THE MYTH OF AMERICA’S APOLITICAL MILITARY
BY TODD SCHMIDT
Public awareness of civil-military relations and the role of the military and military elites in U.S. society gained increased awareness in the first half of President Donald Trump’s administration. There were concerns related to the number of high profile, cabinet-level positions being filled by retired four-star generals and the delegation of presidential-level authorities to the military. For many, having seasoned, retired four-star generals shepherding a new president in the early, vulnerable days of an administration was reassuring. For civil-military scholars and astute military service members, it raised potential red flags. Nearly four years later, concerns regarding civil-military relations persist.
On June 1, 2020, following a presidential speech, the president, accompanied by members of his staff and national security team, walked off the White House grounds and across Lafayette Square for a photo opportunity in front of St. John’s Church. It featured the president holding a Bible. Some political commentators questioned whether the event was staged to garner support from the president’s political base. There was a great deal of media frenzy around the episode because Lafayette Square had, minutes earlier, been forcibly cleared of protesters by police.
There was a curious feature in the photographs taken that day. The senior leader of the U.S. military, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), dressed in combat fatigues, was accompanying the President in, what could have been interpreted as, a demonstration of support for the president in a highly politically charged moment. Within hours, the photographs went viral.
Public awareness of civil-military relations and the role of the military and military elites in U.S. society gained increased awareness in the first half of President Donald Trump’s administration.
In response, a stable of several retired four-star generals denounced the President’s actions. Active duty generals, admirals, and senior civilian leadership from across the Department of Defense issued official statements calling for calm, reason, and unity. In the U.S. Army, senior officers admonished audiences to remain apolitical and to not break trust with the American people. They warned against politicians using the military as political props and pawns. Nearly every statement highlighted the military’s oath to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution. It was a clear message that the military serves the people of the United States with clear and unfaltering faith in and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution.
Days later, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff acknowledged his mistake. He explained the event as a personal blunder, a lapse in judgment for which he apologized. Viewed through the lens of strained civil-military relations, he stated that his actions reinforced a perception of a military involved in domestic politics and taking political sides.
In the days before the 2020 Presidential Election, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a National Public Radio interview, answered questions regarding military involvement in national elections. The U.S. has a “very long tradition of an apolitical military that does not get involved in domestic politics,” he stated. Regrettably, with nearly 500 retired generals and admirals publicly endorsing the two main presidential candidates in the 2020 Presidential Election, this shaky narrative is a nuanced part of our American mythology.
Unravelling the myth
Military elites commonly and errantly perceive themselves as impartial, neutral, and apolitical servants of the state. To be apolitical, by definition, is to have no interest or involvement in political affairs. It insinuates political impartiality or neutrality. Historically and by nature, the military and military elites are not impartial, neutral, or apolitical.
First, the military’s vast resources and immense budget make it one of the most political institutions in the U.S. government. Any military action or policy of significance will have political ramifications that ripple across local communities, the private sector, state and federal authorities, and the world because of the significant effects it can have on the lives, economies, and governments that are impacted.
Secondly, the military’s process of professionalization and education fuses military and political roles. The beliefs and values that embody the military profession do not insinuate neutrality into the professional military ethos. It is not in the military ethos to sit idly by and react to the surrounding environment as impartial and neutral observers. Professional military elites make every effort to anticipate, influence, and regulate their environment, consistent with their personal and organizational interests, as well as their political and policy preferences, according to Bengt and Abrahamsson in Military Professionalization and Political Power. History supports this assertion.
The United States has a strong tradition of anti- militarism. This interpretation of U.S. history is well-grounded, captured in the written exchanges between the “Sons of Liberty,” articles in The Federalist Papers, and in the debates of the Constitutional Convention of 1787. A near universal belief that a standing military, unchecked, unrepresentative, unelected, and unaccountable, is an enemy of liberty and a potential instrument of tyranny was a foundational belief of the early American public, and a tenet of Presidents Thomas Jefferson’s and James Madison’s Democratic-Republican Party that developed in the early 1790s.
History books tend to gloss over the fact that there were nuanced and distinct differences of opinion on the role of a standing military.
However, history books tend to gloss over the fact that there were nuanced and distinct differences of opinion on the role of a standing military. A powerful political faction of nationalist veterans of the American Revolution, “believers in a far stronger central government, and founders and leaders of the Federalist Party,” advocated for a strong standing military establishment from the earliest days of the new American government, according to Richard Kohn in Eagle and Sword. It was a plank of their political platform intended to strengthen a weak federal system.
