Pursuing Civilian Control Over the Military

Pragmatism and Security

A pragmatist identifies two purposes of a military: (1) to relieve the people of the burdens of outside threats to their well-being that otherwise “would absorb their energies in mere negative struggle against evils” and (2) “to stop war as soon as possible, in order to prevent further destruction and allow remaining conflicts to be settled peacefully” (Dewey, 1927/1988, pp. 71–72; Janowitz, 1971, pp. xiv, 275). ² The first purpose implies that a technologically advanced military is sustained by an economy that generates enough wealth to pay for aircraft carriers, jet fighters, space satellites, nuclear weapons, unmanned drones, helicopters, precision-guided missiles, nuclear-powered submarines, and more (Kapstein, 1992, pp. 15–26). The second purpose accepts that conflicts of varying degrees happen between families, groups, tribes, and nations, and so there must be intelligent ways to resolve disputes (Dewey, 1935/1950). When conflicts erupt, it is crucial to settle them with as little force as possible while preventing escalation that leads to mutual annihilation. Both purposes reinforce the assertion that “wars will be limited wars. Or,…a continuation of the struggle between nation-states—by means other than total war” (Janowitz, 1971, p. 266).

Pragmatism is a way of thinking about the world that “presents consequences as a test and a responsibility of the life of reason” (Dewey, 1922/1950, p. 58). It employs a scientific approach to military matters that avoids abstraction, ideology, dogma, and imaginary assumptions (Stuhr, 1987). It is a way of thinking that seeks truth in human activities by searching for facts and then identifying what is known instead of what a leader says is known. It opposes what Barbara Tuchman described as “wooden-headedness” in statecraft: “assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs” (Meacham, 2018). Pragmatists are attracted to military matters because the military has increased in importance in American life (Kohn, 2009a). As the world is “still in the making,” anything “made” must be subject to intellectual curiosity and scientific rigor to avert policy inertia based on “obstructive dogmas” or “rigid canons” that often result in poor performance and unintended and destructive consequences, such as what is transpiring in twenty-first-century Afghanistan (Dewey, 1922/1950, p. 59; James, 1907/1987, pp. 142–143; Sukhanyar, 2018, p. A10). Yet a pragmatist also respects long-established social and political values such as pluralism and civic republicanism, comprehending the need for civilians and the military to be connected to preserve a free society (Janowitz, 1972). Pragmatism as a philosophy accepts what works to better a situation while confronting obsolete and potentially harmful paradigms that urge inflexible practices. It embraces an “experimental spirit” to scrutinize assumptions “for the relief and betterment of the estate of humanity.” It rejects “noble aloofness” by grounding actions and ideas in the world of common people (Dewey, 1922/1950, pp. 58–59). As it is the common people who more often assume the personal physical risks of warfare, the lowest and highest parts of society are therefore significant to the life of all. As a feature of a democratic society intent on supporting the greatest number of its citizens, the pragmatist embraces empathy by seeing the world from another’s perspective while suspending judgment (Dewey, 1922/1950, p. 58; Martin, 1984; Shields & Soeters, 2017; Stuhr, 1987). ³ Edward Landsdale represented such a pragmatist outlook by orienting toward discovery, open communication and discourse, empathy, and rebelliousness against institutionalized superiority and bureaucratic tribalism during the Vietnam War (Boot, 2018, pp. 364–368, 412–415).

Military Versus Civilian Supremacy

Popescu’s choice between “professional versus civilian supremacy” for making crucial decisions during wartime is misleading because it poses a choice between military (the “professionals”) versus civilians when determining who is “in control.” This binary option is based on stereotyped and obsolete thinking from the twentieth-century Cold War. Delimiting the responsibilities and authorities between civilians (nonmilitary) versus the military (noncivilian) represents an unrealized theory and a reality gap between the real world versus an idealized vision, resulting in useless rhetoric and conceptual confusion. Social, geopolitical, and technological changes continue to break down barriers that separate soldiers from society. With World War II as a tenuous exception (discussed later), civilian intervention into operational and tactical decisions for numerous conflicts is as common as having the military intervene in civilian policy and political decisions. Military symbols and traditions such as wearing uniforms and marching in parades do not conceal the blending of military and civilian roles and actions. Military leaders act on behalf of civilians, as civilians direct military actions, exposing a “quasi-military, quasi-civilian, society” (Kohn, 2009a, p. 192). The amalgamation of the roles and missions of civilian and military agencies with their leaders and managers has long been a well-recognized feature of American political life (Dewey, 1935/1950, pp. 106–107; Galbraith, 1969; Huntington, 1961; Janowitz, 1971, pp. 31–36, 275; Kohn, 2009a, pp. 188–192; Mills, 1956/2000). Such blending of national civilian and military leaders and managers intensified since 1991 based on several factors: (1) the militarization of society fomented by the entertainment media, (2) national-level civilian leaders and governing institutions embracing militaristic management and planning practices, (3) the achievement of a single authority sanctioning the use of military force that distills military decision-making power into a unified civilian–military national security council, (4) perpetual and numerous small-scale conflicts sanctioned by undefined war powers, and (5) public acquiescence of the current war powers arrangement and the numerous protracted limited wars (Fallows, 2015; Kohn, 2009a, pp. 178–183; Porch, 2013, pp. 318–334; The New York Times, 2017).

