CHAPTER 3

 

Is Civilian Control
of the Military Still an Issue?

Mackubin Thomas Owens

During the early 1990s, a number of influential observers argued that civilian control of the military was eroding. A serious “gap,” they contended, had opened up between the uniformed military, which was becoming more alienated from liberal civil society, and the civilians, who did not understand or respect the military and its nonliberal virtues. The military clashed repeatedly with the Clinton administration over the integration of openly homosexual recruits and the use of force for “constabulary” operations in the Balkans and elsewhere.[1]

Civil-military tensions did not end with the Clinton presidency. Although George W. Bush told the US military that help was on the way, the uniformed military and civilian leaders, especially Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, were constantly at odds over everything from “transformation” to the conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Many high-ranking officers opposed the “surge” in Iraq.[2]

Problems have continued during the administration of President Barack Obama. Most, if not all, military officers opposed the precipitous reduction of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan and the failure to reach a status of forces agreement (SOFA) with the Iraqi government, which would have allowed the United States to exert more influence in the country. An article in Rolling Stone led to the high profile resignation of the US commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.[3] Observers were shocked when Marine General James Mattis, commander of U.S. Central Command, was relieved in March of 2013, several months before he was scheduled to retire.[4] In April of 2014, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, announced that he would retire a year before he was scheduled to leave his post, reportedly due to serious disagreements with his civilian superiors.[5]

Declining budgets exacerbated the tensions between a military that believed the administration was hostile to the military and an administration that seemed not to trust the uniformed military. In September of 2013, retired Army Major General Robert Scales penned an op-ed for the Washington Post claiming that serving officers “are embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of the Obama administration’s attempts to craft a plan that makes strategic sense. None of the White House staff has any experience in war or understands it.”[6] The public largely concurs. Fifty-two percent of Americans believe that political leaders are not very or not at all knowledgeable about the modern military (CM2T 15).[7]

These sorts of events led the eminent military historian Richard Kohn to observe in 2002 that “in recent years civilian control of the military has weakened in the United States and is threatened today” to the point “where it could alter the character of American government and undermine national defense.”[8] Kohn’s claim raises several questions. First, is civil-military tension in the United States only a recent phenomenon? Second, is civilian control threatened to the extent that Kohn claims? And finally, what are the future prospects for civil-military affairs in general and civilian control of the military in particular?

Poll data support public unease about these questions. Americans are concerned about the military’s lack of confidence in the country’s political leadership. Some 68.4 percent believe that it is hurting effectiveness while only 3.2 percent believe that it is not happening (CM2T 65). However, significant majorities of Americans also support the idea that the military should be able publicly and privately to voice their concerns with the president’s Afghanistan policy to Congress and the public if it disagrees (CM2T 76–78). Additionally, a majority of Americans support the idea that military leaders, when faced with an order that they perceive to be unwise, should be permitted to attempt to persuade civilian leaders to change their minds, inform other civilian or military officials who disagree with the policy about the order, or appeal the matter to a higher authority even if it means circumventing the chain of command (CM2T 82, 83, 86).

This chapter seeks to demonstrate that US civil-military tensions are nothing new. Instead they are the result of a civil-military bargain that is being constantly renegotiated as circumstances change. Civilian control of the military is indeed still an issue but one whose resolution will depend on the respective attitudes of civilians and the uniformed military. Too often during both the Bush and Obama administrations, civilians and soldiers have demonstrated a profound lack of trust in one another. History demonstrates that, ultimately, healthy civil-­military relations depend on mutual trust.

Civil-Military Relations
and Civilian Control of the Military

Civilian control of the military is an important aspect of civil-military relations, although not the only one.[9] The term “civil-military relations” refers broadly to the interaction among the armed forces of a state as an institution, the government, and the other sectors of the society in which the armed force is embedded and has much to say about the allocation of responsibilities and prerogatives between the civil government and the military establishment. Civil-military relations can be seen as “two hands on the sword”: the military hand, which keeps the sword ready for combat and wields it during war, and the civil hand, which draws it in pursuit of the policy goals of the state.[10]

Civil-military relations as a whole can be viewed through two lenses. The first is an institutional lens, which draws a clear line between elected and appointed civilian leaders on the one hand and the uniformed military on the other. The institutional lens is the perspective of the political scientist. In this view, the purpose of the state is to protect the individual rights of its citizens and the purpose of the military is to protect liberal society. The institutional lens characterizes the view of the late Samuel Huntington and his many followers.[11]

A competing perspective, prominent in the work of Morris Janowitz and his followers, is the “sociological” lens, which studies the relations between individuals and groups in both civil society and the military. The normative quest of those who favor the sociological lens is toward “civic virtue,” engaging citizens in the activity of public life, hence their emphasis on the citizen soldier.[12]

Elsewhere I have argued that civil-military relations can be seen as a bargain, the goal of which is to allocate prerogatives and responsibilities between the civilian leadership on the one hand and the military on the other.[13] There are three parties to the bargain: the American people, the government, and the military establishment. Periodically, the civil-military bargain must be renegotiated to take account of political, social, technological, or geopolitical changes.

