Sarah B. Snyder Sarah B
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CREATING REQUIREMENTS: EMERGING MILITARY CAPABILITIES, CIVILIAN PREFERENCES, AND CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS By Alice Hunt Friend Submitted to the Faculty of the School of International Service of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In International Relations Chair: Sharon K. Weiner, Ph.D. Sarah B. Snyder Sarah B. Snyder, Ph.D. Kathleen H. Hicks, Ph.D. Dean of the School of International Service 3/20/2020 Date 2020 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 © COPYRIGHT by Alice Hunt Friend 2020 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED To my compatriots, civilian and military. CREATING REQUIREMENTS: EMERGING MILITARY CAPABILITIES, CIVILIAN PREFERENCES, AND CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS BY Alice Hunt Friend ABSTRACT This dissertation explores the relationship between civilian and military preferences in the United States. A standard measure of the health of the civil-military relationship is whether civilian preferences prevail over military preferences in times of disagreement. Generally, the civil-military relations literature focuses on civilian efforts to impose their preferences on the military. But is it possible that the military is able to impose its preferences on civilians as well? This study asks and answers the questions: Does the military shape civilian preferences, and to what extent? If the military does shape civilian preferences, under what conditions does it do so? I contend that both purposeful actions by the military and factors natural to the civil-military relationship, each centered on the distribution of information resources, shape civilian preferences. I hypothesize that the less information civilians possess relative to the military, the more civilian preferences are based on military preferences. In three cases of emerging military capabilities, I find support for this hypothesis. Using comparative historical methods and process tracing, I examine the congruence of civilian and military preferences across time and find that military actors frequently framed and constrained civilian thinking about, and in some contexts dictated the purposes of, special operations forces, unmanned aerial vehicles, and cyber capabilities. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Completing a PhD program is a group project. I am indebted to my peerless committee, who supported, cajoled, and improved me as much as they improved the dissertation. Dr. Sarah Snyder was a steady source of support and motivation. She’s both a model academic and the reason I finally got cracking, and I am forever grateful. Dr. Kathleen Hicks is a mentor, role model, and friend. She has been endlessly giving of her time and intellect and enormously supportive of my career. I owe her so much more than I could ever repay. And finally, my chair, Dr. Sharon Weiner, defines mentorship. She believed in me even when I didn’t. Mixing ferocity and excellence with compassion and humor, she refused to let me fall short of what I could achieve. She was simply the very best dissertation chair I could have ever asked for and a dear friend. So many others lent intellectual and moral support along the way I fear I will leave someone out. But here goes: To Meredith (Cheese) Killough, Dr. Mara Karlin, Loren Schulman, Melissa Dalton, Dr. Erin Simpson, Laura Meissner, Rhiannon Gulick, Abe Denmark, and Matt Barkan. You are my pit crew. Thank you for the laughs, the help, and the love. Dr. Boaz Atzili, the Director of the SIS PhD program, has got to be the kindest academic on the planet. Dr. Zia Mian told me I could do it. Dr. Risa Brooks and Dr. Jim Golby are the very best colleagues and friends in civ-mil academia. Shannon Culbertson gave me a passport into the special operations community and gamely read drafts of the SOF case study. Dr. Thomas Ehrhard blazed the trail on UAV research and was generous with his time. Dr. Michael Horowitz and Dr. Paul Scharre both offered support and advice about technology and national security, and robots! Dr. Josh Rovner and Dr. Jacquelyn Schneider gave me the decoder ring for cyber issues, as did soon-to-be Dr. Peter Roady. Dr. Kori Schake sent perfectly timed words of encouragement. Dr. Stephen v Tankel and Dr. Carolyn Gallagher were profoundly kind to me about the whole PhD process, and Dr. Joseph Young gave helpful feedback on developing the research. I am grateful to Dr. Eugene Gholz for supporting this project and acting as an outside reviewer. I am also appreciative of Dr. Michael Desch’s thoughtful review of an early draft of the SOF chapter and for hosting me at the Notre Dame Emerging Scholars in Strategic Studies conference. My wonderful colleagues at the Center for Strategic and International Studies deserve special mention for being a source of insights and energy. My cohort at the School of International Service was a great crew for a long journey, especially Brandon Sims and Cherie Saulter. I may never have done this at all if I hadn’t seen the example of scholarly gumption set by Dr. Cyanne Loyle. The people I interviewed were tremendously generous with their time and memories. Finally, I could not have done a thing without the love and support of my long-suffering family. My husband, Dr. (the other kind) Kaleb Friend who didn’t blink when I told him I was going to quit my perfectly good job and try academia, who read drafts and took the kids out and reminded me to eat my vegetables, is my hero. And to my beautiful boys, Judah and Ari, I love you so much. Thank you for inspiring me to make myself better. This is the ‘book’ Mommy has been working on. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................... iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ............................................................................................................... v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ..................................................................................................... viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION, THEORY, METHODS ................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2 SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES: 1977-2011 ...................................... 31 CHAPTER 3 UNMANNED AERIAL VEHICLES: 1952-2016 ................................... 121 CHAPTER 4 CYBER CAPABILITIES: 1984-2019 ..................................................... 212 CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION ........................................................................................ 257 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................ 291 vii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ACTD Advanced Concept Technology Demonstrator AFO Advance Force Operation ASD Assistant Secretary of Defense CIA Central Intelligence Agency CJCS Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff CND/E Computer Network Defense/Exploitation CT Counterterrorism CYBERCOM Cyber Command DARO Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office (D)ARPA (Defense) Advanced Research Projects Administration DASD Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense DoD Department of Defense GPF General-Purpose Force HASC House Armed Services Committee HVT High-Value Target ISR Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff JPO Joint Program Office JSOC Joint Special Operations Command LIC Low-Intensity Conflict MFP-11 Major Force Program-11 NRO National Reconnaissance Office NSA National Security Agency NSC National Security Council OSD Office of the Secretary of Defense QDR Quadrennial Defense Review RSTA Reconnaissance, Surveillance, and Target Acquisition SASC Senate Armed Service Committee SEAD Suppression of Enemy Air Defense SEAL Sea, Air, Land Force SOCOM Special Operations Command SOF Special Operations Force UAS/V Unmanned Aerial System/Vehicle UCAS/V Unmanned Combat Aerial System/Vehicle UN United Nations VCJCS Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff viii CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION, THEORY, METHODS Civilian control of the military is at the heart of civil-military relations. For those who focus on this relationship in mature democracies, the concern is seldom about the risk of military coups, but of excessive military influence on foreign policy.1 To identify the existence of undue military influence, scholars have established a standard measure of civilian control: if civilian preferences prevail over military preferences most of the time, civilians have adequate control over military institutions and their activities.2 This standard is especially important and useful in times of civil-military disagreement. Contests between civilians and the military must, on average, result in civilians’ favor to assure researchers that the civil-military relationship will not undermine democratic regimes. The trouble with judging civilian control by how often civilian preferences prevail is that it assumes civilian preferences were not, themselves, the products of earlier cooptation. According to the scholar Paul Pierson, preferences often reflect the particularly “ideational elements” of power. “Powerful actors,” Pierson argues, “can gain advantage by inculcating views in others.”3 Although the civil-military relations literature tends to believe preferences are 1 Russel F. Weigley, “The American Military and the Principles of Civilian Control from McClellan to Powell,” Journal of Military History 57, no. 5 (1993): 27-58, doi:10.2307/2951800; and Richard Kohn, “Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations,” National Interest 35 (Spring 1994), https://nationalinterest.org/print/article/out- of-control-the-crisis-in-civil-military-relations-343.