Soldiers of the state: reconsidering American civil-military relations

Parameters, Winter, 2003 by Richard D. Hooker, Jr.

In American academe today the dominant view of civil-military relations is sternly critical of the military, asserting that civilian control of the military is dangerously eroded. (1) Though tension clearly exists in the relationship, the current critique is largely inaccurate and badly overwrought. Far from overstepping its bounds, America's military operates comfortably within constitutional notions of separated powers, participating appropriately in defense and national security policymaking with due deference to the principle of civilian control. Indeed, an active and vigorous role by the military in the policy process is and always has been essential to the common defense.

A natural starting point for any inquiry into the state of civil-military relations in the US today is to define what is meant by the terms "civil-military relations" and "civilian control." Broadly defined, "civil-military relations" refers to the relationship between the armed forces of the state and the larger society they serve--how they communicate, how they interact, and how the interface between them is ordered and regulated. Similarly, "civilian control" means simply the degree to which the military's civilian masters can enforce their authority on the military services. (2)

Clarifying the vocabulary of civil-military relations sheds an interesting light on the current, highly charged debate. The dominant academic critique takes several forms, charging that the military has become increasingly estranged from the society it serves; (3) that it has abandoned political neutrality for partisan politics; (4) and that it plays an increasingly dominant and illegitimate role in policymaking. (5) This view contrasts the ideal of the nonpartisan, apolitical soldier with a different reality. In this construct, the military operates freely in a charged political environment to "impose its own perspective" in defiance of the principle of civilian control. (6) The critique is frequently alarmist, employing terms like "ominous," (7) "alienated," (8) and "out of control." (9) The debate is strikingly one-sided; few civilian or military leaders have publicly challenged the fundamental assumptions of the critics. (10) Yet as we shall see, the dominant scholarly view is badly flawed in its particulars, expressing a distorted view of the military at work in a complex political system that distributes power widely.

The Civil-Military Gap

The common assertion that a "gap" exists which divides the military and society in an unhealthy way is a central theme. Unquestionably, the military as an institution embraces and imposes a set of values that more narrowly restricts individual behavior. But the evidence is strong that the public understands the necessity for more circumscribed personal rights and liberties in the military, and accepts the rationale for an organizationally conservative outlook that emphasizes the group over the individual and organizational success over personal validation.

The tension between the conservative requirements of military life and the more liberal outlook of civil society goes far back before the Revolution to the early days of colonial America's militia experience. Though it has waxed and waned, it has remained central to the national conversation about military service. (11) The issue is an important one: the military holds an absolute monopoly on force in society, and how to keep it strong enough to defend the state and subservient enough not to threaten it is the central question in civil-military relations. Most commentators assume that this difference in outlook poses a significant problem--that at best it is a condition to be managed, and at worst a positive danger to the state. As a nation, however, America has historically accepted the necessity for a military more highly ordered and disciplined than civil society.

While important cultural differences exist between the services and even between communities within the services, (12) the military in general remains focused on a functional imperative that prizes success in war above all else. Though sometimes degraded during times of lessened threat, this imperative has remained constant at least since the end of the Civil War and the rise of modern military professionalism. It implies a set of behaviors and values markedly different from those predominant in civil society, particularly in an all-volunteer force less influenced by large numbers of temporary conscripts.

Though the primary function of the military is often described as "the application of organized violence," the military's conservative and group-centered bias is based on something even more fundamental. In the combat forces which dominate the services, in ethos if not in numbers, the first-order challenge is not to achieve victory on the battlefield. Rather it is to make the combat soldier face his own mortality. Under combat conditions the existence of risk cannot be separated from the execution of task. The military culture, while broadly conforming to constitutional notions of individual rights and liberties, therefore derives from the functional imperative and by definition values collective over individual good.