For much of its early history, the military was a peripheral institution in the United States. It was mobilized for war but was kept small in size during peacetime and deployed away from the view of most Americans, either on the frontier or abroad. It was not until World War II that the US military became a central institution in America. Another renegotiation of the civil-military bargain occurred with the onset of the cold war. As nuclear weapons and deterrence moved to the forefront of US security policy, the uniformed military for the most part was displaced by civilian strategists, who placed limits on military action in both Korea and Vietnam. As the flaws in deterrence theory became more apparent, the uniformed military made its presence felt in developing realistic conventional warfighting options designed to prevail at the operational level of war, for example, the army-air force doctrine of follow-on-forces attack and AirLand Battle for dealing with the Soviet conventional superiority in Europe and the navy’s maritime strategy.

Another renegotiation took place after the cold war and the first Persian Gulf War, which validated the US military’s operational doctrine. But in the 1990s, the US military reluctantly took on more and more constabulary operations, for example, in the Balkans, even as it preferred to focus on a quick victory in a conventional war. Arguably 9/11 led to another civil-military debate as the United States entered a period of protracted conflict in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Some have expressed concern that, as efficient and effective as the US all-volunteer force has been on the battlefield, it constitutes a small percentage of the population that is culturally distinct from America at large. Indeed, 82.3 percent of Americans and their ­immediate family members have not served since 9/11; thus, the tenor of the debate will be different from previous renegotiations (CM2T 2). The question today is whether there will be another renegotiation of the civil-military bargain in America.

Some may question whether the idea of a civil-military bargain is compatible with what most Americans, including the uniformed military, understand to be civilian control. Is the military not subordinate to civilian decision makers? Is such subordination not at odds with the idea of negotiating a civil-military bargain? Eliot Cohen, a student of Sam Huntington and one of the most influential writers on civil-­military relations, has called American civil-military relations an “unequal dialogue,”[14] by which he means that civilian policymakers ultimately have the final say. And Peter Feaver, another prominent expert on civil-military relations has argued that civilian leaders have “the right to be right”—and, by extension, the right to be wrong.[15]

In the main, both Cohen and Feaver are correct. But as Andrew Bacevich has argued, “the dirty little secret of American civil-military relations, by no means unique to the [Clinton] administration, is that the commander in chief does not command the military establishment; he cajoles it, negotiates with it, and, as necessary, appeases it.”[16]

Richard Kohn has echoed this point. He writes, “In theory, civilians have the authority to issue virtually any order and organize the military in any fashion they choose. But in practice, the relationship is much more complex. Both sides frequently disagree among themselves. Further, the military can evade or circumscribe civilian authority by framing the alternatives or tailoring their advice or predicting nasty consequences; by leaking information or appealing to public opinion . . . or by approaching friends in Congress for support.”[17] But these sorts of actions do not signal a crisis in civilian control as much as the sort of renegotiation that has characterized US civil-military relations since the beginning of the Republic. In addition, the idea that there is something inappropriate about the military appealing to Congress ignores the point that the legislative branch is a central component of civilian control.

The key to healthy civil-military relations is trust on both the civilian and military sides of the negotiation: the civilians must trust the military to provide its best and most objective advice but then carry out any policy that the civilian decision makers ultimately choose. The military must trust the civilians to give a fair hearing to military advice and not reject it out of hand, especially for transparently political reasons. Civilians must also understand that dissent is not the same as disobedience.

Unfortunately, data about elite civilian opinion regarding military advice do not bode well for such trust. For example, the YouGov data suggest that the civilian elite population has a significant distrust of the military. Some 43.4 percent of elites believe that the US military has different values from the rest of the American public; 61.7 percent believe that the military’s increasing involvement in nonmilitary affairs hurts effectiveness; and only 13.3 percent believe that there is not a lack of public trust in the uniformed leaders of the military (CM2T 18, 56, 58).

Civilian Control: Theory and Practice

How do we ensure civilian control of the military establishment? In his watershed study of civil-military relations, Samuel Huntington identified two broad approaches, “subjective” and “objective” control.[18] The first approach advocates controlling the military by maximizing the power of civilians, be it by means of authority, influence, or ideology. Subjective control can be achieved through government institutions, social class, or constitutional form, for example, democracy. But totalitarian regimes have controlled the military by pitting one part against another: the SS versus the Wehrmacht in Nazi Germany; “political” officers in the USSR. While civilian control is maximized, the military may be weakened to the point that its effectiveness is adversely affected.

Huntington preferred the second approach, which maximizes military professionalism. On the one hand, civilian authorities grant a professional officer corps autonomy in the realm of military affairs. On the other, “a highly professional officer corps stands ready to carry out the wishes of any civilian group which secures legitimate authority within the state.” Eliot Cohen calls this the “Normal” theory of civil-military relations but notes that this approach is by no means the norm in American history, even in recent times.[19]

Although the debate over civilian control entered the public consciousness in the 1990s, civil-military tensions in the United States are nothing new. Just because the United States has never suffered a coup does not necessarily mean that civil-military relations are healthy. This has been true from the very beginning of the Republic. For instance, in 1783 with the Continental Army encamped at Newburgh, New York, some officers attempted to persuade others to take unspecified actions against the Continental Congress in response to the failure of that body to pay the soldiers. When George Washington got wind of the plot, he unexpectedly confronted the dissatisfied officers during a meeting. His demeanor defused the near mutiny and—along with his return of his commission after the end of the war—helped to cement in the minds of American officers ever since the sacred idea of civilian control.

