Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses No.1, Development Enclave, Rao Tula Ram Marg Delhi Cantonment, New Delhi-110010 Journal of Defence Studies Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.idsa.in/journalofdefencestudies Broadening the Education for Synergetic Civil–Military Relations Pradeep Kumar Gautam To cite this article: Pradeep Kumar Gautam (2019): Broadening the Education for Synergetic Civil–Military Relations, Journal of Defence Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, April-June 2019, pp. 5-23 URL https://idsa.in/jds/jds-13-2-2019-civil–military-relations Please Scroll down for Article Full terms and conditions of use: https://www.idsa.in/termsofuse This article may be used for research, teaching and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, re- distribution, re-selling, loan or sub-licensing, systematic supply or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. Views expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India. Broadening the Education for Synergetic Civil–Military Relations Pradeep Kumar Gautam* Statecraft, diplomacy and warfare are not only a matter of brute force, but also a function of scholarship to understand the past, present and future of the art, science and literature of national and international security. At higher levels in their professional career, besides the armed forces, a number of civil servants too have to deal with the state’s use or threat of the use of legitimate force. This article suggests broadening the education for synergetic civil–military relations (CMR). This education needs to be imparted, and sustained, in the military as well as in the civil domain, including in particular the political leadership, bureaucracy, and the academic community. By doing this, a healthy CMR will generate superior strategies. Military victories do not solve political problems. —Lawrence Freedman1 INTRODUCTION It is a well-known adage that war is too serious a business to be left alone to the generals or, for that matter, to the political class and bureaucracy. The art and science of the military craft is deeply interwoven into the spheres of politics, and war and society. In other words, both warcraft and statecraft overlap. However, there has to be a division of labour. The mind is the most vital link and it is not possible for those in uniform or * Colonel Pradeep Kumar Gautam (Retd) is a Consultant to the Indigenous Historical Knowledge Project at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. He thanks the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable suggestions. ISSN 0976-1004 print © 2017 Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses Journal of Defence Studies, Vol. 13, No. 2, April–June 2019, pp. 5–23 6 Journal of Defence Studies in the bureaucracy to be grandmasters of all the intellectual disciplines and discourses all by themselves. This intellectual slot has to be filled by academics from varied disciplines who, by and large, are civilians. Indeed, the nature and character of war can only be grasped through sustained intellectual efforts—a job perhaps best done in an academic environment. Although the armed forces need to undergo rigorous training to be ready and relevant for combat, at the same time a substantial number of civil servants in their professional career too have to deal with the state’s use or threat of the use of legitimate force, along with arms-related international negotiations and treaties. They also have to man various posts of the government which deal with national and international security. Overseeing the instruments of use of force are the elected leaders or the political class who are fed with options and choices as advised by both the military and the bureaucracy. An important method to capture this dynamic is through the prism of civil–military relations (CMR). Interestingly, the term civil–military cooperation is seldom used, though cooperation is a principle of war almost in all militaries. This is because it is a political phenomenon and there are bound to be disagreements, leading more to competition, and even acrimony, rather than cooperation. Why is this so? The simple explanation is that different stakeholders have different perspectives. So, why not understand and study these perspectives without preconceived notions? This article is not about the unending debate in India on whether or how much the military is in the loop for national security decision making. Tracing that process is a complex one and beyond the scope of this article. However, rarely has there been an attempt to study and analyse the various aspects of CMR at a higher academic level from the point of view of all the stakeholders who deal with security. This article attempts a broad-based study that will help in improving the understanding of a subject as complex as CMR, which in turn can lead to better outcomes. The main idea being presented here is that it is not only the military that needs to balance training and education but also the other stakeholders, namely, politicians, civil servants/technocrats and the academicians, need to do the same. In other words, education needs to be imparted, by professionals, both to the military and the remaining three stakeholders of the quad, that is, political leadership, civil servants/ bureaucracy, and the academic community. This will lead to building healthy CMR that can further improve the formulating and execution of Broadening the Education for Synergetic Civil–Military Relations 7 well-informed, and thus superior, strategies. It will also result in a better informed political leadership, military, civilian bureaucracy, and society at large on the larger issue of war and peace. The article is divided into various sections. The following section deals with the theoretical foundations on the interlinkages of the stakeholders of CMR and the outcomes. The next section gives enduring examples from the military history of Germany and India. The penultimate section enumerates the steps that need to be taken for sustainable education for synergetic CMR in India, followed by the conclusion. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION Civil–Military Relations (CMR) In the field of politics, ‘“Civil–military relations” is the name given to the complex relationships among the governments, the military and society. The field is inherently both normative and empirical.’2 This definition is not country specific and the framework can be used in any democratic society and nation. The Americans have generated a huge body of literature on this topic for their society. There are books as well as a number of journal articles which narrate the politics of CMR. Some examples of Western scholars (mostly from the United States [US]) are: Samuel Huntington (1957)3 (objective and subjective control) and his critics;4 Morris Janowitz (1960)5 (military to reflect civil society writ large); Samuel E. Finer (1962)6 (how much separation should there be between a civil government and its army?); Charles C. Moskos and Frank R. Wood7 (military moving from traditional ‘institutional’ format to a civilian or ‘occupational’ format); Michael C. Desch (1999)8 (different attitudes towards military by civilians during war and peace); Peter Feaver (2003)9 (classical principal–agent framework: civilian leaders as principal, military officers serving as agents); and others who have explained this relationship through various perspectives and theories. In the case of India, it is Samuel Huntington’s ideas that are most often transplanted in the management of military by the civilian leadership. Huntington’s argument on the way to control the military is: there are two ways to try to achieve control: subjective control, which involves treating the military as an interest group and a power player, and manipulating its demographic, ideological or religious make- up in order to align it with the ruling class; or objective control, which involves professionalising the military, such that it recognises 8 Journal of Defence Studies its sphere of competence (fighting) and refrains from participating in politics out of sense of duty and appropriateness. The idea is that the government—of whatever kind—has the legitimacy (if not the expertise) to run the country, while the military’s expertise is in the extremely circumscribed realm of protecting the country from foreign attack and protecting the government from internal threats. Since the government has the greater competency, the military is supposed to accept, willingly, a subordinate position in running the state.10 A recent example of rewarding scholarship with regard to India is by Steven I. Wilkinson, a historian at Yale. After India’s independence, the political leadership had to devise ways and means to guard against a military coup, a phenomenon which was often noticed in many newly independent Asian and African countries in the mid-twentieth century. Wilkinson (2015) shows how one factor has always been central to the political leadership: to make the military ‘coup proof’ by various constitutional, institutional and administrative checks and balances.11 In contemporary times, this fear of coup has diminished considerably. However, objective control of the military by the political leadership is essential in a democracy. In the case of the Indian democratic set-up, the consensus is on objective control. However, in India, this subject is not part of the education or even serious authorship by academics, unlike the way it is done by academics in the US. Thus, there is no informed debate and discussion, which is vital in a democracy. In India at least, whenever CMR is mentioned, the first thing that comes to mind is higher defence reforms, and there is enough policy literature on this.12 However, there is not enough literature on military education for military leaders with a civilian oversight.13 Besides, another understanding (or misunderstanding) on CMR is that the day-to-day transactions, tensions and problem solving are construed to be CMR.