Expressing a concern over the growth of the military establishment and the arms industry, the General warned of the emergence of a “military-industrial complex” which would seek the “acquisition of unwarranted influence.” In retrospect, the Generals’ predictions may seem alarmist, his concerns unfounded, and his observations on military organization obvious. Yet, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower gave these remarks in his farewell address, few realized that he was commenting on a dilemma and a theory that, by most accounts, dates to the writings of the famous 19th century Prussian war strategist, Carl von Clausewitz; the theory of civil-military relations. At its most basic level, the theory examines the relationship between political and military leadership. At its core, it seeks to answer three fundamental questions regarding: 1) the inherent nature of the military profession and officer corps in society; 2) the optimal balance of political and military power in the decision-making process; and 3) the relative effects of external and internal factors in shaping the balance of civil and military power. This article provides a review of the extant literature relating to the disagreements over these central questions and assesses the validity of the various arguments.
The Nature of the Military Professional
The nature of the military profession lies at the heart of civil-military relations theory. Is the professional soldier risk-averse or risk-prone, inherently aggressive or conservative, ideological or realistic? How scholars answer these fundamental questions ultimately affects their perception of what function the military should serve in society as well as what factors shape the balance of civil-military relations. In addition, the answers to these questions are presupposed by the assertion that the military officer is indeed a professional. While there is general agreement that Western militaries have been professionally organized since the emergence of the Prussian General Staff in the mid-19th century, scholars have diverged over how the military professional differs from professionals in other fields and how this in turn affects their role in society.
Typically, conceptions of the nature of the military professional vacillate between two camps: those who see the military professional as violent and war-prone and those who see the military professional as pacifist and cautious. Harold Lasswell, one of most influential theorists of civil-military relations of the first half of the 20th century, was an adherent to the first camp. Developed throughout the course of WWII, his theory of the “Garrison State” envisioned a society run by the “specialists of violence,” a term he used to describe the would-be ruling military elite. Believing the world to be in a more-or-less permanent state of conflict, Lasswell contended that the military elite would subordinate the masses and enlist them in the total war effort. Underlying his theory, however, was his belief that the military prefers war to peace.
In 1957, Samuel Huntington put forth a contending viewpoint to Lasswell’s “Garrison State” model in his seminal work, The Soldier and the State (Huntington, 1959). Considered a foundation of the study of civil-military relations, Huntington’s theory delivered the most parsimonious account yet of the nature and role of the military in society. As the soldierly equivalent to Adam Smith’s “economic man” or Machiavelli’s political “prince,” Huntington’s “military man” is a statement on the worldview of the military officer. It is an attempt to understand his motivations, his values, and his ethic. Huntington agrees that the purpose of the military profession is the “management of violence,” but contrary to Lasswell, he proffers a portrait of the military professional as one who “rarely favors war.” The military man, in Huntington’s view, has pacifist qualities: “He is afraid of war. He wants to prepare for war. But he is never ready to fight a war.” Moreover, while the professional military man recognizes his responsibility to protect the military security of the state, he sees war as a last resort, which should only be undertaken when victory is certain. “The military man normally opposes reckless, aggressive, belligerent action,” writes Huntington, and he believes that war “should not be resorted to except as a final recourse…when the outcome is a virtual certainty.”
What Huntington is arguing is that the military professional is committed to an ethic that is “realistic and conservative.” In this respect, he differs greatly from the ideological and innately aggressive military ethic proposed by Lasswell. In fact, Huntington explicitly criticizes his predecessor on this point, charging that the Lasswellian line of thought has “misconceptions with respect to the content of military values.” Despite this, Huntington seems to be in partial agreement with Lasswell about the potential for over-extension of military power in the state. Since the military professional is in constant preparation for war and only favors violent action when victory is certain, Huntington admits that “if war with a particular power is inevitable at a later date with decreased chances of success, the military man may favor ‘preventive war’ in order to safeguard national security.” Huntington also contends that a sufficient military force is both necessary to ensure peace - “the state which desires peace must be well armed” – and, as an extension, to protect the security of the state.
