A Modern Major General : HAZARDOUS DUTY An American Soldier in the Twentieth Century <i> By John K. Singlaub</i> , <i> with Malcolm McConnell</i> , <i> (Summit Books: $24.95; 562 pp., illustrated) </i>

Once he might have been the very model of the professional soldier, combat-tempered, well-schooled, a veteran of regular and irregular operations. He was brave. He assumed responsibility. And in an Army known for adaptability and improvisation, he was one of the more creative.

Unfortunately for this modern major general, John Singlaub failed to learn the singular lesson of the American military: Soldiers have no public politics.

Singlaub spoke out against policies promulgated by President Carter that the general considered weak or worse. Not once, but twice. Carelessly. In front of reporters. In 1978, after 35 years of good and true military service, he was forced to resign.

Conservative groups swept up a willing Singlaub. From the lecture circuit, he gravitated to the international arms market. He eventually became a business rival of Richard Secord, another ex-general peddling arms to the Nicaraguan Contras, but one with better White House connections.

Now, with the assistance of Reader’s Digest roving editor Malcolm McConnell, Singlaub recounts this career in his frank memoir of a contemporary soldier. This is not a particularly introspective work. Of Singlaub’s youth, for example, we learn only that he went to UCLA, Class of 1943, because he could not get an appointment to West Point. (His father was a Democrat in a Republican congressional district.)

Still, it is an exciting story, especially the first chapters dealing with Lt. Singlaub’s adventures in Brittany behind German lines in 1944, and the roving assignment he then drew in the China of the civil-war period.

Singlaub’s expertise in special operations led him from Korea to the Pentagon, to Indochina and back to Korea, to half a dozen duty stations here and abroad. He was the Cold Warrior incarnate.

As his career and book progress, Singlaub becomes increasingly critical of Communists and communism, without examining why that is so. That communist governments were totalitarian might explain it, but so too were the front men the United States propped up around the world: Chiang Kai-shek in China; Syngman Rhee in Korea; first Bao Dai, then Ngo Dinh Diem in Viet Nam; the Shah in Iran; Jose Napoleon Duarte in El Salvador; the ex-Somoza lackeys who headed the Contras.

All these men John Singlaub, the good soldier, labored to keep in power. It is not that he is blind to the faults of these authoritarians--to use Jeane Kirkpatrick’s newspeak. Blunt-spoken Singlaub can be critical even of those who share his political orientation. (His estimate of Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North, that icon of the right, is but a curled lip away from contemptuous.)

Whatever Singlaub the private man thought, for more than three decades, he kept it to himself. Gen. Singlaub followed orders. He was seemingly content, so long as the surrogates were anti-Communist. Only when President Carter wanted to withdraw one of the two U.S. divisions keeping the one-party Korean government in office did he speak out. When Singlaub similarly criticized surrender of the Panama Canal to the Panamanians, he again spoke up. And was gone.

The contradictions stand out; Singlaub does not appear to be a man for self-examination. And despite all of his independence, Singlaub and McConnell occasionally resort to the true conservative’s received truth, e.g., the American press is liberal in persuasion, unethical in practice, and cost the United States victory in Viet Nam.

In short, there is no more compelling theme here than militant anti-communism, the same sort of uncritical thinking that led the United States into Vietnam.

Singlaub’s book is particularly useful, however, in the last section, dealing with his free-lance provisioning of the Contras once he had resigned from the Army. Skirting U.S. laws, he twice hit up the Taiwanese government for $5 million. He provided arms at bargain prices to the Contras while the rival North-Secord-Hakim “enterprise” was coining big profits. Singlaub might have been more frank about his Israeli connections in this “Iran-gate” period, about the deals cut and the amount of government involvement. He is not; the full story of U.S.-Israel relations has yet to be told.

Singlaub’s book is particularly useful, however, in the last section, dealing with his free-lance provisioning of the Contras once he had resigned from the Army. Skirting U.S. laws, he twice hit up the Taiwanese government for $5 million. He provided arms at bargain prices to the Contras while the rival North-Secord-Hakim “enterprise” was coining big profits. Singlaub might have been more frank about his Israeli connections in this “Iran-gate” period, about the deals cut and the amount of government involvement. He is not; the full story of U.S.-Israel relations has yet to be told.

“Hazardous Duty” will intrigue military and diplomatic historians alike. Singlaub’s description of the evolution of unconventional warfare in the U.S. arsenal is engaging. For that reason, “Hazardous Duty” will intrigue military and diplomatic historians alike. Singlaub’s description of the evolution of unconventional warfare in the U.S. arsenal is engaging.

For that reason, “Hazardous Duty” also is dangerous. Soldiers and diplomats alike might be tempted to resort to low-level, low-visibility guerrilla warfare in lieu of diplomacy. And nowhere has unconventional warfare worked for the United States since World War II.

Nor can it. Successful guerrilla movements are by definition indigenous. The guerrilla cannot succeed unless the native people support the cause. It is not an exportable product.

Presidents, diplomats and generals have yet to grasp that simple fact.