Civil –Military Relations
Civil military relations can be understood as ‘two hands on the sword.’ The civilian hand determines the timing to draw out the sword from its sheath and the military hand carries out the civilian government’s order to put the sword in combat. Civil military partnership is shared between the civilian government and the military establishment in order to run the state affairs.
The paper examines the complexities of civil-military relationships from the past till to date. Further, it interprets the viewpoints of authors: Peter D. Feaver in his article, ‘Armed Forces & Society’ and Marybeth P. Ulrich’s article ‘The Runaway General’. Authors’ interpretations signify how far the US is fair in treatment of civil-military relations. In the end, the paper suggests ways to coordinate relations between armed forces and civilian government.
I agree to the interpretations of Marybeth Ulrich. She is vocal in civil-military relations. She supports a balance in civil military decisions, placing the civilian government on the driving seat. But I disagree with Feaver over the point of the agency theory. My perception is that there should be coordination between the civil and military relations. Both civilian executives and military personnel are needed for state’s safety and wellbeing of the people. Any deviation in decision making during the peace time and the war time is jeopardous to the state. I advocate that no one is superior or inferior. They are like strings on the lyre to work equally.
Peter D. Feaver proposes ambitiously a new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship. Here, a principal is the government and agent is a military man, capable of carrying out the duty. ...
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...ated that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff would be the chief advisor to the government on military matters, but it did not dictate that the political leaders actually would take his advice or even listen to his opinion. Logic indicates that quashing the advice of military experts is detrimental to national security. The information the military supplies to the civilian leadership is important to shaping military capabilities and establishing civilian leadership. For operations that involve the application of force, military advice is vital and is in the national interest for civilian leaders. As the United States leads the world into the 21st Century, military leaders must gain and maintain the trust of the American President and the Secretary of Defense in order for their advice to be considered towards the goal of maximizing the security of the nation.
When political leaders frame an unjust war as a morally just war, though, these same soldiers might have second thoughts about their decision to become part of a military machine that is prosecuting an unjust war because their leaders lacked the authority to absolve them from their personal accountability. In this regard, McMahan makes the interesting point that, “What unjust combatants are commanded to do as agents of the state – fight, in an unjust war – is not something that their state, or its leaders, have a claim right to do, or to delegate to others”
...between civilian political and military leadership. Operation Vigilant Resolve is a great example of the failure of this relationship and the need to rectify this issue. This is the final, most important lesson we must learn. Our top military leaders must also be great politicians. They must understand how to temper the will of our civilian leadership who may not be versed in military strategy or operations. We need leaders who are willing to fight for what is right and be humble enough to accept when they are wrong.
He was also a Gulf War veteran who commanded an armored cavalry. His desire in writing this book was to examine, through the recently declassified documents, manuscript collections, and the Joint Chief of Staff official histories, where the responsibility for the Vietnam foreign policy disaster lay, but also examine the decisions made that involved the United States in a war they could not win. This book details the discussion of government policy in the stages of the Vietnam crisis from 1961-July 1965. It examines the main characters of President Lyndon B. Johnson, Robert McNamara, in addition to the military, which included the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It began in the Kennedy era amidst the Bay of Pigs incident and how that led to mistrust of the military planning by advisors and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
...ented by decision-makers in crises. First, every group meeting should have a designated devil's advocate, who will point out potential risks. Second, special care should be taken so that no one agency or coalition of experts can monopolize the flow of incoming information. Janet Reno, by allowing the FBI to monopolize the information coming to her, made it almost inevitable that she would eventually do what the FBI wanted. Finally, the virtues which make the military such an effective international killing force--such as uniformity, obedience, and group cohesion--make it especially susceptible to groupthink. For this reason, the military should have no participation in law enforcement; quasi-military units such as the FBI's HRT and the BATF SRT should be thoroughly demilitarized, and should play, at most, a very subordinate role in law-enforcement decision-making.
Over the years America has been in countless wars, which has exposed the people and their society's ideals to the military's influence. The United States were founded on the spilling of blood which is justified through the act of battle. Military branches have developed since they were first brought into being as the “Minutemen”, but one thing that hasn't changed over time is the people's’ trust. Andrew Bacevich exploits America's dependence and idealisation of their armed forces, as well as explains how the belief came to be.