The militarization of American politics and civil society helps perpetuate a mythic “objective civilian control” theoretical construct that dominates federal government and military culture (Kohn, 2008, 2009a; Rapp, 2015). Huntington’s theory was codified with the publication of The Soldier and the State and based on post–World War II outlooks of an idealized type of soldier that considered anything “civilian” as nonmilitary while anything military as “isolated and divorced from society” (Huntington, 1956b, p. 381). It is now a fixed ideology of the defense establishment, a static professionalized viewpoint, and orthodoxy of the armed services’ military academies, senior service colleges, and elite universities (Snider, 2008, pp. 263–266, 2017).

The theory grants the defense establishment an elite standing claiming apolitical status that also confers “autonomy” along with sizable annual public revenues, a high degree of organizational sovereignty, generous job and business opportunities, and handsome medical and pension benefits amplified by the compact all-volunteer military system. As an ideology, objective civilian control theory articulates how the military commands its unique role in securing the state that involves land, air, sea, cyber, finance, law enforcement, and space power to reveal a self-styled moral superiority above other professions and the common citizenry (Huntington, 1956b; Kohn, 2008, 2009a, 2009b; Mills, 1956/2000, pp. 343–361; Snider, 2008, 2017, pp. 8–10). The fact that there is civil–military blending into a single political institution and culture contests the validity of spin-off theories such as the civil–military problematique (Feaver, 1996).

Such an institution that wields global military supremacy, organizational autonomy, and immense domestic political powers should alarm a people that contribute “less than one percent” of its population to the waging of numerous wars (Fallows, 2015). How can the people, possessed with deference and respect for the military, protect against a unified civilian–military establishment? What is the nature of its power—this national security tribal confederacy—where militarized “civilian” government and commercial institutions are integrated with politicized military counterparts? How is it possible to render such a system impotent in the civic sense by steering them into specialized institutions of violence if corporate and government leaders are seamlessly recruited from the connected senior retired ranks of the uniformed military (Kohn, 2009a, 2009b; Mills, 1956/2000, pp. 198–219; Ulrich, 2015)?

Objective civilian control theory combines American tradition with Cold War exigencies explained by two interwoven influences. First, examples from American military traditions observed by Generals William T. Sherman and George C. Marshall praise the eschewing of all forms of politics while practicing exceptional moral conduct. Second, the emergence of immediate threats to the security of the United States corresponded with a belief that the causes of war “lie deep in human nature.” German and Japanese civil–military experiences with their naked militarism offered historical proof that well-established militaries of modern states needed a superior code of conduct reflected in a specified professionalism designed to maintain civilian control over the military (Huntington, 1956a, 1957, pp. 64–69, 80–139, 229–269, 360–361, 442–445). According to Huntington, “the key to objective civilian control is military professionalism.” Professionalizing is supposed to dampen political ambitions in four interrelated ways. First, the military professional “acquires incompetence” in occupational areas outside their scope of work. Second, the military remains “politically sterile and neutral” by maintaining ignorance over all political matters (Huntington, 1957, pp. 83–90; Feaver, 1996, pp. 149–160; Travis, 2017, p. 397). Third, the military subordinates its power to a single legitimate authority. Finally, military professionalism demands from career soldiers a set of personal attributes to assure competence and prudence when wielding military power: (1) specialized knowledge and skill in “the management of violence” that “is intellectual in nature,” (2) embracing a social responsibility to protect the state supported by written codes of ethics, (3) enjoying a sense of “organic unity” among a distinctive group separate from the nonmilitary sectors of society to offer refuge from political influences, and (4) intellectual and moral development through “considerable training and experience.” The military professional was expected to possess “intellectualized skill, mastery of which requires intense study” (Huntington, 1956a, pp. 678–682; 1957, pp. 8–16).

