Civil–Military Relations

Controlling War

The framers of the American Constitution devoted considerable effort to the question of how best to keep war and its instruments subordinate to democratic rule. Their solution was to divide control of the military between the executive and legislative branches—the first having the power of command and the second the power to equip and maintain, as well as authorize the use of, the armed forces. The framers further divided the military institution itself into a small standing army capable of immediate action, and a larger citizen militia to augment the Army in times of need, but also to act as a check on the political ambitions of the regulars.

Theorists have long recognized that these structural innovations, while important, do not solve the civil–military problem once and for all. Congress, for example, no longer plays the active role the Constitution envisioned for it. Its influence over the use of force has dwindled dramatically in the latter half of the 20th century. Furthermore, the most well-known American prescription for civilian control, Samuel Huntington's vision of officer professionalization, is frequently thwarted by the fonders' checks-and-balances system. Huntington's model for so-called objective control demands that the civilian government define clearly separate spheres of military and civilian responsibility. If the civilians then restrain themselves from meddling in the military's sphere, Huntington argues, the officers will respond by “professionalizing” (i.e., refraining from interference in politics and focusing on their own realm of expertise). In practice, however, drawing a clear line between competencies has proved very difficult, and civilian leaders often have strong political incentives to become involved in military decisions. As a result, civilians have repeatedly encroached on military turf, while the military has engaged in political activity that does not square with the Huntingtonian ideal.

Recent scholarship has begun to treat control as a process, emphasizing its nature as a function of the strategic calculations of the actors, subject to the influence of internal and external threat environments. As rational actors, military officers' decisions on whether to obey civilian orders or not are affected both by expectations of direct punishments and by the types of monitoring mechanisms civilians use to keep track of military activity. If civilian preferences differ widely from those of the military, or if there is little danger that disobedience will be detected or engender serious punishment, officers are more likely to pursue their own personal or organizational preferences at the expense of civilian preferences. At the same time, both monitoring and punishment are costly for the civilian government, and when used excessively could result in disastrous micromanagement that actually undermines the performance of the military on the battlefield. Thus, the central task facing the civilian leadership is to strike a balance of the proper mix of monitoring and punishment to cause the officers to obey most of the time.

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