The New Civil-Military Relations

1961 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gene M. Lyons
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Minimum Cost ◽  
The United States ◽  
Fundamental Principle ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Historically the character of civil-military relations in the United States has been dominated by the concept of civilian control of the military. This has largely been a response to the fear of praetorianism. As recently as 1949, for example, the first Hoover Commission asserted that one of the major reasons for strengthening the “means of exercising civilian control” over the defense establishment was to “safeguard our democratic traditions against militarism.” This same warning was raised in the report of the Rockefeller Committee on defense organization in 1953. While the overriding purpose of the committee's recommendations was to provide “the Nation with maximum security at minimum cost,” the report made it clear that this had to be achieved “without danger to our free institutions, based on the fundamental principle of civilian control of the Military Establishment.” Finally, during the debate on the reorganization proposals of 1958, senators and congressmen used the theme of a “Prussianized” military staff to attempt to slow down the trend towards centralization in the military establishment.Despite this imposing support, the concept of civilian control of the military has little significance for contemporary problems of national security in the United States. In the first place, military leaders are divided among themselves, although their differences cannot be reduced to a crass contrast between dichomatic doctrines. Air Force leaders who are gravely concerned over the need to maintain a decisive nuclear retaliatory force are by now acknowledging the need to develop a limited war capability.

US Civil-Military Relations in the Gray Zone

2020 ◽  
pp. 263-282
Author(s):  
Sarah Sewall
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Gray Zone ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
The Face ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

This chapter argues that the changing character of conflict demands rethinking U S civil-military relations. The United States has long relied on a nuclear deterrent and conventional military superiority to defend itself, but its adversaries have changed the rules of the game to exploit civilian vulnerabilities in the U S homeland using non kinetic tools. To ensure continued civilian control of the military use of force and effective management of competition below the threshold of war, civilian leaders must assume greater responsibility for the political and operational management of hostilities in the Gray Zone. Because civilian leaders are underprepared for this new global competition, they will be tempted to default to conventional military solutions. Traditional civil-military frameworks did not envision permanent conflict or the centrality of civilian terrain, capabilities, and operational responsibilities. The United States needs civilian-led tools and approaches to effectively avoid the dual extremes of national immobilization in the face of non kinetic threats and inadvertent escalation of conflict without civilian authorization or intent. Civilian adaptation could also diminish the traditional role of the armed forces in defending the nation. The United States must rewire the relationship of the military and civilians through its decisions about how to manage Gray Zone competition.

scholarly journals Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 (4) ◽  
pp. 7-44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Risa Brooks
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Use Of Force ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Delegation Of Authority ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

The U.S. military's prevailing norms of professionalism exhibit three paradoxes that render the organization poorly suited to meet contemporary challenges to its nonpartisan ethic, and that undermine its relations with civilian leaders. These norms, based on Samuel Huntington's objective civilian control model, argue that the military should operate in a sphere separate from the civilian domain of policymaking and decisions about the use of force. The first paradox is that Huntingtonian norms, though intended to prevent partisan and political behavior by military personnel, can also enable these activities. Second, the norms promote civilian leaders’ authority in decisionmaking related to the use of force, yet undermine their practical control and oversight of military activity. Third, they contribute to the military's operational and tactical effectiveness, while corroding the United States’ strategic effectiveness in armed conflict. These tensions in Huntington's norms matter today because of intensifying partisanship in society and in the military, the embrace by civilian leaders of objective control and their concomitant delegation of authority in armed conflict to the military, and growing questions about the causes of the inconclusive outcomes of the United States’ recent wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is time to develop a new framework for military professionalism.

Crisis in the Civil-Military Triangle?

2020 ◽  
pp. 191-206
Author(s):  
William E. Rapp
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Us Military ◽  
The People ◽  
The Us ◽  
High Regard ◽  
The Government ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

Despite the high regard for the US military by the American public, a number of tensions continue to grow in civil-military relations in the United States. These are exacerbated by a lack of clarity, and thus productive debate, in the various relationships inherent in civil and military interaction. By trisecting civil military relations into the relations between the people and the military, the military and the government, and the people and the government on military issues, this chapter examines the potential for crisis in coming years. Doing so allows for greater theoretical and popular understanding and thus action in addressing the tensions, for there is cause for concern and action in each of the legs of this interconnected triangle.

On Resignation

2016 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard H. Kohn
Keyword(s):  
National Security ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
The Public ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Senior Officers ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Authority ◽  
The Military

Arguments in favor of the topmost senior officers exercising “principled resignation” in opposition to policies, decisions, or orders that they find immoral, unethical, or disastrous for the country weaken the military profession and endanger American national security. A member of the Joint Chiefs, a combatant commander, or a topmost war commander who “resigns” would be injecting themselves improperly into a policy role, opposing civilian authority, and undermining civilian control of the military. The act would be politicizing for the military and likely fail to change what the officer opposes. Most importantly, their act of personal conscience would poison civil–military relations long into the future; civilian trust in military subordinates not to undermine support for policies and decisions with the public and other political leaders would decline. Even more than today, they would choose their senior military leaders for compatibility and agreement above other traits.