Such tensions continued during the early Republic. After the Amer­ican Revolution there was a spirited debate between Federalists and Republicans regarding the desirability of a permanent military establishment. Prominent Federalists including Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and Henry Knox favored a standing army or at least a uniformed militia, but the “genius” of the people made such an establishment impossible. It was a matter of faith for Americans that standing armies were a threat to liberty and that the militia in the form of a “people numerous and armed” was the only acceptable way to defend a republic. This vision of the militia was never completely true, but it took the debacle of the War of 1812 to disabuse the American people of their attachment to a militia.[20]

In 1818, Creeks, Seminoles, and escaped slaves launched a series of attacks on Americans from sanctuaries in Spanish Florida. General Andrew Jackson, acting on the basis of questionable authority, invaded Florida, not only attacking and burning Seminole villages but also capturing a Spanish fort at St. Marks. He also executed two British citizens whom he had accused of aiding the marauders. Most of President James Monroe’s cabinet, especially Secretary of War John Calhoun, wanted Jackson’s head, but Secretary of State John Quincy Adams came to Jackson’s defense, contending that the United States should not apologize for Jackson’s preemptive expedition but insist that Spain either garrison Florida with enough forces to prevent marauders from entering the United States or ‘‘cede to the United States a province . . . which is in fact derelict, open to the occupancy of every enemy, civilized or savage, of the United States, and serving no other earthly purpose than as a post of annoyance to them.’’ As Adams had written earlier, it was his opinion ‘‘that the marauding parties . . . ought to be broken up immediately.”[21]

During the Mexican War, President James Polk, a Democrat, feuded constantly with his generals in field, both of whom were Whigs with presidential aspirations. Both Major General Zachary Taylor and Major General Winfield Scott did not hesitate to criticize the president’s policy, strategy, and leadership while conducting the military operations in Mexico.[22] Such behavior on the part of general officers would be unthinkable today. Their public criticism of Polk adumbrated Major General George B. McClellan’s similar public denunciations of Lincoln during the Civil War.[23]

Civil-military tensions persisted into Reconstruction and the era of westward expansion of the United States. During the election of 1920, General Leonard Wood, who had already served as general in chief of the army, campaigned for the Republican presidential nomination while in uniform.

Of course, we are much more familiar with the problems of civil-military relations during the Truman administration, with the firing of General Douglas MacArthur, and the recent events during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama presidencies. So in fact, civilian control does continue to be an issue, but it is far from a recent problem, reflecting the fact that while the uniformed military has internalized the concept of civilian control, the actual “line” between civilians and the military is itself an issue for negotiation.

Any discussion of civilian control must take into account that it involves not only the executive branch but Congress as well. The fact is that the two branches vie for dominance in the military realm. While the president has constitutional authority as commander in chief of the military, Congress retains the power of the purse and is therefore the “force planner of last resort.” Nonetheless, the decentralized nature of Congress gives the president and the executive branch an advantage when it comes to military affairs. Ironically, Congress further strengthened the executive’s hand by enacting the Goldwater-Nichols [Department of Defense Reorganization] Act in 1986.[24]

In addition, any discussion of US civil-military relations must recognize that historically, civil-military disputes usually do not pit civilians per se against the military. Instead, these disputes involve one civil-military faction against another.[25] For instance, shortly after World War II, civil-military tensions were inflamed by the debate between the newly established air force and the navy regarding long-range air power, in particular, strategic bombers. On the one hand, Harry Truman, his secretary of defense, Louis Johnson, and certain members of Congress favored the air force’s long-range B-36 bomber. On the other hand, the navy and its supporters in Congress and the press advocated on behalf of that service’s proposed supercarrier, the USS United States.

These sorts of factional debates have persisted into our own time. For instance, the choice of the air force’s A-10 Warthog land-attack aircraft over its competitors pitted the congressional delegations of several states and both the civilian and uniformed leadership of the three military departments against one another. A similar situation arose in the case of the Marine Corps’s V-22 Osprey, with the Marines, the Department of the Navy, and several congressional delegations arrayed against very powerful opponents within the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD). The creation of Special Operations Command (SOCOM) also occurred despite strong opposition from the services as well as OSD. It was an alliance between an assortment of “guerrillas” within the Department of Defense and some very dedicated congressional advocates that saw the reorganization come to fruition.[26]

As budgets decline, such disputes among various factions are likely to be the main arena of civil-military discord. Although it is common to attribute the decline in interservice disputes to the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986, the more likely reason is that as defense budgets increased beginning in the early 1980s, each of the services got most—if not all—of what they requested. We should hope that declining defense budgets do not presage a return to the “bad old days” of the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Even the alleged textbook case of a civil-military crisis, Truman’s firing of MacArthur, is more complex than it appears at first sight. In fact there was military support for the firing: both George Marshall and Dwight Eisenhower urged Truman to fire him, while Republicans in Congress supported MacArthur.

The Character of Military Advice
and the “Calculus of Dissent”

The uniformed military is obligated to provide its best professional advice to civilian policymakers. Officers are obligated to offer this advice forcefully, but this does not mean they have the right to insist that their advice be followed. History shows that the military is not always right, even regarding strictly military affairs. Moreover, officers are not elected, whereas political leaders who are have legitimacy in making trade-offs for society. Nonetheless, dissent is not disobedience: there must be a “calculus of dissent.”[27]

Americans largely understand and support this calculus. The ­public—and perhaps surprisingly elites even more so—supports the concept of officers dissenting from orders that they deem unwise in a variety of manners, including trying to convince superiors to change their minds and referring the matter to an inspector general (CM2T 82, 83, 87). However, this support is not without reservations; in cases where the officer leaks the matter to the press or refuses to carry out the order even when faced with a court-martial, the public does not approve and elites are less supportive than the general public (CM2T 85, 88).

