Soldiers and Civilians: the Civil-Military Gap and American National Security

Military Review, May-June, 2003 by Jesus F. Gomez

Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001, 545 pages, $28.95

The national debate on U.S. civil-military relations is alive and heated in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn's book Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. As the title suggests, the book discusses the increasing divide between soldiers, specifically the senior officer corps, and U.S. society, specifically civilian elite society. Although the findings of the book do not substantiate what some have termed a crisis in civil-military affairs, they do find schisms between the two that might, if not addressed, lead to a crisis.

The book is a compilation of several multidisciplinary studies that aim to answer the following questions:

What is the nature or character of the civil-military gap today?

What factors shape it?

Does the gap matter for military effectiveness and civil-military cooperation?

What, if anything, can and should policymakers do about the gap?

The authors obtained the research data for their work through a survey instrument completed by the Triangle Institute for Strategic Studies. Surveying what they considered military and civilian elites, the authors analyzed the survey data and chose 12 of 21 studies to publish. Those studies make up the chapters in the book and are clustered into three sections, each with four chapters. One section addresses the opinions of the soldiers and civilians surveyed. One section explores the gap in civil-military relations over time-a brief history if you will. The final section explores what implications the gaps have on military effectiveness and the cooperation between civilians and the military.

What the reader will find in this important, scholarly work is that there is a chasm between the military and the civilians it serves The divide, argue the writers, makes it harder to recruit soldiers; makes it easier for midcareerists to leave the military before retirement because of disillusionment; and makes obtaining funds from Congress difficult.

The authors also discuss many of the problems the average soldier faces, such as high operating tempo and personnel tempo; the difficulty of integrating policies like "don't ask, don't tell" into military values; and the apparent disconnect in military values with those of mainstream society's. Some soldiers might read the findings and believe them intuitively obvious. For instance, the average soldier tends to be more conservative than the average civilian; most officers are inclined to be Republican; that the military believes that the Nation's political leaders are ignorant about military affairs. What is especially useful, however, is that the book puts those issues out for debate. Not that the debate is new. One writer points out that the debate goes back to 1776 when Samuel Adams suggested that soldiers and citizens are distinctively different and that the former "should be watched with a jealous eye" by the latter.

The book presents much research data that help frame the issues perpetuating the gap between civil-military relations. Although the 9/11 terror attacks have largely placed the debate on the back burner because of the subsequent tremendous cooperation between civilian authorities and senior military leaders, the problems that Feaver and Kohn identify remain.

The solutions the authors propose are fairly straightforward and achievable. They suggest that the military increase its presence in civil society; improve civilian understanding of military affairs; and strengthen civil-military instruction in professional military education. Through such measures, the gap in understanding can be narrowed.

This is an important book for professional soldiers because the military perspective is often missing in the civil-military debate. The authors have superbly outlined the issues, giving them historical dimension. Most important, the authors articulate the problems as seen through the scope of academia, which naturally facilitates an analysis through military lenses, a logical and needed next step. Quite simply, this is a debate in which professional soldiers should be involved, if not as participants, then certainly as followers of the argument. The issue directly affects the military profession. If civilian elites perceive there are problems, they will likely seek to resolve those problems. If professional soldiers do not engage in the debate, they might have to implement solutions that could perpetuate and enlarge the very gap the solutions aim to close.

MAJ Jesus F. Gomez, USA, Fort Leavenworth Kansas