THE KINDER, GENTLER MILITARY. By Stephanie Gutmann. Scribner. 300 pp. $25

The latest sex-related scandal to afflict the Pentagon—the U.S. Army’s first-ever female three-star general alleges that a fellow general groped her—provides further testimony, if any were needed, that gender remains a problem for the American military. For more than a quartercentury, the armed services have been engaged in an extraordinary effort to integrate women fully into their ranks, prompted by the military’s demand for "manpower" in a post-conscription era, and urged on by powerful forces promotingfull equality for women in American society. A project without precedent in all of military history, it rests on the premise that, in war as in other fields of human endeavor, men and women are interchangeable, or at least they ought to be.

Gutmann, a freelance writer, questions that premise and totes up the price paid in attempting to demonstrate its validity. In morale, readiness, and combat effectiveness, incorporating women into the force has exacted a heavy toll. She concludes that, short of a full-fledged assault on human nature, the project is likely to mean the end of the American military as a serious fighting force.

Although by no means the only book on women in the military, this may well be the first to consider the subject honestly. Unlike other writers, whether on the left or the right, for whom the issue serves as a proxy for scoring points related to a larger political agenda, Gutmann considers the subject on its own terms. Her approach is that of a journalist. While stronger on anecdote than on theory and analysis, the result is nonetheless compelling.

She empathizes with the women (and men) in the ranks who signed up to soldier and find themselves wrestling with the realities of genderintegrated ships and ready rooms. She is appropriately skeptical toward the activists innocent of military experience who airily dismiss ancient truths about military culture and unit cohesion. She is withering in her contempt for the senior military professionals who, succumbing to political correctness, foster a climate in which double standards become the norm and inconvenient data about female availability for duty and washout rates are ignored or selectively interpreted.

The result, Gutmann writes, is an atmosphere within the services of "official avoidance, doublespeak, and euphemism"—and a loss of confidence in the integrity of senior leaders.

Yet one is left wondering whether gender is at the heart of the problems ailing today’s military, or whether it is merely one manifestation of a much larger and more complex phenomenon. Gutmann notes in passing that the ongoing transformation of the military "parallels a general cultural drift in the United States." That cultural tendency— pointing toward a society that is shallow, selfabsorbed, obsessed with material consumption—is hardly conducive to the nurturing of military virtues in men or women. If the American military has entered a period of decline, as now seems the case, the explanation goes beyond matters of gender. Responsibility for that decline rests squarely with a people who take for granted their claims to military preeminence but evince little interest in or commitment to actually sustaining it. Simply returning to the days of a male-dominated military won’t solve that problem.  —Andrew J. Bacevich