Healthy civil-military relations involve a trust relationship between civilians and the uniformed military, at least when service in the military is a true profession worthy of being granted significant autonomy and a unique role in its relationship with civilian policymakers due to specialized knowledge and expertise. Otherwise, the military is little more than just one more obedient bureaucracy within the executive branch. The difference between a profession and a merely obedient bureaucracy is important when we consider the character of military dissent.

A member of a bureaucracy has no legal right to dissent. The choice in a disagreement is either “salute and obey” or resign. But a profession must provide a set of alternatives beyond either “loyalty” or “exit.” As Albert Hirschman argues, the institutionalization of greater “voice,” that is, dissent, can help stem massive exits. If the military is truly a profession, then dissent—although not disobedience—is necessarily an option when an officer disagrees with the policies of civilian leaders.[28] But such dissent should take place during the debate leading up to a final decision. Once a decision is made, the military is obligated to abide by it.

Several years ago, Lieutenant General Greg Newbold (Ret.) of the U.S. Marine Corps, wrote: “I offer a challenge to those still in uniform: a leader’s responsibility is to give voice to those who can’t—or don’t have the opportunity to—speak. . . . It is time for some military leaders to discard caution in expressing their views and ensure that the President hears them clearly.”[29] Of course, many observers pointed out that Newbold’s advice would have been more persuasive had he offered it while still on active duty.

Newbold’s op-ed was a part of an episode dubbed “the revolt of the generals” in the spring of 2006, which saw a number of retired army and Marine Corps generals publicly and harshly criticize the Bush administration’s conduct of the Iraq War and call for the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[30] Following the 2006 election, President Bush asked for Rumsfeld’s resignation and opted to change course in Iraq, initiating what came to be known as the “surge.”

What about resignation in response to a policy with which an officer disagrees? Many argue that resignation was the proper response of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who disagreed with the policy and strategy of the Vietnam War pushed by Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. This is the purported lesson of the very influential book by H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty.[31] Many serving officers believe that this book makes the case that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have more openly voiced their opposition to the Johnson administration’s strategy of gradualism during the Vietnam War and then resigned rather than carry out the policy.

But the book says no such thing. While McMaster convincingly argues that the chiefs failed to present their views frankly and forcefully to their civilian superiors, including members of Congress when asked for their views, he neither says nor implies that the chiefs should have obstructed President Lyndon Johnson’s orders and policies through leaks or public statements, or by resigning.[32]

Richard Kohn has made the strongest argument against resignation as a legitimate response to a policy disagreement between the uniformed military and civilians, contending that “personal and professional honor do not require a request for reassignment or retirement if civilians order one’s service, command, or unit to act in some manner an officer finds distasteful, disastrous, or even immoral. The military’s job is to advise and then execute lawful orders. . . . If officers at various levels measure policies, decisions, orders, and operations against personal moral and ethical systems, and act thereon, the good order and discipline of the military would collapse.”[33] However, a plurality of Americans disagree with Kohn: 43.9 percent believe that it is appropriate to retire or leave the service in protest, while 26.9 percent believe it is inappropriate and 29.2 percent are unsure (CM2T 84).

But what alternatives are available? Several commentators, including Leonard Wong, Douglas Lovelace, and Don Snider, have provided some thoughtful guidance on the issue. Wong and Lovelace contend that the proper response depends on two variables: the magnitude of the threat to national security resulting from the disputed policy and the degree of civilian resistance to military advice.[34] Snider offers a similar but broader array of variables: the gravity of the issue; the relevance of one’s expertise to the dissent; the degree of sacrifice that one’s dissent entails; the timing of the dissent; and the dissenter’s authenticity as a leader.[35] Obviously, resignation must remain an option, although one that should never be orchestrated for political reasons.

Public Attitudes and Implications
for Civilian Control of the Military

In The Soldier and the State, Samuel Huntington argued that a source of civil-military tensions is the clash between the dominant liberalism of the United States, which tends toward an antimilitary outlook, and the “conservative” mind of military officers.[36] Part of this conservative mindset is a focus on military effectiveness or what Huntington calls the functional imperative, which stresses virtues that differ from those favored by liberal society at large—which he called the societal imperative. Huntington further argued that while American liberalism accepted the need for an effective military during wartime, it tended to turn against the military during peacetime, trying to force it more into line with liberal values. He contended that in peacetime the dominant liberalism of the United States sought extirpation of the military but, recognizing that even liberal society needs a military, liberal civilians would settle for transmutation, which seeks to supplant the functional imperative with the societal one.[37]

It is clear that the American military must take account of societal considerations, no matter the demands of the functional imperative. We return to the idea of civil-military relations as a bargain that must periodically be renegotiated. Thus, in 1993, President Bill Clinton’s proposal to permit military service by openly homosexual recruits was rejected by Congress, indeed, a Congress controlled by his own party. The legislative branch accepted the view of the uniformed military that service by those who are openly homosexual would undermine the military’s functional imperative. The result was a veto-proof law prohibiting such service. But two decades later, Congress repealed that same law, reflecting the case that the attitude of Americans regarding this issue had clearly changed in the interim, as evidenced in the YouGov poll in which 54.5 percent of Americans strongly or somewhat agreed with homosexuals serving openly in the military (CM2T 54). Some 46.1 percent say it is relevant if most men in the infantry oppose homosexuals serving openly in the military, 34.5 percent say it is irrelevant, and 19.4 percent are unsure (CM2T 55).

