Snakes and leaders

摘要

IT IS one of the spectacles of soldiering in the democratic world: the moment when a four-star general fields a hard question from a lowly grunt. The chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Joseph Dunford, had his turn while visiting us marines in Australia's tropical north this month. As ceiling fans stirred the soupy air of a mess hall in Darwin, a marine asked how conflict with North Korea might unfold, and what had changed since the Korean war, so that: "We don't get as many casualties as we did in the 1950s." The general, America's most senior uniformed officer, replied that he is "painfully aware" of that history, because his father fought in Korea as a marine rifleman. He assured the assembled marines and their hosts, burly Australian officers in berets and slouch hats, that isolating North Korea diplomatically and economically remains the priority. Then he offered a warning. For all America's modern weaponry, any new Korean fight would be "nasty". If troops wake each morning believing this might be their last day at peace, he went on, they will be mentally "in the right place".