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

Redefining the Military's Mission

It would be too simplistic to suggest that a solution to the current crisis lies in somehow ensuring that the expectations the three parties to the civil-military relationship have of one another are fulfilled. If a solution is to be found, it must come from the military itself. All institutions, of course, but especially innately conservative ones like the military, resist self-correction. They change only when change is forced upon them from the outside. Nevertheless, today we face a situation that demands the initiation of change--of sweeping transformation, in fact--from within.

For conscription will not return, and, considering that we purport to be a democracy based on the consent of the governed, perhaps that is as it should be. Accordingly, as we move further beyond the Cold War, civilian officials and members of Congress--both part of a generally affluent, upwardly mobile political class that rarely anymore feels obligated to serve in uniform or sees any career advantage in doing so--will increasingly come to office devoid of military experience. The result, on the whole, will be a pronounced insensitivity to and unfamiliarity with military affairs and the military ethos that will only be accentuated by the strategic illiteracy that is already so pronounced among most contemporary political practitioners.

Paradoxically, this self-inflicted vulnerability bon of inexperience and ignorance seems likely to make civilians more, rather than less, dependent on and deferential to a military they cannot afford to alienate politically. Lacking perspective and confidence, they typically will be forced to acquiesce--often unknowingly--to the military's preferences and practices. The military then, given the upper hand both politically and bureaucratically, would naturally tend to push its own selfish agenda, believing it to be in the larger national interest. It is imperative, therefore, that the military face up to the realization that it is centrally a part of a crisis in civil-military relations and step up to the challenge of self-initiated change.

Such change clearly does not lie in the sort of cosmetic, superficial correctives; some might suggest as appropriate and adequate: military familiarization classes for new civilian officials, for example, or more intensive ethics instruction for those in uniform. A solution lies, rather, in the most fundamental of institutional concerns: the central mission of the military.

Is the military's proper and strategically most productive function to contribute to and enhance security or simply to provide for the common defense? Is the military's purpose to secure and preserve peace or to prepare for and wage war? Is the military a strategic or simply a martial instrument of power? Is the military in the business of preventing war or merely responding to crisis? Is the military strictly an executive instrumentality or does it have a legitimate and necessary role in actually determining strategic direction? Should the military be entirely subordinate (if not subservient) to civilian authority or should it assume a position of essential coequality? Does the military bear responsibility for being a thinking and learning institution or just a dutiful action arm of the state?