ALL THAT WE CAN BE: Black Leadership and Racial Integration the Army Way.

By Charles C. Moskos and John Sibley Butler. Basic Books. 193 pp. $24

Part scholarly analysis, part policy prescription, part starry-eyed advocacy, this small book has a big agenda: the dismantling of "the paradigm of black failure." The authors, both veterans, sociologists, and noted observers of military affairs, advance two striking propositions.

First, they assert that the U.S. Army, beleaguered by racial problems in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, is now the nation's most successfully integrated institution. This change did not occur by chance, they argue, but rather as a result of a series of well-conceived reforms devised and forcefully implemented by the army's top uniformed and civilian leaders. Second, the authors suggest that the approach adopted by the army to close its racial divide provides a model for solving the seemingly intractable racial problems of the larger society.

Overall, the second proposition is less convincing than the first.

About the army's monumental achievement, Moskos and Butler are essentially correct. Black Americans accept the army's claim of zero tolerance of discrimination. Talented young African Americans see the army as an institution wherein effort correlates with reward, and black leadership is nurtured. So they enlist and re-enlist in large numbers: in 1995, African Americans made up 27.2 percent of the army's total enlisted and officer personnel, their presence contributing greatly to the service's current health and effectiveness.

How was this accomplished? Not, as the opponents of affirmative action might wish, through the simple issuing of equal-opportunity edicts. As the authors insist, "The army is not race-blind; it is race-savvy." Given the racial climate outside the military, a level playing field alone would not suffice. So the army developed a comprehensive system of incentives and sanctions--the former generously underwritten, the latter strenuously enforced. For example, the army's "efficiency reports" (personnel evaluation reports) rate individuals on whether they support equal opportunity. Most get a positive rating; a negative one will stop a career in its tracks.

So far, so good. Yet in considering how to transfer this wisdom to the rest of society, the authors stumble. Applauding the army's blending of white and black folkways into a "multicultural uniculture," they propose a national embrace of "our common Afro-Anglo heritage." However stirring it sounds, this formulation leaves out the Navajos, recent arrivals from Mexico, and the second-generation Chinese Americans (to name but a few). Absent military-style discipline, such a narrow version of multiculturalism seems unlikely to command wide assent.

Such ruminations apart, the authors' chief concern is to promote national service. Indeed, this is their true agenda. Accepting (with reluctance) that the draft is unlikely to be reinstituted soon, Moskos and Butler propose national service as a way to mobilize young Americans in pursuit of common goals while teaching them valuable skills and easing racial tensions.

Yet there are problems with this proposed cure for racism. The army would likely oppose national service, on the grounds that it would hurt military recruiting. More important, national service would not entail the forced intimacy and shared hardship of military life--conditions that are essential to breaking down barriers and forging bonds of mutual respect. Cleaning up national parks or tutoring schoolchildren is hardly comparable to basic training, let alone combat.