WESLEY CLARK
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: What was you reaction when Palgrave approached you about its "Great Generals" series?

CLARK:  I was very interested in this because the stories of these great generals is something that motivated me throughout my entire career and as I grew older and had more experience in the military I went back to them again and again.  I saw different aspects of their lives and character and career at each different stage of my life and so it was a tremendous teaching tool when you're moving through the uncharted waters of professional doctrine and unfamiliar situations to go back and see how other well regarded leaders of the past approached problems that were difficult for them...everything from their relationships within the chain of command, as in the case of Patton, down to the political-military with the case of Eisenhower, or the overall strategy and the cost and the horror of war with Ulysses Grant.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: What is your approach?  Are you a hands on series editor or --?

CLARK: I read them.  I'm not a historian so I can't go through the volumes of the literature on each one of these people...  I've read enough about them to have formed an impression and to be able to offer my thoughts to the author and sometimes they're useful and sometimes they're not as useful, but I try to give my critique on the manuscript in its early stages and help it meet its intended audience and its intended purpose.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: About the books you wrote yourself, can you talk a little bit about being an author?

CLARK: Well I've written two books.  And the first one was Waging Modern War, which is my own military experience, and then the second one was called Winning Modern War, which is about terrorism and Iraq and Afghanistan, but I enjoyed writing.  It was a lot of fun.  I thing you have to get your experiences out.  Most of us can only reflect on it if we write seriously and deeply about our own experiences, and so writing the book helped me understand myself and what my times were like and my career was like.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: Did you have--a lot of authors will take a ghostwriter --?

CLARK: No, no.  I wrote it all.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: In terms of your experience, as you were working from West Point up are there one or two military figures who had a particular influence on you?

CLARK: Well I was lucky to have worked for a number of strong generals in my time.  So beyond the historical figures, I worked for General [Alexander] Haig, and he had been a lieutenant and aide-de-camp to [Douglas] MacArthur's deputy in Korea.  So I got some of that.  I worked for the Army Chief of Staff and the Vice Chief, General [John] Wickham and General [Maxwell] Thurman, when I was a colonel; that was enormously helpful.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: In what sense?

CLARK: To see the problems they dealt with and to gain their perspective.  And then I was very privileged to work as a three-star, I worked with General [John] Shalikashvili when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.  He was wonderful.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: What did you learn from him, for example?

CLARK: How to find solutions to tough problems.
 

ALESSANDRA BASTAGLI
DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: What is the idea behind the "Great Generals" series and how did Wesley Clark come to be involved?

BASTAGLI: ...there was a lot that we could learn from great generals, and like General Clark mentioned today, tonight, not just in terms of modern warfare but in terms of business leaders or football coaches there is a great interest and there's a lot that we can learn from generals.  So we wanted to do a series that focused on strategy, leadership tactics, legacy and relevance today...  So a series of very short biographies.  They're all going to be 224 pages.

And so we thought as series editor, obviously you'd like to have a general.  But it needs to be a general who knows his military history and who has a sense of what publishing's all about.  And Clark is obviously--he has two big books out there and he does know his military history and he also has fought in modern wars so he knows about modern warfare as well.  He's also a business leader.  So he has all those credentials.

So I very simply, I sent an email to his assistant explaining what the focus of the series was, the authors I wanted to sign up, which generals I wanted to have to begin with.  And the assistant just passed it on to Clark, and Clark wrote this one liner saying, "This sound great.  Lets's do it."  And so he just signed on just based on the idea and how important he thought it was.  And then later we signed a contract with him and got started with Patton.

DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: And you were saying that it's more than just his name on the cover?

BASTAGLI: Right.  Exactly.  I mean usually in series like these, when you have a big name it tends to be just a figurehead and they don't do any of the work; they don't even do any of their own writing, but he is a writer and so he does read all the books and he gives us feedback, editorial feedback--things he catches that he thinks aren't okay or that he agrees with.  And he's also very supportive of course of the authors, and then he writes his own forward.  And you'll see that when you read even Patton it tends to be something quite personal.  It's his experience and what he learned from these great generals.  So of course no one can ghostwrite that for him.  So he does all the work himself, which is a wonderful surprise and more than we hoped for.  So it was quite wonderful.  It's been great working with him actually.

Copyright © 2006  Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action