Led by President George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, this powerful political contingent of Continental Army veterans filled critical positions throughout Washington’s presidency and future administrations. These inaugural military elites were an early apparition of an exceptionally powerful epistemic community of military professionals. This community of professionals was bound together by military values, discipline, and leadership that had been instilled through their military service.
During the American Civil War and the Reconstruction era, military elites reached a pinnacle of political involvement in both domestic and military policy. It was common for general officers to be appointed to senior ranks for purely political reasons, whether to garner political support of a particular constituency or to address a particularly complex political issue or challenge. Many of these politically appointed generals were empowered to overrule civilian governments and displace democratically elected civilian officials.
Civil War-era military elites administered governmental processes and superseded civilian institutions by running courts, levying taxes, supervising elections, and drafting state constitutions. The military fulfilled domestic law enforcement duties in the American West, and were called to quell organized labor disputes and violence in the East. The increasing praetorian involvement of the military in post-Civil War Reconstruction ultimately led to the passage of the Posse Comitatis Act of 1887, constraining the military from involvement in the administration of domestic policy and law enforcement within the United States.
By WWII, military elites were well-aware of the political power, prestige and high regard with which they were now held in American society. Because of the disorganized and unorthodox leadership of President Franklin Roosevelt, military elites were intent on using their political and social capital to influence significant organizational change that would allow military control of U.S. national security policy process moving forward. The creation of the National Security Council (NSC) was the outcome and codification of these lessons learned, according to Henry Jackson in The National Security Council: Jackson Subcommittee papers on Policy-making at the Presidential Level.
By the 1970s, resentment by civil society towards the U.S. military was a consequence of societal divides caused by the Vietnam War and changing generational attitudes towards the military and military service.
Admiral Sidney Souers, a former Executive Secretary of the NSC and the first Director of Central Intelligence, provided congressional testimony to the Jackson Committee regarding policy-making at the presidential level. He stated that the NSC was intended to be an organization essentially run by military elites. It would provide a measure of control and influence over future presidents, ensuring “military considerations and military logic” dominated an orderly national security policy process, according to Adam Yarmolinsky in The Military Establishment: Its Impacts on American Society.
Two years later, with the political support of General George Marshall, Congress repealed legal limitations prohibiting military elites from directly lobbying Congress in matters of national security policy, particularly on highly political matters related to budgetary process and defense spending. Authorized by the National Security Act of 1949, military elites were now empowered to provide their views to Congress unsolicited, even if it meant undermining presidential policy and budgetary priorities.
Military and defense expenditures during and post-WWII reached unprecedented levels. This tremendous growth in resources was accompanied by the appointment of military elites to a growing number of powerful civilian governmental positions. Historically, the military and military elites acted as advisors and agents to the President in matters of national security and foreign policy. Post-WWII, however, military elites began to serve in the role of Presidential Envoys, Ambassadors, leadership positions in the State Department, CIA, and other federal agencies and commissions, such as the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). They, again, had primary responsibility for formulating and implementing decisions on both domestic and foreign policy issues.
By 1953, the Jackson Committee reported findings that, as it related to national security, “military professionals are the makers of national policy,” not the President and not the Congress, according to Jackson. Civilian leadership, elected officials, and competing institutions lacked a “take charge” mentality in the aftermath of WWII; were not doing enough to assert leadership in foreign policy; lacked respect for and attached too little importance to future strategy and planning; and were “wedded to a philosophy of reacting to problems as they arise,” according to Jackson. To some, military encroachments in civilian and private sectors was seen as a subtle and silent coup. Military elites dominated the national security policy process because of their institutional size, resources, crisis orientation, and a civilian cohort of counterparts that readily acquiesced, according to Arthur Ekirch in The Civilian and the Military.
General Andrew Goodpaster, in a book co-written with Samuel Huntington, addressed the complexity and difficulty of civilian control over the military. The complexity of its application is rooted in the reality that military elites possess a “vast, diverse, and intricately interwoven body” of knowledge and expertise that is indispensable. Civilian “amateurs,” as Goodpaster references them in “Educational Aspects of Civil-Military Relations,” are ill-suited to advise in matters of national security and war. Civilians can and do possess academic knowledge. The difference between civilians and military professionals that justifies objective deference to the military, Goodpaster argued, is the military elite’s vast and career-long training and experience in the application of force, combat, and national security affairs.
In the aftermath of 9/11, a growing number of military officers are comfortable engaging in political activity.