In November of 2015, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter announced that all military specialties, including the infantry and special operations, are open to women. American public opinion is generally supportive of the move. Some 58 percent of Americans currently somewhat or strongly disagree with excluding women from serving in the infantry (CM2T 52). Yet 45.8 percent believe that it is relevant if most men in the infantry oppose women joining the infantry, 31 percent believe it is irrelevant, and 23.2 percent are not sure (CM2T 53).

Clearly, the outcome of the civil-military bargain depends on the contrasting attitudes of the military and civilians. Until recently, the best available data regarding such attitudes came from a 1993 survey conducted by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) in North Carolina. This study was undertaken in response to the claim that a serious “gap” between civilian and military attitudes had arisen, making the US military dangerously alienated from the society it served.[38]

The study confirmed the fact that civilians and members of the uniformed military possessed different views of the world and that the military’s had diverged considerably from those of civilians over a twenty-year period. For instance, by 1993, the officer corps had become less politically liberal and more conservative than in the late 1970s. In 1976, 16 percent identified themselves as either somewhat or very liberal. In 1993, only 3 percent of officers identified themselves as somewhat liberal. Meanwhile, the percentage of officers identifying themselves as conservative increased from 61 percent to 73 percent. According to the recent YouGov poll, only 11 percent of Americans think that people serving in the military are somewhat or much more likely to vote Democratic in elections (CM1T 40). On the civilian side, a smaller percentage had any awareness of, or experience with, the military. At present, only 7 percent of the public say that they are not at all familiar with the military and 23 percent say not very familiar (CM1T 39).

Of more concern is the increase in partisanship. The percentage of officers calling themselves independents declined while those identifying themselves as Republicans increased. In 1976, the figures were independents 46 percent and Republicans 33 percent. Two decades later the numbers had flipped: only 22 percent identified as independents while 67 percent identified as Republicans.[39] Of course, there is a reason for this: the perception that liberals and Democrats were antimilitary, a theme that can be traced to the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Since the TISS survey, the number of civilian veterans who self-report as Republicans has remained relatively stable (36.95 percent to 33.06 percent), according to the YouGov results. At the same time, there has been a decrease in the number of Democrats (31.03 percent to 18.55 percent) and an increase in independents (27.59 percent to 39.52 percent). However in terms of ideology, the number of veterans who self-report as conservative has increased (33.16 percent to 45.16 percent) and so has the spread between veterans and nonveterans (4.63 percent to 28.49 percent).

The origins of a growing partisanship on the part of the military notwithstanding, many observers have expressed the fear that the result of this increasing partisanship will be an officer corps that sees its role as going beyond merely advising civilian decision makers to instead insisting that its recommendations be followed. An example is the very public “warning shot” that General Colin Powell, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, fired regarding the Clinton administration’s potential involvement in the Balkans and the army’s purported resistance to constabulary operation in the Balkans and elsewhere.[40] Indeed, one of the TISS study’s major findings confirmed this view. There have been no studies of military attitudes since the TISS study, but anecdotal evidence, for example, the aforementioned revolt of the generals, suggests that this attitude has only hardened in response to the impact of fifteen years at war. The problem of this trend among military officers clearly has implications for civilian control of the military.

What of the civilian side? What are civilian attitudes toward the military after two wars and what do they portend for civilian control in the future? Surveys conducted by YouGov provide data that offer some interesting possibilities, especially in light of Huntington’s discussions of the clash between the “conservativism” of the military officer, on the one hand, and American liberal society, on the other, and how this plays out in terms of “extirpation” and “transmutation,” both of which seek to reshape the military along the lines of Huntington’s “societal” rather than “functional” imperative. Huntington’s discussion strongly suggests that tensions between the military and civilians will be greater the more liberal the civilians.

For instance, the data from the YouGov survey is instructive. A majority of those who self-identify as “very liberal” do not believe that military leaders share the same values as the American people at large. For “liberals” the percentage of individuals who believe that they do not is nearly the same. Nearly a half of “moderates” and a substantial majority of both “conservatives” and the “very conservative” do believe that military leaders share the same values as the American people (CM2T 16). It also reveals that over a third of those that call themselves “very liberal” believe the military gets more respect than it deserves (CM2T 14).

Answers to question 19 reveal that “liberals” see the values of the military as being less progressive than those of the society at large. This is true of “conservatives” as well but they no doubt see this as a virtue rather than a vice, presumably because conservatives tend to oppose service by those who are openly homosexual and access to such military specialties as infantry and special operations forces for women (CM2T).

The survey also shows shows that nearly a third of all those who believe that military values are less progressive than those of the American people at large attribute it to the sort of people that the military attracts: those with less progressive views (CM2T 20). This in some respects validates Huntington’s idea of a conservative military mindset. Critics of the military often contend that people join the military because they have no other economic options, but it is more likely the case that most in the military are motivated by some degree of patriotism and a sense of service. Those who do are more likely to possess or seek the traditional virtues normally associated with military service in the public mind: discipline, loyalty, courage, honor, and self-sacrifice.

