The Political Army - by Thomas Crosbie

About the Book

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.

Book Synopsis

Winner, 2025 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

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.

Review Quotes

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, which he shows to be simultaneously responsive and adaptive, at times disastrous, but always political. What emerges is a logic of military-media relations that raises important questions about the implications of a political military for democracy. --Sarah Maltby, author of Military Media Management: Negotiating the Frontline

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 Preparing for War: The Emergence of the Modern U.S. Army, 1815-1917

About the Author

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.