In a recent verbal bout with my History of the Military Art professor, I contended that the true might of a nation may be inversely proportional to the size of its military during peacetime. My thinking, though perhaps idealistic, was that the maintenance of a large military during relative international tranquility is an overt admission of weakness and increases the likelihood of unnecessarily employing that force—it is contextually irrelevant. Instead, I proposed that a strong and stable economy is the best metric of national prowess, for such an economy can resource many opportunities as they arise. On the contrary, a robust standing military has a much narrower utility. To be sure, this author is not one that intentionally seeks to take an interdisciplinary approach to academia, but the connection seems relevant given the nature of this assignment. Whereas a nation may accomplish a strategic goal through military force, a leader may accomplish a task relying upon coercive power; whereas a nation may transform and develop the world through its economic strength and versatility, a versatile leader may transform others through the employment of one or many leader development principles—both theoretically based and experientially acquired. This piece serves to describe acquired PL499 course concepts and their relevance to my project team and the West Point Leader Development System (WPLDS). Only through a...
The first is “rational military considerations alone have rarely shaped military policies and programs” (xiv). What this means is that a lot of military factors are not focused on the needs of the military, but on the American people. For instance, there have been several occasions in the past where the military need money but they are not granted the access to the funds that they need. In another instance, it has been shown that people regulate the military fearing that it will overpower the people. This can potentially inhibit the military from taking the necessary actions to protect its
Huntington, Samuel P. 1964. The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
Leander recognizes the paradoxical situation faces by employing private military companies’ forces to solve the security problems in Africa. As a matter of fact, the line between public and private security orders in weak African states has already been blurred (Leander, 2005, p.606). Private forces are inevitable actors in those African states, thus on the one hand, it is argued that encouraging PMCs in Africa is able to restore the order. In the special case of weak African states, the poor conditions and frequent conflicts call for such a “force multiplier” as the PMCs.
Theory. The term ‘civil-military relations’ is often used to describe the relationship between civil society and its associated military force, moreover the fundamental basis upon which the civilian authority exercises control over its military organization. It is generally accepted that ‘civilian control of the military is preferable to military control of the state’ and although there are states that do not conform to this norm, they tend to be less developed countries that have succumb to military interven...
Given the fact that Pakistan is situated between a failed state and a rising economic superpower that has twice attempted to invade Pakistan in the last 30 years, as well as the pathetic state of the country's judicial and executive branches, it would seem understandable that the ordinary Pakistani would view her military as the only functioning branch of government that can provide safety in such unstable conditions. However, as any educated and informed Pakistani will tell you, the military has committed innumerable hu...
David Galula and Roger Trinquier have common roots, they were French citizens and both lived in the 20th century when the study of counterinsurgency theory was coming into focus. Each of these men experienced bitter conflicts of war. Galula fought in North Africa, Italy, and France. In addition, Galula fought in irregular wars located in China, Greece, Indochina, and Algeria. Galula was a lieutenant colonel when he decided to author his now classic book. Whereas, Trinquier an officer in the colonial infantry defended the French concession in Shanghai and later in Indochina under the Japanese occupation where he was held prisoner of war in a Japanese internment camp. After Trinquier’s release from prison, he continued to serve in Indochina and additionally in Algeria. Both men wrote from first-hand experience and published their accounts in 1964 while the Cold War waged. Communism ideology vs. the free world theorists collided across the face of the globe in a race for domination. Counterinsurgency has been an American strategy since the 1960s ebbing and flowing in strategic signi...
Use of the military as a political instrument can occur at different levels of force. The book International Politics on the World Stage, (Rourke, 2008) identifies five ways the military can be used at increasingly escalating levels. At the lowest level the military can be used as “an unmentioned but still present backdrop” (Rourke, 2008, p. 306) in an effort to influence diplomatic negotiations.
Threats to the implementation of private military companies are public opinion and lack of budget for military spending. The challenge of public opinion can be founded in the way in which private military contractors are portrayed in the media and the high profile criminal investigations that have happened in the United States concerning the actions of a small minority of contractors. Similar to the current image of the Canadian Armed Forces, the actions of a small number of members can significantly impact the overall public opinion of a group. Even though the majority of military contractors have not been charged or found guilty of any crime, events such as the Nisur Square shooting will be used to weaken the argument for private
Following World War II, the beginning of the Cold War and the U.S. vs. Soviet fight for global dominance prompted the U.S. government's rapid increase in military spending. The central foreign and domestic policy goal of the U.S. was to contain and eventually deter Soviet influence at home and abroad, a goal that paved the way for a significant increase in the influence of the military establishment in both foreign and domestic policy. Ever since the era of increased military influence, the military and government have kept the United States in consistent military operations in order to provide a market for weapons contractors. This military-industrial complex, although rarely discussed, is one of the, if not the single most important factor