The Sukhomlinov Effect

An Army may travel on its stomach, but defeat or victory rides on the generals' epaulets. The Sukhomlinov Effect --named after the sartorially smashing but strategically stumbling World War I Czarist War Minister, V.A. Sukhomlinov--suggests that the winners wear the least flashy uniforms. In the current issue of Horizon, Scholars Roger Beaumont and Bernard J. James review the dress of military leaders from bedraggled American colonists to pajamaed Viet Cong. With the exception of the drably turned-out forces on both sides of the Korean War, the gaudier the officers, the surer the defeat. Jump-suited Churchill was ordained by the Sukhomlinov rule to prevail over the strutting dandy Adolf Hitler. Japan's high command surrendered in aiguillettes and swords; General Douglas MacArthur accepted in tieless khaki. The authors point out that shortly before the 1968 Tet offensive. American fashion experts had designated fastidiously uniformed General William Westmoreland as one of the best-dressed American men. But the Sukhomlinovian verdict on Viet Nam is a curt "data incomplete."'

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