Combating the crisis of civil-military relations - citizens, public officials and military have failed to meet each other's expectations, military must be reformed from within - Cover Story

Humanist, Jan-Feb, 1998 by Gregory D. Foster

Today precious few of the mutual expectations the three parties to the civil-military relationship have of one another are being met. And from these failed expectations flows the crisis that now afflicts us. Ideally, the military would be a useful instrument of national power that facilitates the attainment of the country's strategic goals, as well as a socially, politically, and economically responsible institution that contributes to the preservation and functioning of civil society. Civilian authorities would establish definitive strategic purpose and direction for the country, effectively manage events and circumstances, and exercise responsible military oversight. The People would be civically engaged and employ reasoned judgment to rigorously monitor the military's overseers.

But reality has fallen well short of this ideal. The military--parochial to a fault, insatiably greedy for resources and the expensive appurtenances of its craft, disturbingly politicized at the top, and beset by a largely unrecognized but nonetheless real and pervasive civic illiteracy within its own ranks--has made the most of its practiced bureaucratic and political survival skills. While ostensibly accepting a variety of nontraditional assignments its core believers consider extraneous and burdensome--peacekeeping, humanitarian assistance, and the like--and zealously trumpeting itself as the revolutionary vanguard for a new age of third-wave, fourth-generation cyberwar, the military has remained stubbornly wedded to a hidebound conception of war and self. The central tenets of this entrenched worldview are only too familiar: that war is inevitable; that peace, never but a temporary respite, is a function of one's readiness for war; that war is traditional combat; that victory in war goes to the party most proficient in the application of violence; that the military exists solely for the purpose of preparing for and waging war; and, therefore, that the profession of arms occupies privileged standing and subscribes to a superior ethos that should be immune from the meddling scrutiny of unworthy amateurs.

Such beliefs, deeply ingrained in the thinking of uniformed professionals and their most ardent acolytes (including more than a few on Capitol Hill), have led the military to continue preparing, as always, for the wars of the past; to deny the relevance,of, and therefore be generally unprepared for, the many contemporary contingencies that do not conform to the traditional model of war; and, accordingly, to give experience-impaired civilian officials little strategic maneuver room in responding to emergent crises. These same beliefs, because they reflect something deeper about the types of individuals the institution attracts and rewards in fulfilling its mission and self, also have contributed materially to the military's incessant proneness, to scandal. Such incidents constitute a form of collective institutional disobedience that is the outgrowth of an institution that has lost its identity and no longer has confidence in or respect for those it is supposed to serve.