The erosion of civilian control of the military in the United States today

Naval War College Review, Summer, 2002 by Richard H. Kohn

Furthermore, senior military leaders have been able to use their personal leverage for a variety of purposes, sometimes because of civilian indifference, or deference, or ignorance, sometimes because they have felt it necessary to fill voids of policy and decision making. But sometimes the influence is exercised intentionally and purposefully, even aggressively. After fifty years of cold war, the "leak", the bureaucratic maneuver, the alliance with partisans in Congress--the manage trois between the administration, Congress, and the military--have become a way of life, in which services and groups employ their knowledge, contacts, and positions to promote personal or institutional agendas. (34) In the 1970s, responding to the view widely held among military officers that a reserve callup would have galvanized public support for Vietnam, allowed intensified prosecution of the war, and prevented divorce between the Army and the American people, the Army chief of staff deliberately redesigned divisions to contai n "round-out" units of reserve or National Guard troops, making it impossible for the president to commit the Army to battle on a large scale without mobilizing the reserves and Guard. (35) In the 1980s, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral William J. Crowe, worked "behind the scenes" to encourage Congress to strengthen his own office even though the secretary of defense opposed such a move. During the Iran-Iraq War Crowe pushed for American escort of Kuwaiti tankers in the Persian Gulf, because he believed it important for American foreign policy. He and the chiefs strove to slow the Reagan administration's strategic missile defense program. Crowe even went so far as to create a personal communications channel with his Soviet military counterpart, apparently unknown to his civilian superiors, to avert any possibility of a misunderstanding leading to war. "It was in the nature of the Chairman's job," Crowe remembered, "that I occasionally found myself fighting against Defense Department Positions as well as for them." (36)

In the 1990s, press leaks from military sources led directly to the weakening and ultimate dismissal of the Clinton administration's first secretary of defense. (37) In 1994 the Chief of Naval Operations (CNO) openly discussed with senior commanders his plans to manipulate the Navy budget and operations tempo to force his preferred priorities on the Office of the Secretary of Defense and Congress. When a memo recounting the conversation surfaced in the press, no civilian in authority called the CNO to account. (38) The 1995 Commission on the Roles and Missions of the Armed Forces recommended consolidating the staffs of the service chiefs and the service secretaries; no one mentioned the diminution of civilian control that would have taken place as a result. (39)

Even during the 1990s, a period when the administration appeared to be forceful, insisting upon the use of American forces over military objections or resistance, the uniformed leadership often arbitrated events. The 1995 Bosnia intervention was something of a paradigm. American priorities seem to have been, first, deploying in overwhelming strength, in order to suffer few if any casualties; second, establishing a deadline for exit; third, issuing "robust" rules of engagement, again to forestall casualties; fourth, narrowing the definition of the mission to ensure that it was incontrovertibly "doable"; and fifth--fifth--reconstructing Bosnia as a viable independent country. (40)