By the 1970s, the image of the military in American society had changed. Resentment by civil society towards the U.S. military was a consequence of societal divides caused by the Vietnam War and changing generational attitudes towards the military and military service. The experience of Vietnam drove the military to comprehensive introspection. Extensive internal studies focused on how to improve training, education, and the continued professional development of the force. Particular focus was put on improving the professionalization of the officer corps, ending conscription, and transitioning to an all-volunteer force, according to Goodpaster.
These post-Vietnam initiatives had the effect of improving the professionalism of military elites, but also laid an institutional framework that created an increasingly insulated and conservative officer corps. A predominantly conservative belief system among military elites begins to form or is reinforced with the selection process (self and institutional). It continues with the socialization process, education, training, and combined career experiences. A consequence of this selection and socialization process is an epistemic community of highly trained, well-educated military professionals increasingly comfortable engaging in the political sphere with civilian counterparts. Mirroring past generations of military elites, they are not apolitical.
In the aftermath of 9/11, a growing number of military officers are comfortable engaging in political activity. As it relates to military policy, they increasingly believe civilian leaders no longer have the right to be wrong. Dr. Peter Feaver states in Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight and Civil-Military Relations that, “We may be seeing the emergence of a norm among American military officers that civilian control does not mean civilians have the right to be wrong…officers see no inconsistency between endorsing civilian control and endorsing an ‘insist’ role for the military, where ‘insist’ implies ‘accept our advice or else.’”
A 2007 RAND study found that civilian leadership is viewed by the military as increasingly irrelevant to the national security and foreign policy process. Civilian control of the military is conditional. It is contingent on the fundamental premise that civilian leadership demonstrate the cognitive complexity and intellectual curiosity to assert themselves in military matters, ably and knowledgeably questioning and probing military elites regarding national security and military strategy.
The definition of “civilian control” is evolving. Former Congressman Chris Gibson, also a former senior military officer, argues in Securing the State: Reforming the National Security Decision-making process at the Civil-Military Nexus that there is no longer parity between civilians and military elites as it relates to military professional preparation and expertise in national security and foreign policy. The lack of a countervailing force in the policy process creates an imbalance of power in civil-military relations that favors the military. Gibson insinuates that military elites now prop up civilian leaders that serve in titular positions, doing so to avoid giving the appearance of directing policy.
Likewise, some civil-military relations scholars assert that the myth of military subordination to civilian control is deliberately preserved. This creates a dilemma for scholars studying national security and foreign policy decision-making because of the gap between theory and reality. Not until the presumption of civilian control is removed can the “dearth of appropriate theoretical frameworks” be filled, according to Rebecca Schiff in The Military and Domestic politics: A Concordance Theory of Civil-Military Relations.
Dr. Kori Schake and former Secretary of Defense General James Mattis led a 2016 study called “A Great Divergence?” that found civil-military balance of power relations in turmoil. Military elites are reportedly embarrassed to be associated with the amateurism of novice administrations that lack, in their view, any strategic planning or military experience. In contrast, elected officials and senior civilian leadership with little or no military experience feel they lack the moral authority to manage the military. Instead, they rely heavily on military elites, hoping to stand in the shadow of the military’s credibility with the American public. Civilian officials fail to realize that this dependency on the military erodes their own credibility, public standing, and public trust, according to Mackubin and Owens in “Is Civilian Control of the Military Still an Issue?”
The American public, meanwhile, has come to trust and revere the U.S. military, holding it “in such high regard” that the civilian government has allowed resident “strategic thinking to atrophy,” according to Schake and Mattis. The military is seen as the last fully functioning federal governmental organization and military elites are increasingly seen as the last remaining pool of trusted leadership capable of dependably and successfully navigating congressional confirmation. This over-reliance on the military has made U.S. national security and foreign policy flimsy and inadequate to the challenges of the international environment. Politicians, lulled into a sense of complacency by military elites, now face far-reaching consequences tied to their failure to balance military influence, according to Schake and Mattis.
Countering Praetorian Propensities
A condition of praetorianism describes a dynamic in which military elites within a state actively participate in government. Politics has penetrated their ranks. They are political actors with political preferences that intervene in the policy process, whether to corral a novice executive; preserve and maintain status quo; correct and redirect policy in accordance with their preferences; dominate policy process to effect control; or a combination of these actions. The behavior of military elites falls along a spectrum of praetorianism that ranges from moderate political actors in the policy process to dominant actors in the governing process, according to Eric Nordlinger in Soldiers in Politics: Military Coups and Governments.