The implications of this situation are clear: the military wants to avoid war because all wars jeopardize the security of the state, but in order to prevent war, the military man must constantly prepare and strengthen his forces. “Weak states,” in Huntington’s view, “invite attack,” so as a result, Huntington concluded that “the military man in his concern with power may come to consider the accumulation of power as an end in itself irrespective of the uses to which it may be put.” Similarly, Lasswell maintained that the rulers of his garrison state, i.e. the military officers, would “have a professional interest in multiplying the gadgets specialized to acts of violence.” Of course the fundamental difference between the two arguments is that Huntington’s state establishes civilian control over the military whereas in Lasswell’s scenario, the military is the state. In sum, Huntington disagrees with Lasswell over the inherent values of the military ethic, but based upon the requirement of the military profession itself, he acknowledges a cause for concern similar to Lasswell’s “Garrison State,” albeit on a less extreme scale.
Those following in the footsteps of Huntington are often in agreement with his call for civilian control of the military but have been quick to point out that his version of the idealized military professional often breaks down in reality (Cohen, 2001). Eliot Cohen, for instance, tests several premises of Huntington’s argument against existing empirical evidence. He argues that Huntington’s theory, or as he calls it, the “normal theory of civil-military relations,” contains several flaws in the concept of military professionalism. First, Cohen takes exception to Huntington’s assertion that the skills of the military officer are “universal” across time and place, arguing that the skills needed by officers often vary and are dictated by the nature of the war they are fighting. Second, he argues against Huntington’s claim that the most effective forces are those motivated by ideals rather than ideology. In contrast, Cohen notes that ideologically motivated armies, such as those of Nazi Germany or the USSR, have often proved to be effective and professional military forces, regardless of whether or not they won wars. Third, Cohen suggests that the deepest problem with Huntington’s definition of the military professional is that, unlike other professionals, the military officer rarely practices that which he is trained to do. This lack of experience, in Cohen’s view, undermines the professional qualities of the officer and leads to mistakes in war.
Other contemporary scholars have challenged Huntington’s fundamental assertion that the military profession is risk-averse and conservative (Posen, 1984; Snyder, 1991). In his analysis of the origins of WWI, Jack Snyder blames an innate “offensive bias” of the military profession as one of the key factors that led to the outbreak of violence. He sees two main reasons for the military’s proclivity for offense. The first rests upon Kenneth Waltz’s structural realist assertion that “states are socialized to the implications of international anarchy.” While Snyder is in agreement with Huntington that the training of military professionals induces them to see the world in terms of threats to state security, he believes this will lead to more wars, not less. In Snyder’s view “the military professional tends to hold a simplified, zero-sum view of international politics and the nature of war, in which wars are seen as difficult to avoid and almost impossible to limit.” Seeing war as inevitable, the military professional will increase the likelihood of war by adopting offensive doctrines based on a preventive strategy.
A second explanation for the military professional’s “offensive bias” is related to the first, but has its roots in organizational theory. Charged with handling certain tasks and challenges, organizations tend to develop routines and “standard operating procedures” in order to reduce uncertainty. Viewed through this lens, Snyder sees the military as no different from any other large organization; the offensive doctrine is, at its heart, an organizational response designed to reduce the uncertainties of war. “Taking the offensive, exercising the initiative,” as Barry Posen notes, “is a way of structuring the battle” along favorable lines.
Despite the increasing capabilities of professional militaries, the pervasiveness of armed conflict, and the presence of an “offensive bias,” Lasswell’s “Garrison State” has failed to emerge. Likewise, Huntington’s “military man” remains a valuable and elegant look at the ideal military professional. But as Cohen, Snyder, and Posen have pointed out, the idealized form often loses its explanatory power when held up to the real world. The extant literature reflects several fundamental disagreements on the inherent qualities of the military professional, and these have implications for how scholars judge the optimal balance of political and military leadership.