Three ambiguous assumptions underpin objective civilian control theories. The first is the inconsistent treatment of human nature. To Huntington (1957):

War is always likely and is ultimately inevitable…its fundamental causes lie deep in human nature where exist the sources of all human conflict…. If the causes of war are in human nature, the complete abolition of war is impossible. (p. 65)

The second ambiguity involves Huntington’s (1956a) requirement for “a single recognized source of legitimate authority over military forces” (p. 678). Yet the U.S. political system operates from competing ideas and divided political authority. Although the military officer “must be loyal to some single institution,” even Huntington (1957) lamented that “where there are competing authorities, or competing ideas as to what ought to be the authority, professionalism becomes difficult if not impossible to achieve” (pp. 35, 184–185). The endurance of various limited wars of choice that dominate U.S. deployments and operations harbor unique constituencies, rendering Presidents Obama and Trump as more managers rather than deciders, which is not conducive to honestly asserting that there is a single authority that governs the various wars.

A third ambiguous assumption involves the limits of Huntington’s functional specialization argument declaring that military tasks and operations justify the military’s assertion of autonomy. In theory, specialization raises expectations that the military must be given autonomy when preparing for and waging war. This may be true if a major war breaks out. In the war on terror, no agency can conduct their affairs “without extraneous interference” (Huntington, 1957, pp. 57, 70–71, 85). The September 11, 2001 (9/11) attacks were successful in part because U.S. agencies sought “autonomy.” Industrial age theories of management persevere, as cultural and operational autonomy becomes the cousin of organizational stovepiping. Transnational terrorists relish bureaucratic stasis and stovepiping. Linking specialization to autonomy becomes a talking point to win political arguments when seeking larger defense budgets to fight the next big war and helps to distance military actions and activities from civilian scrutiny and oversight. The functional specialization concept is superfluous in relation to the varied twenty-first-century limited wars (Kohn, 2009a; Porch, 2013).

Classification of Wars

Popescu argues that attempting to classify wars by distinguishing between “wars of choice” versus “wars of necessity” is unhelpful for policy makers and the military because making such distinctions is based on “subjective” judgments (Popescu, 2018, p.5). Maybe the only “objective” method to determine the kind of war being pursued is a formal declaration or war by the Congress; or the President can specify the type of war by executive order? A scientific survey can be attempted. Pentagon employees can be asked to determine the kinds of wars being waged. Survey results could be shared with the Congress and the American people to develop strategies and plans to match means with ends. Since any survey will be deemed biased or politically motivated, determining the nature and purpose, or “type of war,” becomes a political question, always subject to debate among people with opposing values and preferences.

Determining the types of wars waged defaults to complex and provisional decision-making processes amid political struggle (Rourke, 1984, pp. 1–7). Military operations obscured from public view—such as the operations in Niger up until the death of four soldiers—might lead the American people to question if we are at war (Savage, Schmitt, & Gibbons-Neff, 2018). Presidents Bush, Obama, and now Trump order soldiers to carry out military operations on various continents as long as it does not exceed a certain size and scope, result in too many casualties, and draw too much public scrutiny. If the president wanted to deploy three combat brigades to Somalia, he would probably need to comply with the War Powers Act because the size and scope would draw higher than normal public awareness. Where do we draw the line between small deployments requiring minimal civilian oversight versus deployments too large to conceal without formal congressional approval? Is the size and scope of conflicts related to a war’s legitimacy? If it isn’t, why are small-scale attacks and operations kept from public view?

The binary choice between wars of choice versus wars of necessity is a useful framework to give the American people a way to structure complex issues and examine their preferences when presented with unfamiliar facts about military operations conducted in their name. The people earn the right to scrutinize wars: They underwrite a US$22 trillion government debt through tax revenues (Kapstein, 1992, pp. 66–86), and they offer their sons and daughters to fight and die in small and big wars. ⁴ Each citizen decides if a war being waged in Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Niger, or another warzone is being fought “for reasons of principle, ideology, geopolitics or sometimes pure humanitarianism” or as “a life-or-death struggle in which the safety and security of the homeland are at stake” (Krauthammer, 2001). “Wars of choice” imply that principles, ideologies, or humanitarian perspectives exist and lack universal agreement. By contrast, “wars of necessity” garner more unanimity.