It is well-established that U.S. military officers are increasingly identifying with Republican Party politics and voting for Republican political candidates, according to Ole Holsti in “Of Chasms and Convergences: Attitudes and Beliefs of Civilians and Military Elites at the Start of a New Millennium.” Suggesting that military elites within the officer corps are unbiased, impartial, neutral, or apolitical is simply not accurate. Military elites, like all actors in a government or polity, cannot cognitively separate their political beliefs and preferences from their behavior, role, and influence in the policy process. Rather, they inject their beliefs and biases into the policy process, consciously or subconsciously, in an effort to achieve their policy preferences.
Facilitating this dynamic, military elites are heavily embedded and relied upon in the policy process. As a group, they constitute a powerful epistemic community in the national security policy process that is no longer effectively controlled by civilian leadership. Rather, in matters of national security, civilians are exceptionally reliant and dependent upon military elites. They rely on them to inform decisions. They rely on them to establish, control, manage, and lead planning and decision-making process. Finally, they rely on them to carry out and implement policy decisions, once made.
In the coming years, however, the time and space available for national security decision-making, potentially existential in nature, will shrink. In an increasingly complex, strategic international environment, fraught with great power competition, the rapid evolution and convergence of technologies, such as biotechnology, quantum and “edge” computing technologies, nanotechnology, neurotechnology, artificial intelligence, robotics, augmented reality, unmanned weapons, hypersonic vehicles, and space- and cyber-based capabilities, will only make this decision-dynamic a more acute challenge.
As future presidential administrations tackle this challenge, there needs to be a fundamental review of the role the military and military elites play in civil government and the policy process.
Distinguishing traits of change in the character of conflict in the 21st Century will be the speed in which both change and conflict occurs; the simultaneity of multi-dimensional contests against an expanding array of threats; the continual evolvement of international relationships; the consequences and implications of rapidly changing human geography; and persistent disorder and conflict. This global environment will be marked by interstate conflict, short of war, that is primarily non-kinetic, meaning it will most likely not involve mass formations of manned weapon platforms, such as armored tanks, aircraft, carrier groups, and infantry and artillery formations. Outbreak of militarized conflict will increasingly incorporate space-based capabilities, cyber warfare, and autonomous systems incorporating artificial intelligence that will increase the velocity of war and the decision-making process.
In the fleeting moments that preface conflict of this character, national security and foreign policy decisions and actions will have political and military facets and consequences that require rapid decision and response. Military and civilian elites, locked in a struggle for power and influence in the realm of national security policy, should consider where the balance of power falls in the context of what is best for U.S. grand strategy and decision-making. As journalist and writer Peter Sanger warns in “The Strategic Environment: Cyber Threats and Emerging Issues in Policy and Law,” in this global environment that is rapidly advancing and increasingly technical, how do civilian institutions, plagued by partisanship, polarization, and gridlock, and nominally led by elected officials that “can barely turn on a laptop computer,” protect and guard the Republic?
Various scholarship and think tank studies across the past several decades lament the partisan politicization of U.S. national security and foreign policy. This is coupled with a systematic breakdown of the U.S.’s ability “to fashion a coherent and consistent approach to the world,” according to I.M. Destler, Leslie Gelb, and Anthony Lake in Our Own Worst Enemy: The Unmaking of American Foreign Policy. Lieutenant General (Retired) Brent Scowcroft, a tremendous influence on national security policy for over 40 years, noted that the U.S. continues to “have no strategy that covers the entire world,” causing the U.S. to suffer from “strategic confusion…due to a failure to think ahead.”
As future presidential administrations tackle this challenge, there needs to be a fundamental review of the role the military and military elites play in civil government and the policy process. The influence of military elites will wax and wane with the political winds. However, they will remain an overpowering influence and political force as long as there is no countervailing influence.
Achieving a healthy rebalance in civil-military relations requires rebalanced investment in competing institutions and elements of national power. Deliberate reinvestment is the only way to create a more diverse community of national security and foreign policy professionals. Federal government institutions, such as the Department of State, can no longer go under-manned and under-resourced. Until there is a rebalancing of resources and investments, the U.S. will continue to see increased praetorian propensities in the behavior of military elites, imbalance in civil-military relations, and a growing community of political actors serving in uniform.
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Col. Todd Schmidt, Ph.D., is a Pacific Council member and serves as the Director (J5) for Plans, Policy, and Allied Integration in the U.S. Army’s Joint Functional Component Command for Integrated Missile Defense.
The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Pacific Council.