The Optimal Balance of Civil-Military Relations
Establishing an optimal balance between political and military leaders brings with it a set of assumptions and definitional problems. First, it assumes that it is possible to identify an optimal relationship. Second, given that it is possible, it becomes necessary to define how the optimal balance is to be measured. While Huntington believed it was possible to define the optimal balance “in the abstract,” he acknowledged that there had to be agreement on the premises regarding the nature and purpose of the military. Differences over these issues have tended to shape subsequent arguments, and as a result, scholars have typically identified the optimal civil-military relationship based upon their own interpretation of the military profession and their own measurements of optimality. This section examines three different conceptions of the most favorable civil-military relationship.
To Huntington, the ideal relationship between the political leadership and the military officer corps is present when the politicians exercise “objective civilian control” over the military. Objective civilian control requires the maximization of military professionalism and autonomy as opposed to “subjective civilian control,” which tries to civilianize the military or co-opt it into the political process to make it more amenable to the state. Subjective control, in Huntington’s view, may succeed in curbing the power of the officer corps, but it does so at the expense of national security.
Believing the primary function of the military was to safeguard national security, Huntington naturally favored that arrangement which would maximize the effectiveness of the military organization. Like Clausewitz before him, Huntington saw the need for a clear separation between the politician and the military officer: the statesmen make the policy and the military officer carries that policy out to the best of his ability given the resources that he possesses. As such, the military officer has authority over operational and tactical issues while the statesmen construct strategy. Assuming the officer corps can achieve Huntington’s professional ideal, the optimal balance of civil-military relations will be reached, because the military will have a clear understanding and acceptance of its subordinate role.
While most scholars agree that some form of civilian control is most favorable to the state’s security, some have arrived at different conclusions about the optimal civil-military balance. Cohen begins by pointing out flaws in the Huntingtonian concept of a separation or “gap” between the political leadership and the military. In practice, Cohen claims there is often a fusion of the “high” politics of war, that is, the strategic decisions of the statesmen, with domestic politics. As a result, the purposes of the military’s activity become clouded and its professionalism undermined. Cohen believes the optimal balance will derive from his notion of the “unequal dialogue.” “The imperatives of politics and of military professionalism invariably, and appropriately, tug in opposite directions,” writes Cohen, “inevitably too, professional judgments require scrutiny rather than unthinking acceptance.” Contrary to Huntington, Cohen claims that friction between military and political professionals is necessary to produce the most efficient political-military decisions.
In a more recent study, Risa Brooks builds upon the work of Cohen and argues that the ideal civil-military relationship is that which produces the best environment for strategic assessment (Brooks, 2008). Sharing Cohen’s view that dialogue and collaboration between political and military leadership is an essential ingredient in effective decision-making, Brooks provides a framework for establishing the “best” civil-military relationship. In her opinion, this optimal balance is dependent upon a low “preference divergence” between political and military leaders and firm civilian control of the military. Brooks creates matrices to evaluate both variables, but the more important point of her study is her conclusion that a firm separation of political and military powers is not only improbable, but also, contrary to Huntington, it is detrimental to national security.
Other arguments have been posited by scholars working on the fringes of civil-military relations, whose work is nonetheless important to the field. Stanislav Andreski, a sociologist writing in 1954 (prior to Huntington), examined the affects of the military organization on the stratification of society (Andreski, 1954). While civil-military relations were not the primary focus of his book, his argument contains useful insights about the optimal balance of political and military power. For instance, Andreski is credited with coining the term “Military Participation Ratio.” The MPR was Andreski’s way of measuring the “proportion of militarily utilized individuals in the total population.” He distinguished between the actual MPR in any given society and the optimum MPR, which he defined as the ratio “within the given technico-tactical conditions [that] would enable a state to attain the maximum military strength.” Therefore, in Andreski’s view the optimal balance has more to do with total strength of the military and not military security, per se.
Most recently, Julian Schofield assessed the implications of traditional “militarization theory” on civil-military relations (Schofield, 2007). He argues that the optimal balance in civil-military influence rests on the “polarity of the environment,” a term he uses to describe the number of allies vis-à-vis the number of potential interventionists in a conflict.