According to Huntington, World War II was the archetype conflict of objective civilian control; the political leadership “wholeheartedly” ratified the war and turned it over to those who made war “their business.” As “the national aim of total victory superseded all else,” the military was expected to attain nothing short of “total victory” against Germany and Japan (Huntington, 1957, p. 317). Paradoxically, the war lacked attributes of objective civilian control principles as “the boundary between military forces and civilian society weakened as total mobilization required an ever larger segment of the population to become part of the war apparatus” (Janowitz, 1972, pp. 429–430). Millions of civilians, not specialists of violence, joined or were conscripted, were given a few months of training, sent off to war, and then promptly returned to civilian life while their military superiors (most from the service academies) continued as “professionals” in military service as admirals, generals, and then as government and corporate leaders (Mills, 2000/1956).

By contrast, the Korean War did not receive much political attention at home even though it resulted in a stalemate while costing dearly in American lives, resources, and an open-ended military commitment. It is closer to a war of choice because it was limited, fought in an unfamiliar part of the world, and rationalized by anticommunist ideology (James, 1993). This led to political struggles among the public, partisan groups, Congress, and the Joint Chiefs. “The Korean War was the first war in American history which was not a crusade,” and “the first time that public resentment of the conduct of the war contributed to the ousting of the party in power” (Huntington, 1957, p. 387). More important, the war’s ambiguous results generated “a wide range” of divergent views between the armed services about appropriate ways to fight the Cold War (Stokesbury, 1988, pp. 253–258). It therefore becomes useful to identify the kind of war being waged, by whatever way it happens, to try and match ends with means.

The Military and Politics

Janowitz was less concerned with separating the military from politics and more concerned with a “military establishment effectively articulated with civilian society” (Janowitz, 1972, pp. 427–428; 1980/1991, p. 214; Segal, 1984, pp. 178–179). The belief that the American military must be apolitical is propagated by popular culture. Retired Admiral Mike Mullen expressed distaste over having military officers “acting in political roles in President Donald Trump’s administration” (Sullivan, 2018). ⁵ However, if “wars are political” and “victory is defined in political terms,” how can the military be disconnected from politics (Clark, 2016, p. 29)? Three difficulties help explain the complexity of this issue. First, Huntington’s civil–military theory wrongly maligns the words “politics” and “political” by distorting their meaning and purpose. Politics is a natural process and an essential feature of democracy involving “the art of controlling, protecting, assisting, and governing individuals and groups in society” to include “the art of developing and guiding public policy” (Smith & Zurcher, 1968, p. 289). Three additional meanings of the word political are “seeking power at the expense of other government institutions,” participation in the policy-making processes, and “involvement in partisan politics” (Owens, 2015, pp. 89–90). The military is involved in political issues and struggles because politics pervades nearly all aspects military affairs ⁶ (Huntington, 1961; Kohn, 2009a; Mills, 1956/2000). Tactical military actions have strategic political implications just as strategic decisions impact localized actions in profound and unique ways (Petraeus, 2009). When someone decides to abstain from politics and partisanship, then that decision in and of itself is a political decision. The military establishment wields enormous political influence over the reelection of members of Congress, acquires annual multibillion dollar budgets, and participates on many levels of the government bureaucracy in the formulation and execution of plans, policies, and military operations that influence U.S. foreign policy (Galbraith, 1969; Huntington, 1961; Kapstein, 1992; Krebs, 2006, pp. 193–196; The New York Times, 2017). Domestic politics are impacted by foreign policies and military actions. Military officers across the defense establishment are deeply involved in framing interagency security problems, developing strategies, planning for political and diplomatic challenges and questions, and then formulating and carrying out operations to support national objectives (Huntington, 1957, pp. 374–399; Kohn, 2009a; Krebs, 2006; Matheny, 2016; Rapp, 2015). Huntington’s all-inclusive assertion that “politics is beyond the scope of military competence” appears directed at the military’s inability to develop “the goals of state policy” requiring “a broad awareness of the elements and interests entering into a decision” (Huntington, 1957, pp. 71–72). Yet under twenty-first-century conditions, how can military practitioners shun such tasks when acting as representatives, advisors, and executors of national policies (Clark, 2016; Rapp, 2015)? Huntington’s antipathy toward the military engaging in politics is oddly expressed in his description of Admiral Arthur Radford’s pamphlet Militant Liberty, which Huntington (1957) considered as a “naïve, amusing, and harmless work of an eccentric…” that exemplified a “devastating example of what can happen when generals and admirals…abandon their military knitting and venture into political philosophy” (p. 397).

