Key Takeaways from the CAPSTONE Civil-Military Relations Module
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Key Takeaways from the CAPSTONE Civil-Military Relations Module............................ 5-A Richard H. Kohn, list from “Six Myths about Civil-Military Relations in the United States,” Unpublished ................................................................................................. 5-B Richard H. Kohn, “Civil-Military Relations: Civilian Control of the Military,” revised/updated from John Whiteclay Chambers, II, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 122-125 ................................................................................................................................. 5-C Peter Feaver, “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision,” International Security, Vol. 35, No. 4 (Spring 2011), pp. 93-97 (excerpt) ...................................................................................................................... 5-D Jim Golby, “In the Wake of Chaos: Civil-Military Relations Under Secretary Jim Mattis,” War on the Rocks, February 4, 2019, https://warontherocks.com/ 2019/02/in-the-wake-of-chaos-civil-military-relations-under-secretary-jim-mattis/ ........... 5-E Peter Feaver, “Elephants in the Room: Mattis was the Best Secretary of Defense Trump Could Have Had,” Foreign Policy, February 12, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/02/12/mattis-was-the-best-secretary-of-defense- trump-could-have-had/ .......................................................................................................... 5-F Richard H. Kohn, “Civil-Military Behaviors that Build Trust,” adapted from Kohn, “Building Trust: Civil-Military Behaviors for Effective National Security,” chapter 13 in Suzanne Nielsen and Don Snider, eds., American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2009), 264-289.......................................................................................... 5-G This page intentionally left blank CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS Refresher Summary of CAPSTONE Module - Bottom Line Up Front: Civil-military relations has always challenged American leaders, but the relationship has been, with rare exceptions, manageable. The difficulties today are distinctive but not altogether different from many in the past, and can be overcome, as has been true historically, by building trust relationships. - Definitions: Two baskets of issues: (i) interactions of senior leaders in the making of strategy/policy/operations and (ii) connections between the military and society, including institutions as well as people/populations. - At the top of Government in Strategy, Policy, Operations: Sources of Misunderstanding, Tension, Distrust, and Conflict o A paradox of recent history: “No coup, no problem”? o Different people, different worlds, different cultures o Civilian control: The right to be wrong o What, if anything, is different now? o “Best Military Advice” o Speak up but not out o Congress: co-equal branch in civ-mil o Resignation: a real problem for trust - The Military and Society (The “Gap Issue”) o Paradox of the “gap:” Public support/confidence vs.” the 1% and 99%” o Public confidence o Retired military… . …and presidential campaigns . …and policy disputes o A “contract”? The military budget and a civil-military balance “down range” - Wrap Up: So . Why Does the System Work, and How Can We Help it Work Better? o More cooperation than conflict? o Military subordination, civilian control o Primacy of the Constitution, rule of law o Military Professionalism o Trust: the universal solvent 5-A-1 This page intentionally left blank SIX MYTHS ABOUT AMERICAN CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS Richard H. Kohn University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Definition: Civil-military relations is the entire set of relationships and interactions between the military and society: individually, group, and institutional. For our purposes here, the most important portions are the relationships and interactions between topmost flag officers and political leaders in the White House, Congress, OSD/Service secretariats, and other executive branch organizations and agencies. * * * * * First myth: Everything is, and always has been, fine in the relationship at the top between the most senior military and the most senior political officials in the government. * * * * * Second myth: Civilian control of the military is safe, sound, and inviolate, i. e., “no coup (or open insubordination), no problem.” * * * * * Third myth: There exists a clear, bright line between military and civilian responsibilities, with the corollary that the military should push back against orders that promise huge disaster or needless deaths, or are professionally untenable, or are immoral or unethical in a senior officer’s view, even to the point of speaking out publicly or either threatening or actually “resigning” [asking to be reassigned or retired] rather than carrying out the orders. * * * * * Fourth myth (two versions): The military is non-partisan and a-political; the military is partisan and politicized. * * * * * Fifth myth: Americans “love” their military; and (corollary) there exits some “bargain,” “covenant,” or “contract” between the military and the American people. * * * * * Sixth myth: Civilian control is understood by both sides in the relationship, and by the American people. 5-B-1 This page intentionally left blank CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS: CIVILIAN CONTROL OF THE MILITARY Richard H. Kohn [Revised and updated from John Whiteclay Chambers, II, ed., The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 122-125] By the time that the United States became an independent nation, civilian control of the military was already firmly established as an axiom of government. On the basis of history and political theory, Americans considered standing armies to be instruments of despotism as well as defense. With their weapons and discipline, soldiers possessed the means to overthrow a government and destroy liberty. In the state constitutions written after independence, in the Articles of Confederation, and in the Constitution of 1787, the generation that founded the United States explicitly subordinated military forces to elected officials so that all the great decisions relating to war and peace, to raising and organizing armies and navies, to governing them internally, and to their use and support, rested in the hands of the representatives of the people, or those appointed by them to administer military affairs. The system adopted at the end of the eighteenth century derived from English practice and American colonial experience. At the time of settlement in the early 1600s, military forces belonged to the crown. During and after the English Civil War of the 1640s, when Parliament sought control of the armed forces, executed the king who resisted this claim, and was then replaced by a military dictatorship under Oliver Cromwell, civilian control broke down. The Stuart monarchs who were restored to the throne after 1660 reasserted military command but seemed to threaten arbitrary rule by using the new standing army as their instrument. In the constitutional settlement of the Glorious Revolution of 1688-89, Parliament took control of military finance and discipline in what proved to be a watershed for English liberty. Henceforth, civilian control rested on dividing authority over the military between Crown and Commons so that neither could rule by force: Parliament would approve the existence of a military establishment through its power of the purse (appropriating money annually) and by passage of a mutiny act to govern the internal order of the forces. The monarchy retained command, deployed the regiments and ships, and raised and administered them in peace and in war. In the century before independence, the colonies experienced a similar struggle between legislative and executive. Legislatures created militias or authorized the raising of volunteers or conscripts, voting the funds and setting the conditions of service by law, while command and administration rested with the governors. Gradually, using mostly the power of appropriation, the assemblies increased their influence when governors, desperate for forces for defense against European and Native American foes, compromised their authority in return for money, supplies, and permission to raise men. The governors, many of whom were military officers, wielded great influence, but fear of military rule was muted because local defense depended on militia or citizen volunteers—the adult white male population, officered by members of the local elite who rarely had reason to attempt to overturn the established order. During the struggles with France beginning in 1689, however, conflict with the British army, friction with the population, and the regulars' disdain for provincial forces all reinforced colonial antipathy to royal regular forces. By the time of the Revolution, the standing army had become a symbol of repressive authority and arbitrary rule. The Boston Massacre in 1770, when redcoats fired into a threatening mob, killing five civilians, and the imposition of military government in Massachusetts under the Coercive Acts in -1- 5-C-1 1774, engraved a century's concern with controlling military force into the American political tradition, confirming the belief that the safest way to defend a free people was to rely on citizen- soldiers. During the Revolutionary War, military and civilian leaders took