Civil-Military Affairs and Security Institutions in the Southern Cone: The Sources of Argentine-Brazilian Nuclear Cooperation

2004 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 29-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arturo C. Sotomayor Velázquez
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
Southern Cone ◽  
Democratic Peace ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Establishment ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
International Participation ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

AbstractThis paper analyzes the conditions in which the governments of Argentina and Brazil founded security institutions in the early 1990s, while they were democratizing. It advances the hypothesis that international cooperation in the security field is often linked to the evolution of civil-military relations. Civilian leaders in both countries established institutions and sought international participation deliberately to achieve civilian control and gain leverage over the military establishment, which they sorely distrusted. The need to stabilize civil-military relations at home was therefore the prime motivating force behind the emergence of security institutions in the Southern Cone. Three mechanisms were at work: omnibalancing, policy handling, and managing uncertainty. These mechanisms are derived from three different schools of thought: realism, organizational-bureaucratic models, and theories of domestic political institutions. Besides explaining the sources of nuclear bilateral cooperation, this argument also serves as a critique of two prominent theories in international relations that attempt to explain cooperation and peaceful relations among democracies: neoliberal insti-tutionalism and democratic peace theory.

Military Leaders and Foreign Policy-Making

1963 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 392-405 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lewis J. Edinger
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Politics ◽  
Theoretical Models ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Interdisciplinary Field ◽  
The One ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

A survey of the literature of the last decade in the burgeoning interdisciplinary field which has come to be known—rather imprecisely—as civil-military relations, reveals a large number of descriptive and prescriptive, operational and theoretical studies, but little unity of focus or method. The interested shopper finds himself in a veritable department store filled with a wide assortment—including those in the bargain basement. Spurred on by wartime experiences and Cold War exigencies, historians and social scientists, physical scientists and journalists—above all in the United States—have covered reams of paper with discussions of the relationship between arms and men, war and peace, strategy and policy, defense and diplomacy. Displaying a great variety of analytical depth, breadth and sophistication, some of these studies have advanced our knowledge of civil-military relations—particularly in contemporary America—while others have failed to survive changes in international politics and weapons technology. Some writers, both of conservative and liberal orientation, have focused on the “appropriate” role for the military in state and society; others have sought to remain detached from such normative questions in order to concentrate on micro-descriptive phenomenal studies or more or less abstract macro-analytical theoretical models. Between the earth-bound descriptive and prescriptive studies on the one hand, and the soaring theoretical efforts on the other has loomed a wide gap, all too familiar to students of international relations, comparative politics, and public administration, waiting to be bridged—if bridged it can be—by empirical theories of civil-military relationships.

scholarly journals Mutual Embeddedness: The Architecture of Civil-Military Relations in Vietnam

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Vuving
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
Reciprocal Relationship ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Party Control ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Zero Sum ◽  
The Military

This chapter explores the architecture of civil-military relations in Communist Party-ruled Vietnam. Contrary to the dominant paradigm of civil-military relations in the West, civil-military relations in Vietnam follow a very different logic, that of the Leninist system. The relationship between the military and the party-state in Vietnam is characterized by mutual embeddedness. This is not a zero-sum game as the concept of civilian control implies. In the Leninist system, the military's politicization, political influence and involvement in politics are critical for the Communist Party's hegemony. The Party's absolute, direct, and comprehensive control of the military is the core of civil-military relations in the Leninist system. However, Party control is a reciprocal relationship that gives military leaders more say and more privileges than they would have under more democratic conditions. This reciprocity explains the system’s endurance as well as its internal stability. The Vietnam People's Army is deeply politicized and the political control of the military serves the interests of both the Party and the military leadership. Barring a major political reform in the Vietnam Communist Party itself, the Vietnam People's Army will remain more political than professional and commercial.

