Uneasy Balance: Civil-Military Relations in Peacetime America Since 1783

Military Review, Jan-Feb, 2005 by John H. Barnhill

UNEASY BALANCE: Civil-Military Relations in Peacetime America Since 1783, Thomas S. Langston, The Johns Hopkins University Press, New York, 2003, 198 pages, $39.95.

After every war the U.S. military has to realign itself by taking stock of and reorienting to society's peacetime needs. The realignment that should have occurred at the end of the Cold War has not yet happened. Uneasy Balance: Civil-Military Relations in Peacetime America Since 1783 tracks previous realignments and discusses the implications of the failure to complete the one currently overdue.

Contrary to popular belief, the U.S. military has not yet put Vietnam behind it, says author Thomas S. Langston, professor of political science at Tulane University. For that matter, neither the military nor the civilian population have adjusted to the end of the Cold War. While the military and the populace look into their rearview mirrors, civilian defense leaders push forward, using the military as a social laboratory for changes too radical for society at large or jumping vigorously into nationbuilding and foreign adventures while stretching the military over the globe. Because there is neither consensus nor cooperation, current U.S. military policy is unbalanced, if not dysfunctional.

Postwar realignments have two components: service and reform. Service is the reestablishment of connection to the peacetime role of helping the populace rather than fighting wars. Reform is the introspective component, the studying of the failures and success of just-finished wars and making appropriate adjustments in capabilities--training and retooling. For civilian and military components to be successful, both must agree on the desired end product. This happened fully only twice: after the War of 1812 and after the Spanish-American War. In other postwar eras, one side or the other was dominant, and the results were mediocre to awful. Fortunately, none was disastrous.

The current era might see the first disaster. Civil-military relations are dismal; the military is more contemptuous of a civilian society from which it is increasingly isolated. At the policy level, there is no clear consensus on what the military posture should be or what roles it should serve. Not only is there a civil-military split, there is disunity within the military as well. Because there is no consensus, the post-Cold War realignment is stalled.

Langston identifies the problem, and as a good political scientist, has at least the beginnings of a solution--to get on with reform; reestablish civil-military communication and consensus; make the military capable of fighting old-style and new-style wars while also building nations at home or abroad--the way the Coast Guard handles war and peace missions simultaneously. More important, the military should stop hiding from Vietnam-style wars and learn to win them instead.

These recommendations are not bombshells; they are mostly common sense. But the consequences of letting this reform period drift can be dire--armed isolationism, if civilians dominate; perhaps unchecked militarism, if the military prevails. Langston is not totally optimistic the drift will be checked in time.

Although brief, the book is a sensible mix of description, analysis, and prescription. At a minimum it deserves a quick reading and extended contemplation.

John H. Barnhill, Ph.D.,

Tinker AFB, Oklahoma