The Cost of Loyalty

Dishonesty, Hubris, and Failure in the U.S. Military

By: Tim Bakken

Narrated by: Lance C. Fuller

Bloomsbury presents The Cost of Loyalty by Tim Bakken, read by Lance C Fuller.

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2020

A courageous and damning look at the destruction wrought by the arrogance, incompetence, and duplicity prevalent in the U.S. military—from the inside perspective of a West Point professor of law.

Veneration for the military is a deeply embedded but fatal flaw in America’s collective identity. In twenty years at West Point, whistleblower Tim Bakken has come to understand how unquestioned faith isolates the U.S. armed forces from civil society and leads to catastrophe. Pervaded by chronic deceit, the military’s insular culture elevates blind loyalty above all other values. The consequences are undeniably grim: failure in every war since World War II, millions of lives lost around the globe, and trillions of dollars wasted.

Bakken makes the case that the culture he has observed at West Point influences whether America starts wars and how it prosecutes them. Despite fabricated admissions data, rampant cheating, epidemics of sexual assault, archaic curriculums, and shoddy teaching, the military academies produce officers who maintain their privileges at any cost to the nation. Any dissenter is crushed. Bakken revisits all the major wars the United States has fought, from Korea to the current debacles in the Middle East, to show how the military culture produces one failure after another.

The Cost of Loyalty is a powerful, multifaceted revelation about the United States and its singular source of pride. One of the few federal employees ever to win a whistleblowing case against the U.S. military, Bakken, in this brave, timely, and urgently necessary book, and at great personal risk, helps us understand why America loses wars.©2020 Tim Bakken (P)2020 Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Axe to grind?

As a retired (female) military officer myself, I’m familiar with much of what the author had to say. On many occasions I found myself thinking “so true!” However, in many other moments I felt the author just hates Westpoint (WP) and military officers. It didn’t help that he tells us straight out that WP senior officers didn’t listen to him and he felt wronged by WP. He makes gross generalizations about officers and characterizes military personnel as incompetent monsters. He was also very very partisan which for me lowers the veracity of one’s analysis. Overall, I felt like the author was forming an obviously biased brief about an organization he is hell bent on taking down. He drew conclusions to a lot of matters that he couldn’t possibly know the complexity of as authoritative and absolute. Because of this, I found myself questioning the legitimacy of his references and wondered if he broad brushed other media to find other authors whose views matched his own. Finally, a drinking game could be made with the number times the author used “penchant,” “hubris,” and “Westpoint.”

At last, the truth!!!

Fantastic, refreshing, gratifying...and horrifying. We need more people like Tim to help make our world a better place.

Must Read

If you were ever in the military you must read this book. The author tell you all about the military academies.

Trust is What Makes Armies Function

I completed this book a few weeks ago. However, in the environment of COVID, George Floyd and Vanessa Guillen, its premises on flaws within the military deserve inspection and review. While I dismissed some of the hyperbole from his time at West Point based on my perspective as a non-Academy grad instructor, I could appreciate Bakken's perspective. His critique of the services, to include combat performance, management of criminal justice (to include sexual assault / harassment and drugs), and the aftermath of conflict (Tillman, Gallagher, and Lorance) are worth reflection. While many of his recommmendations appear unsuitable, infeasible, or impractical, they may be under consideration by the national politic if we fail to act. In an era where our “dissociation from civilian society,” and perception of prioritizing loyalty over truth can have long lasting effects on civil-military relations, this book is a reminder to not let the hubris of our past impact leading our military formations of tomorrow.

Interesting, realistic take weakened by tone

I enjoyed the book and are very familiar with the material discussed. My real complain is that the author sabotaged himself with the overall tone he applied to the book: he sounds like an extremely grieved person venting. The facts he focused so much on the Academies, specifically west point adds to that notion. He could have made this a more profound, objective book by focusing less on west point, and more on the experience in the actual force. That would have required more research than just citing readily available material like he did. I understand it most be difficult, but it would have added effectiveness to his argument.