinary Friendship."” [1]
1. Good Men In a Crisis. Jordan, Jonathan W. Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 19 Aug 2026: A13.
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