The United States: Politicians, Partisans, and Military Professionals

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Feaver ◽  
Damon Coletta
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Political Influence ◽  
The United States ◽  
Army Corps ◽  
Political Role ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military ◽  
The U.S

The United States boasts an enviable record regarding the military’s role in politics: never a coup and never a serious coup attempt. However, this does not mean that the military always played only a trivial role in politics. On the contrary, as the Framers worried, it is impossible for a democracy to maintain a military establishment powerful enough to protect it in a hostile international environment without at the same time creating an institution with sufficient clout to be a factor in domestic politics. The U.S. military’s political role has ebbed and flowed over the nearly 250 years of the nation’s history. The high-water mark of political influence came in the context of the gravest threat the country has faced, the Civil War, when the military enforced emergency measures approved by Congress, beyond the letter of the Constitution, including during Reconstruction when the military governed rebellious states of the former Confederacy. These were notable exceptions. For most of the 19th century, the military operated on the fringes of civilian politics, although through the Army Corps of Engineers it played a key role in state-building. When the United States emerged as a great power with global interests, the political role of the military increased, though never in a way to directly challenge civilian supremacy. Today, the military wields latent political influence in part because of its enormous fiscal footprint and in part because it is the national institution in which the public express the highest degree of confidence. This has opened the door for myriad forms of political action, all falling well below the red lines that most concern traditional civil–military relations theory. Military involvement in the American political system may be monitored and evaluated using a typology built around two columns that highlight the means of military influence—the first column is comprised of formal rules and institutions and the second encompasses the norms of military behavior with respect to civilian authority and civil society. While traditional civil–military relations theory focuses on military coups and coup prevention, theory based on this typology can help explain American civil–military relations, illuminating the warning signs of unhealthy friction under democratic governance and promoting republican vigilance at those moments when the U.S. military takes a prominent role and wades more deeply into domestic politics.

Civil-Military Relations

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Bruneau
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Political Power ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civilian Control ◽  
Military Effectiveness ◽  
Democratic Transitions ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Democratic Regimes ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
The Military

The literature encompassed within the area of civil-military relations (CMR) is extremely broad. The focus in this bibliography is primarily on CMR as a subfield of comparative politics in that it deals with the power relations between the military and civilians. This bibliography is concerned with the classic question, raised in the 1st century ce by Juvenal: Who will guard the guardians? From this perspective, CMR is generally about power and politics of an organization with a monopoly in arms to exercise political power. While foreign states and international organizations may influence CMR, particularly during democratic transitions, it is essentially a national phenomenon. International law does, however, pertain in most of the roles and missions the military are tasked with. Not included in this bibliography are the following topics: military history, strategy and doctrine, sociology of the armed forces including recruitment, gender, race, and health. Thus, important authors such as Morris Janowitz and Charles Moskos will not be included. This bibliography will break new ground in four ways: First, in giving attention to military effectiveness as well as the traditional focus on civilian control; second, in giving attention to roles and missions currently executed by the military; third, in including non-democracies, democracies, and those in transition; and fourth, in including the roles of private contractors in the mix of civil-military relations. The six primary sections in this bibliography are the following: Democratic Civilian Control is mainly about the United States and its emphasis is on the military taking political power, even though the American military has never sought to take power. CMR in Contemporary Non-Democratic Regimes focuses on China, Russia, and Egypt as they are all globally important non-democratic regimes, with varied relationships between the military and civilians. CMR in Democratic Transitions is included as the military is a key actor in virtually every transition from the beginning of Third Wave of democratization, starting in Lisbon, Portugal, on April 25, 1974. CMR in the Context of Roles and Missions is included as it details that the military mainly implements roles and missions not involving conflict with other militaries, and includes the role of international law. The section on CMR Including Democratic Civilian Control and Military Effectiveness is included as attention must be paid to effectiveness in the different roles and missions for military organizations. And, finally military roles and missions assumed by Non-Military For-Profit Private Enterprises are included as involvement of private enterprise raises questions regarding the state’s putative monopoly of power and roles of the military.

The International Fraternity of the Uniform: Implications for Civil–Military Relations

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel J. Sokolsky
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Professional Education ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Network ◽  
Operational Effectiveness ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Civil Military Relations ◽  
Military Relations ◽  
Democratic Norms

The profession of arms shares with other professions a certain universality, in terms of both time and place. This transnational “corporateness” helps to foster strong military-to-military ties on a bilateral and multilateral basis between and among the armed forces of states. Through senior international professional education and the operations of its global network of unified Combatant Commands (COCOMs), the United States seeks to develop and reinforce a web of relationships with military leaders as an element of its national security strategy. These professional and operational linkages create an international fraternity of the uniform. The fraternity of the uniform, by providing an additional military avenue of communication between the United States and foreign states, one that at times seems to skirt and compete with normal diplomatic and political relations, can be viewed as a challenge to liberal-democratic norms in civil–military relations both at the national and international level. That is to say it can be used by foreign military leaders as a “shirking” tactic employed to reduce the inequality inherent in the civil–military dialogue. The challenge for governments, then, is to leverage the advantages afforded by having their militaries join in the fraternity, while not allowing such membership to undermine proper civil–military relations. In doing so, the international fraternity of the uniform contributes to the operational effectiveness of American-led military multilateralism and the mutual security of its participants.

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