This seems to be the consensus of survey respondents, large majorities of whom, both “liberals” and “conservatives,” see the military as socially conservative (CM2T 21). Yet answers to question 24 illustrates that by large majorities all ideological groups, including the most liberal and conservative segments of the population, believe a military isolated from America at large is a bad thing (CM2T).

There is a divergence of opinion between “liberals” and “conservatives” when it comes to the issue of “fairness” towards women, with liberals seeing the military as treating women less fairly than American society at large does (CM2T 25). Surprisingly, there are no data regarding the question of fairness with respect to minorities, although the survey shows that all groups, but especially “conservatives,” believe that there are more opportunities for minorities in the military than elsewhere in American society. Significantly more than 50 percent of African-Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities believe that the military is either more, or about as, fair as the rest of society in terms of promotions and recognition, the opportunity to excel, the opportunity for self-improvement, the opportunity for respect, and middle-class status.[41] Some 48.7 percent of Americans believe that the military offers more opportunity than the rest of society for minorities while 34.3 percent say about the same, 6.9 percent say less, and 10.1 percent are unsure (CM2T 33).

Huntington’s thesis suggests that the more politically liberal an administration is, the more likely it will be to favor the societal over the functional imperative. The implication of this thesis is that the attitudes toward the military of those in power will be reflected in policies toward the military. The more liberal an administration, the more likely its policies will tend toward “extirpation”—severely cutting force structure—in peacetime and severe “transmutation”—trying to force the military more into line with liberal values—during wartime, which will engender some degree of military pushback against that policy.

Most people would regard the Obama administration as very liberal. In light of Huntington’s categories, the data from the YouGov survey suggest that with such an administration, civil-military relations in general and civilian control of the military in particular will be problematic, and this indeed seems to be the case.

A very liberal administration is likely to base its military and security policies on ideas that the uniformed military will find hard to accept. Based on Huntington’s thesis, one would postulate that an administration that shares the “very liberal” attitudes reflected in the data from the YouGov survey is likely to pursue a policy of extirpation in its approach to the military. This seems to be borne out by the evidence. On the one hand, the Obama administration has failed to develop a strategy for dealing with events in the world, including the emergence of ISIS, Iran’s nuclear ambitions and its quest for regional hegemony, Russian aggression against Ukraine, and a rising China (the so-called Asia Pivot has not materialized for lack of resources and events throughout the rest of the world). On the other hand, the defense budget has declined precipitously, and force structure has contracted to levels not seen in decades.

Contending that it has ended two wars and that the world has little need of US military force, the Obama administration has made its real push for extirpation in the realm of social change. Its first success was in the repeal of the law banning service by those who are openly homosexual. Of course that action reflected changes in public opinion regarding homosexuality. The Obama administration has now begun to open all military specialties to women, who were excluded from service in the infantry and special operations forces. In one respect, this is a continuation of a trend that has been at work for some time. The military has been providing more and more opportunities for women, but the line has traditionally been drawn at the infantry and special operations forces.

While there have been calls to open these specialties for some time now, those urging such steps were always seen to be on the margins of the debate, for example, feminist academics waging a war on military culture, decrying its “masculinist military construct” that favors the “hypermasculine male.” For instance, in her article “By Force of Arms: Rape, War and Military Culture” for the February 1996 issue of the Duke Law Review, Madeline Morris wrote that there was much to be gained and little to be lost by “changing this aspect of military culture from a masculinist vision of unalloyed aggressivity to an ungendered vision.”[42]

But in early 2013, former defense secretary Leon Panetta set a deadline of January 2016 for the services to integrate women fully. Critics of the mandate are concerned that this full integration of women will be achieved only by lowering standards. The services most affected by the mandate, the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, have stated that they will not lower the standards, but the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, opened the door to double standards when he said in January 2013, “if we do decide that a particular standard is so high that a woman couldn’t make it, the burden is now on the service to come back and explain to the secretary, why is it that high? Does it really have to be that high?”[43]

The issue of women in the infantry has already generated pushback from military officers who believe that their leaders may succumb to political pressure rather than defending what they believe to be the traditional virtues of the military. The Marine Corps in particular was very vocal in its opposition to opening infantry positions to women. This affair will be a major test for civilian control on both the civilian and military side. Will the military simply acquiesce in establishing double standards, violating a key component of military culture—fairness? Will officers either salute and obey or leave the service, or will they exercise a “calculus of dissent?” Will the civilian leadership accept the advice of those who object to the elevation of the societal imperative over the functional; who believe that the full integration of women into the military will be counterproductive if standards are compromised?

The answer will ultimately be decided by the third party to the civil-military bargain: the American people. History has shown that the military can defend its prerogatives only to the extent that they are not completely at odds with public opinion. As Abraham Lincoln remarked in his first debate with Stephen Douglas (1858), in a republic such as ours, public opinion is everything: “He who moulds ­public sentiment, goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to be executed.”

But it is possible that the military’s increasing isolation from civilian society, combined with a high level of public ignorance regarding the military,[44] gives political leaders greater latitude in this realm, independent of public opinion. This is further exacerbated by political leaders who do not engage the public on security affairs.

