No full-text available
To read the full-text of this research,
you can request a copy directly from the authors.
Knowing When to Salute
Abstract
Due to a strong “Can Do” spirit and a well-engrained, albeit simplistic, notion of civilian control over the military, senior military leaders are disinclined to publicly share their disagreement with emerging national security policy. Many senior officers mistakenly believe that there are no alternatives other than just silently executing, resigning, or retiring when confronted with bad policy formulation. There are, however, options available to senior uniformed leaders when confronted with policy formulation that they, in their professional opinion, believe is flawed. Depending on the degree to which the civilian authorities are receptive to military advice and the magnitude of the threat to national security involved in the policy, senior military leaders can choose among many alternatives to widen the policy debate.
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s resignation in December 2006 elevated the issue of civilian control of the military into public view and partisan debate. According to the New York Times, Mr. Rumsfeld’s resignation may have been delayed due to the administration’s concern about undue influence from the U.S. military. Specifically, the influence allegedly came from retired officers. The New York Times noted that retired generals who had called for Rumsfeld’s dismissal “had in effect ensured Mr. Rumsfeld’s job security, because the White House was unwilling to take any action that could be interpreted as the civilian leadership buckling under pressure from the military establishment.”1 Assuming the Time’s analysis is correct, it highlights how the public statements and actions of retired senior military officers may have important—and potentially detrimental—effects on national security policy. More disturbing is the possibility that this represents only part of a larger trend toward questionable and counterproductive involvement by retired officers in policy matters, and even in partisan politics.
This article focuses on Carl von Clausewitz’s ideas regarding civil–military relations and in particular how those ideas relate to Samuel Huntington’s models of objective and subjective civilian control. Huntington believed that Clausewitz supplied the foundation for his concept of objective control. Yet an examination of Clausewitz’s own experiences, as well as his theoretical writings, rejects the basic tenants of objective control: a politically neutral military, the separation of political from military considerations during the professional officer’s analytical processes, and the reliance on the professional military as opposed to the citizen soldier. Instead, Clausewitz embraced something similar to Huntington’s concept of subjective control and with it a fusionist model of civil–military relations.
President George W. Bush's Iraq surge decision in late 2006 is an interesting case for civil-military relations theory, in particular, the debate between professional supremacists and civilian supremacists over how much to defer to the military on decisions during war. The professional supremacists argue that the primary problem for civil-military relations during war is ensuring the military an adequate voice and keeping civilians from micromanaging and mismanaging matters. Civilian supremacists, in contrast, argue that the primary problem is ensuring that well-informed civilian strategic guidance is authoritatively directing key decisions, even when the military disagrees with that direction. A close reading of the available evidenceboth in published accounts and in new, not-for-attribution interviews with the key playersshows that the surge decision vindicates neither camp. If President Bush had followed the professional supremacists, there would have been no surge because his key military commanders were recommending against that option. If Bush had followed the civilian supremacists to the letter, however, there might have been a revolt of the generals, causing the domestic political props under the surge to collapse. Instead, Bush's hybrid approach worked better than either ideal type would have.
Why Iraq Was a Mistake
- Lieutenant General
- Greg Newbold
Lieutenant General Greg Newbold, USMC Retired, " Why Iraq Was a Mistake, " Time, Vol. 167, No.
16, April 17, 2006, p. 42.
Army Retired, as cited in " Generals Speak Out on Iraq The News Hour with Jim Lehrer
- Major General John Batiste
Major General John Batiste, U.S. Army Retired, as cited in " Generals Speak Out on Iraq, " The News
Hour with Jim Lehrer, April 13, 2006, available from www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military/jan-june06/iraq_4-
13.html#, accessed on May 21, 2007.