Secondly, as the civilian versus military dichotomy is imaginary, it diverts attention away from salient political and military problems. The Cold War era “quasi-military and quasi-civilian” defense establishment has come to fruition to expose truths about American culture and the military’s role in American life (Ashford, 2018; Kohn, 2009a, pp. 188–208). Civilians are militarizing, as the uniformed military is politicized. Their roles and functions blend across a national security system engaged in varying wars and influenced by emerging technologies (Kohn, 2009a). Former Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz represents the militarized civilian with little to distinguish from any four-star admiral or general. For the thousands of civilian Department of State and Defense employees with Wolfowitz’s career lineage, the essential question is: To what extent are “civilian superiors” articulated with civilian society (Burk, 2002; Janowitz, 1980/1991, p. 214; Mills, 1956/2000)? Instead, there exists a “civil-security” gap between the people and the defense establishment illustrated by Lieutenant General H. R. McMaster’s vigorous advocacy for staying the course in Afghanistan and seeking “a deeper commitment to Syria” (Landler, 2018), General John Nicholson vigorously endorsing increased military and economic commitment in Afghanistan (Mashal, 2017), and the military’s daily management of other limited wars around the world. Such conceptual gaps and ambiguities exemplify Huntington’s flawed legacy and theoretical irrelevance.

A third problem regarding the political issue is miscommunication between the people and the government. Transparency should be a vital element to sustaining current security arrangements and the various wars. The cases of Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden expose the challenges of keeping information from the people. With secrecy as a settled practice of the military based on objective civilian control theories, the lack of transparency and secretive decisions by the military to pursue shadowy enemies on distant continents has potential to be condemned by the people. Where is the tipping point? How much outrage will be tolerated?

Conclusion

As civilian supremacy over war powers is inviolate, “the people alone” remain as “the only legitimate fountain of power” as reflected in the U.S. Constitution and explained in the Federalist Papers (Madison, 1788/1988, pp. 297, 313). The American governing system thwarts tyranny and sustains democracy by dividing power and authorities across a compound republic (Ostrom, 1987, p. 91). Civic participation in such a government influences soldierly cohesion and military effectiveness to promote the welfare of the greatest number of people (Burk, 2002, pp. 22–24; Janowitz, 1983, pp. 59–61). In such a system, how do objective civilian control theories function to preserve civilian control over the military?

Janowitz was concerned that an all-volunteer force might not mirror the greater society, as “a political democracy rests on citizen participation, especially in the armed forces.” His concern with a military system dominated by “absolutist” outlooks that maintain an “assault perspective” based on “a continued affirmation of the inevitability of armed force” appears warranted. An all-volunteer force “deeply rooted” in an absolutist “professional ideology” for a Cold War–type security establishment operates to divide soldiers from civilians (Janowitz, 1972, pp. 428, 434–436). Any kind of social isolation of soldiers from society threatens to lead to unforeseen political tensions and turmoil (Klay, 2018; Segal, 1984).

American military leaders do not live up to Huntington’s ideal-type professional in the political and intellectual sense (Klay, 2018; Kohn, 2009b; Warren, 2015). This defies expectations of unconditional military autonomy and self-regulation (Cooper, 2017; Kohn, 2008, 2009b; Snider, 2017). In spite of clear signals from the American people in the 2008, 2012, and 2016 elections that they want out of the wars, national-level civilian and military leaders are united to perpetuate worldwide military operations, illustrating an influence in decisions of war and peace deficient of clear authorization (Ashford, 2018). The struggle for geopolitical clarity since 1991 exacerbates civil-security confusion, making it difficult to decide on the appropriate application of military force to tackle professed threats. Bitter internecine debates between counterinsurgency versus traditionalist conventional war advocates exemplify the fruitlessness of adhering to an imaginary civilian versus military dichotomy (Boot, 2018; Porch, 2013). If the American public cared about Huntington’s guidelines, there might be public outrage over General John Allen’s barking oration at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, the grotesque use of Army Captain Humayun Saqib Khan to score political points during the 2016 presidential election campaigns, and the appointments of John Kelly, James Mattis, Michael Flynn, and H. R. McMaster into critical civilian-led defense positions. Where is the public outrage for violating “professional” standards under objective civilian control precepts? With the appointment of John Bolton as National Security Advisor, Janowitz (1971) again demonstrates his acumen: “Some military leaders are as ‘pragmatic’ as any civilian political leader, while some civilians are as ‘absolute’ as any military officer” (p. 275).