The Future of Civilian Control
of the Military in America

Civilian control of the military is safe in America, mainly resulting from a combination of institutional and normative constraints and military professionalism. There is no danger of anything approaching a military coup in the United States, and many of the concerns that commentators raised beginning in the 1990s were not so much indications of a crisis in civil-military relations as they were manifestations of the reality that the civil-military bargain in America is frequently renegotiated. In addition, most of the concerns projected in the 1990s are not borne out by the data in the YouGov polls. But a potential danger arises from the combination of the military’s isolation from civilian society and the possibility that more and more officers will see their role as insisting that civilians follow their advice.

The main change in circumstances that has led to civil-military tensions since the election of Barack Obama in 2008 is that his administration reflects the attitudes of what the YouGov survey labels the “very liberal.” It is to be expected that the conservative mindset that Huntington attributed to the military would be at odds with the very liberal Obama administration over issues from the use of force to the integration of women.

While relations between the uniformed military and the Obama administration are very likely to remain strained, the military will make its case to its other civilian master, the Congress. Despite the fact that Congress itself strengthened the hand of the executive by passing the Goldwater-Nichols Act, the military has the right to make its case to the legislative branch and it no doubt will, very strongly. Of course, this assumes that Congress actually provides a balance to counter a liberal administration. But even with Republican majorities in both houses of Congress after the 2014 election, this has not proven to be the case.

A danger for the military, of course, is that officers who dissent will be pushed aside for those who are more compliant. Those who argue that healthy civil-military relations are characterized by comity and a low number of disagreements between civilian and military decision makers ignore or discount the possibility that this may be the result of promoting yes men who are politically safe and who will not really fulfill their obligation to provide their best military advice as forcefully as possible.

The Obama administration has demonstrated that it is willing to curtail independence on the part of its high-ranking officers. Of course, a president has every right to choose the generals and admirals he wants, but it is also the case that he usually then gets the generals and admirals he deserves. If a president indicates by his actions that he does not want smart, independently minded generals who speak candidly to their civilian leaders, the message that generals and admirals may receive is that they should go along to get along. Nothing could be worse for the health of US civil-military relations.

It is undeniable that American civil-military relations have been healthiest when there is a high level of trust between civilian and military leaders, that is, when there is mutual respect and understanding between them that leads to the exchange of candid views and perspectives between the two parties as part of the decision-making process. Examples of healthy US civil-military relations include Lincoln and Grant during the Civil War, Franklin Roosevelt and George Marshall during World War II, and the tenure of Robert Gates during the last part of the George W. Bush administration.

On the one hand, the military must have a voice in strategy making, while realizing that politics permeates the conduct of war and that civilians have the final say, not only concerning the goals of the war but also how it is conducted. On the other hand, civilians must understand that to implement effective policy and strategy requires the proper military instrument and therefore must insist that soldiers present their views frankly and forcefully throughout the strategy-making and implementation process. This is the key to healthy civil-military relations.

A number of factors will influence US civil-military relations in the future. One is the participation gap, the fact that less than one percent of the population now serves in the military. It is unlikely that the military will return to being a “peripheral” institution in America, its status before World War II. But of all the civil-military “gaps” that observers have identified over the past two and a half decades, the participation gap is by far the most consequential.

The US military is a largely middle-class organization, reflecting the attitudes and virtues of that demographic, but as fewer and fewer Americans serve in the military, the mutual trust that is necessary for healthy civil-military relations may well erode, raising the specter of praetorianism in the military of the sort that haunted France in the 1950s and 1960s as a result of the French military’s experiences in Indochina and Algeria. Some observers detected at least a hint of praetorianism on the part of members of General McChrystal’s staff as they took pleasure in calling themselves “Team America” in the infamous Rolling Stone article that led to the general’s resignation.[45]

Disaffected praetorianism may well arise from the fact that the US military has fought two prolonged conflicts over the last decade and a half, and although civilians have been happy to say to soldiers “thank you for your service,” they have largely been unaffected by these wars. The disparity in sacrifice between the uniformed military and civilians has left some veterans bitter. A cohort of disaffected veterans cannot help but contribute to a lack of trust, which will make the maintenance of healthy civil-military relations difficult in the future. Attempts to “buy” veterans with generous entitlements is likely to fail. The best way to gain or retain the trust of veterans is to ensure that they receive “genuine gratitude. Not sympathy or pedestals; but real gratitude. . . . Every civilian should understand that the veteran has done nothing less, and also nothing more, than what is sometimes required to maintain liberty.”[46]

Notes

1. Lindsay Cohn, “The Evolution of the Civil-Military ‘Gap’ Debate,” paper prepared for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies Project on the Gap between Military and Civilian Society, 1999.

2. David Margolick, “The Night of the Generals,” Vanity Fair, March 13, 2007.

3. Scott Wilson and Michael Shear, “Gen. McChrystal Dismissed as Top US Commander in Afghanistan,” Washington Post, June 24, 2010.

4. Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Obama Dumps a Smart, Independently Minded General,” Weekly Standard, January 22, 2013, http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/obama-dumps-smart-independently-minded-general_697440.html.

5. Greg Miller and Adam Goldman, “Head of Pentagon Intelligence Agency Forced Out, Officials Say,” Washington Post, April 30, 2014.