Overall, civil-military relations theorists have been hesitant to distinguish an “optimal relationship.” This reluctance stems, in part, from the difficulty of defining the nature of the military professional and his role in society. But in order to establish the ideal, it is also necessary to understand the forces that determine the actual civil-military relationship. Here too, scholars have divided themselves into camps: those who are partial to external determinants, those who favor internal determinants, and those who fall somewhere in the middle.
External and Internal Determinants of Civil-Military Relations
Most scholars concerned with external variables have concentrated on the role of the international threat environment on civil-military relations. Lasswell and Andreski were the first to touch upon this point. In Lasswell’s model, the heightened external threat environment produced the “Garrison State” and undermined the civil-military relationship by placing the military in power. In Andreski’s view, however, an increasing external threat would improve civilian control because it focuses the military’s energy outside the state and produces a leveling affect in society. By that same token, Andreski argued that a decreasing external threat would have the adverse effect of focusing the military’s energy inward and exacerbating social inequality. To Lasswell, or Huntington for that matter, this situation wasn’t a concern because they saw the heightened external threat as unchanging.
In 1999, Michael Desch conducted a study examining how changes in the international threat environment affect the strength of civilian control of the military (Desch, 1999). He was motivated by the implications of the “less challenging international security environment of the post-Cold War era” for the future of civil-military relations. While this particular assumption is need of serious re-consideration, he presented a solid argument that fused external and internal determinants. According to Desch, the structure of the international system produces internal changes on the individual, organizational, and societal level. Thus, he concludes “patterns of civilian control are shaped by the interaction of these internal attributes with the external environment.”
Andreski’s argument can also be considered “fusionist” in that it considered the impact of “technico-tactical conditions.” This term highlights a broader theme of Andreski’s argument regarding the impact of the strength and availability of new war-fighting technologies on civil-military relations: “the degree of superiority of the armed forces over the unarmed populace depends in the first place on the quality of the armament.” Provided the military was able to “equip and maintain themselves,” Andreski believed that a high MPR would produce a leveling effect within society. Whether or not this strengthened civilian control depended on the nature of the security threat.
While not dismissing the relevance of external forces, some scholars have focused solely on internal determinants to explain the balance of civil-military power. Using “institutional theory,” Brooks saw three primary factors affecting the civil-military relationship: 1) the position and influence of the military establishment in domestic society; 2) the unity of the military officer corps; and 3) the political leadership’s base of support. Thus, in Brooks’ view the relative position of the military in society depends primarily on domestic political issues, not international structural forces. She notes: “the military’s power in the state depends on its capacity to cultivate and maintain social allies or influence mass opinion.”
Lastly, it is possible to reduce the equation further and look at the individual level unit of analysis. In his piece on WWI, Snyder argues: “the offensive strategies of 1914 were largely domestic in origin, rooted in bureaucratic, sociopolitical, and psychological causes,” while external factors were usually “secondary.” Snyder believed that the innate “offensive bias” of the military officer could effectively hi-jack the decision-making process and reduce civilian input.
Conclusion
This article has attempted to shed light on the complex theory of civil-military relations by reviewing the scholarly literature in the field. It organized the main arguments according to three of the primary questions at the heart of the theory. While Huntington’s Soldier and the State remains a monumental theoretical contribution, subsequent studies have unpacked his argument and revealed weakness in its explanatory and predictive power. Waltzian discourses based on the realist viewpoint have yielded some ground to more nuanced approaches based on domestic political factors, organizational models, and individual influence. Yet, the fundamental meaning of civil-military relations as proposed by Huntington remains as relevant today as it did during the Cold War; it was then that he characterized the “nub” of civil-military relations as balancing the “functional imperative” of the military to protect society’s security with the “societal imperative” to protect its own ideologies and institutions. The landscape of international politics has changed, and future studies would benefit from an analysis of how the increased role of non-state actors fits into the existing theoretical framework, but the need to balance Huntington’s two imperatives will persist.
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