American Military Culture and Civil-Military Relations Today
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American Military Culture and Civil-Military Relations Today CHARLIE DUNLAP Review of Rosa Brooks, How Everything Became War and the Military Became Everything: Tales from the Pentagon (Simon & Schuster 2016) If you’re like me, you may dread long military detention, our strategic deafness plane trips, not out of anxiety about flying, about Africa, stability operations, drones, but rather out of fear of being stuck next covert operations, cyber, nonlethal to a loquacious but studiously uninformed weapons, the militarization of foreign traveler. But if your seatmate happens to policy, and much more. be Rosa Brooks, you know you’re going to have an interesting and thoughtful ride. If The wide range of topics in How you aren’t sure that’s going to happen Everything Became War is perhaps less for anytime soon, however, consider bringing its own sake than to point to the along her new book, How Everything interconnections between them, and also Became War and the Military Became to show the structure of national security Everything: Tales from the Pentagon. decision-making on a day-to-day basis and (Full disclosure, my friend Rosa—I’ll refer the many offices of government and to her in this review as Rosa, rather than officials — far beyond simply the Professor Brooks—very kindly listed me in Department of Defense and a handful of her book’s acknowledgements.) intelligence agencies — involved in making them. These are weighty topics, Though subtitled “Tales from the but the book proceeds in a deceptively Pentagon,” this book is not some sort of easy narrative tone, revealing Rosa’s mindless “tell-all” by a former government skill’s as a journalist. It opens, for official. Instead it’s a thoughtful analysis example, with an account of sitting in an of national security in a capacious sense, “anonymous Pentagon conference room … as seen by a former journalist turned listening as briefers from the military’s Georgetown law professor turned Special Operations command went over Pentagon official turned defense thinker. plans for an impending strike against a How Everything Became War is one of terrorist operative.” those rare books in which there is no part not worth reading; moreover, it addresses I say “deceptively easy” narrative, because an astonishing number of issues for a although How Everything Became War volume of this length. You’ll learn about often uses Rosa’s own experiences working such diverse security issues as piracy, in the Pentagon for a little over two years 1 Civil-Military Relations Today | C. Dunlap — not, interestingly, as a practicing mean. And that’s just within the national lawyer, but instead as a senior advisor to security community of the executive Under Secretary of Defense Michele branch; the gaps in understanding and Flournoy — its point is not memoir as trust are often even larger when extended such. Rather, Rosa uses her experiences, to the whole of government. set against her own self-described background as the product of a family of “left-wing antiwar activists” with many II prior assumptions about the US military, to probe into the interior functioning of Although much of How Everything Became the American national security apparatus War is about these “processes” internal to and American military culture. the US national security community — ways decisions are reached and policies As she says, the two years she spent in the and actions taken — it also has many Pentagon were “strange, almost surreal in interesting discussions about substantive their intensity” and she was simply too policies themselves. The development of busy while in the job to be able to autonomous weapons is one, and it is contemplate or analyze deeper questions another area where I find myself in about the structure of America’s national violent agreement with the book. Arguing security institutions. That’s the point of that autonomous weapons might “be more this book — to undertake the serious capable of behaving far more humanely analysis — and it might be thought of as than we might assume” (and possibly an exercise in "deep" journalism or more humanely than humans in many perhaps anthropology. Especially strong situations), she demonstrates her are Rosa’s observations as to how and why readiness to risk her street cred with the contemporary civil-military relations are human rights community with which she marred by mistrust and has long been associated, and particularly misunderstandings at the senior levels of Human Rights Watch and associated government, and how this plays out on a advocacy organizations’ “killer robots” day-to-day basis. campaign calling for an outright ban on these weapons. Her account of dealing with a civilian counterpart on the National Security This is not to say that everyone will agree Council, for example, who simply called up with everything she has to say. I one day asking — telling — the Pentagon disagreed with her on more than a few of to shift a surveillance drone platform from the issues. For example, she speaks whatever it was doing for Central regretfully (as do many others) of not Command, to monitor political events in being able to close Guantanamo. Kyrgyzstan bears reading in full (pp. 307- Although I think the President ought to 311). The NSC staffer evidently thought have the authority to do so, I also believe calling for shifting a surveillance drone the evidence is scant that its closure and its support was something akin to would markedly change anyone’s opinion ordering up a Big Mac; moreover, he of the U.S. or alter terrorist behavior one seemed not to understand that neither he scintilla, and may even create a whole new nor Rosa had the authority to order set of issues. Central Command to do this. Her experience illustrates that there are Apart from straight-up disagreement on civilian officials who should (and need to) several issues, in some cases I found know better — not only clueless as to how myself disappointed with the one- the military works but also having a sidedness of her treatment of some topics. skewed understanding of what “civil- Her hostility to drone warfare is one military relations” really is supposed to example; it’s not that her arguments don’t 2 Civil-Military Relations Today | C. Dunlap have merit, but rather it’s the failure to (i.e., 2012), I said that the “one institution articulate the other side of the argument of government in which the people with the same rigor. In fairness to the retained faith was the military. Buoyed book, however, it takes up so many topics by the military’s obvious competence in that I finally came to realize that it was the First Gulf War, the public increasingly simply not possible for her to address turned to it for solutions to the country’s every aspect (to include all opposing views problems.” and interpretations) of every issue. That said, the reader needs to understand that Fast forward from 1992 to 2016 and Rosa there are other perspectives and says Americans view the military “as the interpretations. only reasonably well-functioning public institution we have these days [and,] as a How Everything Became War has one result, Americans increasingly treat the theme, indicated by the book’s title, of military as an all-purpose tool for fixing special importance in both civil-military anything that happens to be broken.” affairs and regarding American society True, but it would be an interesting more broadly. This is her observation discussion to address that phenomenon (often made but given an especially more broadly, as it so clearly predates shrewd discussion in this book) that more 9/11. How Everything Became War also and more matters are being given to the makes, however, a number of critiques of military to solve, even though it may not the U.S. military establishment. It offers a be the best entity to attempt to do so or an catalogue of prescriptions to radically entity that even has the capability of change its organization; most of these are doing so. This handover, or desire to hand proposals familiar to Lawfare readers as tasks over, arises in no small part because they are frequent topics of discussion in military is seemingly the only institution Washington think tanks. of government left standing in the public mind with any serious credibility. While agreeing with much she has to say regarding reform, I still would counsel Several other reviews of this book have caution, given the current popularity just appeared to take the view that this noted of the military among Americans phenomenon is a product of 9/11 and the (polls show the public has overwhelmingly public embrace of the US military in the more confidence in it that any other entity years following. It seems unlikely that it in our society), and the fact that virtually would have happened following 9/11 if all analysts believe it to be the world’s that public credibility had not grown in strongest. It’s axiomatic that any change earlier years. And in a 1991 seminal essay in the existing formula that has produced in The Atlantic (“Military Efficiency”) an institution so popular at home and so James Fallows mused on the many things respected abroad needs powerful the military seemed able to accomplish justification to overcome the maxim of “if and said: “I’m beginning to think that the it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” only way to get the national government to do anything worthwhile is to invent a security threat and turn the job over to III the military.” This important aspect of American civil-military affairs has a long Of course, even the best organizations pedigree.