6. Robert Scales, “US Military Planners Don’t Support War with Syria,” Washington Post, September 5, 2013. Cf. the reply by David Barno, “US War Decisions Rightfully belong to Elected Civilian Leaders, Not the Military,” Washington Post, September 12, 2013.

7. References to the YouGov data by question number appear in parentheses throughout this essay with the abbreviations CM1T and CM2T indicating the 2013 and 2014 surveys, respectively. The complete results are available at http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-1 (CM1T) and http://www.hoover.org/warriors-and-citizens-crosstabs-2 (CM2T).

8. Richard Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the United States Today,” Naval War College Review, Summer 2002, p. 9.

9. The others are (1) the influence of the military on society at large, (2) the role of the military, (3) ensuring military effectiveness, and (4) who serves. See Mackubin Thomas Owens, US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain, New York: Continuum, 2011, and “What Military Officers Need to Know about Civil-Military Relations,” Naval War College Review, Spring 2012.

10. Vincent Brooks et al., Two Hands on the Sword: A Study of Political-Military Relations in National Security Policy, Carlisle, PA: Army War College, 1999.

11. Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957.

12. Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait, New York: Free Press, 1960.

13. Owens, US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11.

14. Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime, New York: Anchor, 2002, p. 247.

15. Peter Feaver, “The Right to be Right,” International Security, Spring 2011.

16. Andrew Bacevich, “Discord Still: Clinton and the Military,” Washington Post, January 3, 1999, p. C1.

17. Kohn, “Erosion of Civilian Control,” pp. 15, 16.

18. Huntington, Soldier and the State, pp. 80–85.

19. Cohen, Supreme Command, p. 4.

20. Lawrence Delbert Cress, Citizens in Arms: The Army and Militia in American Society to the War of 1812, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1982.

21. Letter to Luis d’ Onis, July 23, 1818, in Worthington Chauncey Ford, Writings of John Quincy Adams, 1914, vol. 6, pp. 386–94; letter to James Monroe, July 8, 1818, ibid., p. 304.

22. John C. Pinheiro, Manifest Ambition: James K. Polk and Civil Military Relations during the Mexican War, Westport, CT: Praeger, 2007.

23. Mackubin Thomas Owens, Abraham Lincoln: Leadership and Democratic Statesmanship in Wartime, Philadelphia: Foreign Policy Research Institute, 2009, pp. 30–33.

24. Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Force Planning: The Crossroads of Strategy and the Political Process,” Orbis, Summer 2015.

25. I am indebted to Donald B. Connelly for this observation. See his book John M. Schofield and the Politics of Generalship, Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006, p. xii.

26. Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Congress and the Creation of SOCOM,” Naval War College faculty paper, May 2013.

27. Owens, US Civil-Military Relations after 9/11, pp. 62–70.

28. Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1970.

29. Greg Newbold, “Why Iraq Was a Mistake,” Time, April 17, 2006.

30. David Cloud and Eric Schmitt, “More Retired Generals Call for Rumsfeld Resignation,” New York Times, April 14, 2006, and Margolick, “Night of the Generals.”

31. H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies that Led to Vietnam, New York: Harper Collins, 1997.

32. Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, p. 54.

33. Richard Kohn, “Building Trust: Civil-Military Behaviors for Effective National Security,” in Suzanne Nielson and Don Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009, p. 282.

34. Leonard Wong and Douglas Lovelace, “Knowing When to Salute,” Orbis, Spring 2008.

35. Don Snider, “Dissent and Strategic Leadership of the Military Profession,” Orbis, Spring 2008.

36. Huntington, Soldier and the State, pp. 143–162.

37. Ibid., pp. 155–57.

38. Richard Kohn and Peter Feaver, eds., Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American Security, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001.

39. Ole Holsti, “A Widening Gap between the US Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976–1996,” International Security, Winter 1998/99, pp. 5–42.

40. Colin Powell, “Why Generals Get Nervous,” New York Times, October 8, 1992; Edward Dorn and Howard Graves, American Military Culture in the 21st Century: A Report of the CSIS International Security Program, Washington DC: Center for Strategic and International Studies, February 2000, pp. xvi, xix.

41. Promotions and recognition: black 67.3 percent, Hispanic 54.6 percent, other 77 percent (CM2T 26); opportunity to excel: black 72 percent, Hispanic 58.8 percent, other 83.3 percent (CM2T 27); opportunity for self-improvement: black 73 percent, Hispanic 58.8 percent, other 79 percent (CM2T 28); opportunity for respect: black 69.6 percent, Hispanic 60.9 percent, other 77.9 percent (CM2T 29); living in the middle class: black 63.4 percent, Hispanic 51.4 percent, other 68.6 percent (CM2T 30).

42. Madeline Morris, “By Force of Arms: Rape, War, and Military Culture,” Duke Law Journal, February 1996.

43. U.S. Dept. of Defense, “Press Briefing by Secretary Panetta and General Dempsey from the Pentagon,” transcript, January 24, 2013, http://www.archive.defense.gov/Transcripts/Transcript.aspx?TranscriptID=5183.

44. According to the YouGov data, public estimates for the number of service members serving in the five branches of the military on average were wrong by a count of over five million. Guesses on specific branches of the military, such as the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, were incorrect by hundreds of thousands.

45. Michael Hastings, “The Runaway General,” Rolling Stone, June 22, 2010.

46. Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Life after Wartime,” Weekly Standard, June 2, 2014.