Soldiers of the State: An Alternative View of Civil-Military Relations in America Today
Abstract
In America today the dominant view of civil-military relations holds that civilian control of the military is dangerously eroded. Though tension clearly exists in the relationship, the current critique is largely inaccurate and badly overwrought. Far from overstepping its bounds, America's military operates comfortably within constitutional notions of separated powers, participating appropriately in defense and national security policymaking with due deference to the principle of civilian control. Indeed, an active and vigorous role by the military in the policy process is and always has been essential to the common defense. Today the subject of civil-military relations turns on two questions. The first is whether or not the American military has become dangerously estranged from American society at large. The second is whether or not it has become too deeply involved in American politics. Both are serious questions which deserve deeper examination than they generally receive. Civil-military relations in America today are unquestionably marked by friction, not between society and the military, but between civilian and military elites. There are two principal factors that explain the divide. The first is that discord between civilian and military elites springs primarily from social and intellectual differences that profoundly condition and shape the relationship. The second is that our system of constitutionally distributed control over the military ensures that the tension inherent in separated powers extends to the military domain. The tension which marks the civil-military relationship today is not a function of an overweening military. Instead it is a product of a uniquely American process of constitutional governance which has succeeded well in reconciling the competing imperatives of an effective national defense and a properly subordinated system of separated powers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jan 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADA441631
Entities
People
- Richard D. Hooker
Organizations
- National War College