Super Bowl XXV marked a high point in the relationship between the average citizen and the United States Armed Forces. The January 1991 game—best remembered for Scott Norwood’s field goal attempt missing wide right, leaving the Giants victorious, and starting an impressive streak of futility for the Bills—took place less than two weeks after the air campaign of Operation Desert Storm began. Throughout the night, the nascent war threatened to upstage the game itself. Whitney Houston delivered a classic performance of the national anthem in front of a sellout crowd in Tampa, each of whom waved a small American flag as aircraft from nearby MacDill Air Force Base screamed overhead. Rather than air the halftime show live, ABC opted to have Peter Jennings deliver an update on the war in Iraq. This was ironic, and merciful to the viewing audience, as the show itself was a celebration of Disney’s “It’s a Small World.” With frequent references to the war throughout, shots of servicemembers in the crowd, and a parade of children with deployed parents waving yellow ribbons, the broadcast created what historian Melani McAlister called a “multilayered patriotic display.”[1] Eighty million people watched it live on ABC.[2]
Whitney Houston singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl in 1991. (George Rose/Getty)
CNN’s coverage of the first night of bombings in Iraq drew an audience of similarly epic size, particularly impressive for a new network. Almost 60 million watched on the network itself and 225 independent affiliates simulcasting CNN’s coverage.[3] The network’s continuous coverage of the conflict established it as essential viewing and sped the decline of network news in favor of cable, sparking the creation of rivals Fox News and MSNBC by the late 1990s. As the U.S. military celebrated its victory in Operation Desert Storm, it numbered around two million uniformed service members, enjoyed a sprawling defense industrial base, and an adult population of whom 31% were veterans.[4] As the Cold War ended, military life was interwoven into that of the average American.
As the U.S. sought to move past the Cold War, its efforts to cash in the resulting peace dividend severed many of the most prominent links between the military and the broader population. Massive defense-related spending cuts led to fewer bases, servicemembers, and industry jobs, causing the military to vanish from many communities and leaving only ghost facilities to mark its past relationship. The reduced size of the force meant fewer having served, resulting in fewer veterans to share their experience and be part of local communities. Only one in eight men and one in 100 women today have experience serving in the military, a number the Census Bureau projects will fall to one in 14 men with women remaining at the same level.[5] The smaller military consolidated onto fewer bases over five rounds of Base Realignment and Closurec—ommonly known by its acronym, BRAC. Between 1988 and 2005, over 130 installations across 33 states and territories closed or saw drastically reduced usage.[6] These closures left both economic and environmental devastation in their wake, as clean-up costs potentially exceeded the savings from closing the installation.[7] Reduced military spending also roiled the defense industrial base, leading many contractors to either go out of business or merge. The number of aerospace and defense prime contractors went from 51 in 1990 to five today. Contractors for ground vehicles and tanks went from nine to three.[8] Communities reliant on the industrial base ended up suffering in many of the same ways as those that saw BRAC closures. The loss of jobs led to significant economic downturns and drastically altered the identity of many communities.
Despite this severing of the military from other parts of civil society, the public continued to support the military, placing more confidence in it than other public institutions. Today, even though the overall response is near an all-time low, 60 percent of those polled expressed a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in the military, placing it only behind small business in the Gallup poll.[9] A Reagan Foundation poll in 2022 painted a bleaker picture, with only a plurality of those surveyed expressing a great deal of confidence in the military and only 13 percent of 18-29 year old respondents were extremely or very willing to serve with 25 percent somewhat.[10] The disparity between support and interest in serving is a predictable outcome of a process started during the Reagan administration and carried through each administration since that equates to simply supporting the troops with the fulfillment of a patriotic duty.[11] Understanding or direct engagement was not a requirement, something that afforded political and military leaders broad latitude in using the military and avoiding serious inquiry on strategic missteps.
The recent decline in support paired with a crisis in recruiting reveals the fragility of the late Cold War civil-military dynamic and exposes how little the military has done to make itself relatable to society or understandable to most Americans. Similarly messaging does little to counter inaccurate depictions that take root in the popular imagination, such as that all veterans are simultaneously heroic but also nearly irreparably damaged. In a recent study looking at veterans in the workplace, Daniel Peat and Jaclyn Perrmann Graham found there was a “sense of stigmatization for nearly every veteran” they interviewed due to mental health perceptions.[12]
To combat this, a growing refrain to the force from military leadership is for individuals to be more active in telling their service stories. While this storytelling can be a good thing, it shifts much of the burden of communication from the institution to an already overtaxed force and presumes the message will be framed in a manner that reflects favorably on the service. It also overlooks that the reach of recent veterans and those currently serving is much smaller than it used to be. Finally, this communication has also already been occurring for years, which is why as of 2022 nearly 60 percent of recruits have a family member in the military, with 30 percent having a parent in the service.[13] A Wall Street Journal article this summer highlighted how this reliable “pipeline is now under threat” as well.[14] Given the size of the military is not likely to grow and old bases are not going to come back, the volume of storytellers and their reach will continue to diminish. To repair its relationship with the American public, the military needs to do more to leverage traditional and new media to amplify the stories of servicemembers and communicate better both what life in the military is like and what it does. This should not be a recruitment campaign, but rather a reintroduction. Recruitment campaigns contain a clear ask and rely on the assumption the audience has familiarity with the military. Given the separation between the military and the public this assumption is faulty. The military needs to reach out and show the American people what it actually does to support the nation and rebuild the foundation on which recruitment rests.
In the early years of the Cold War, the Army found itself in a similar position. It struggled to explain its utility on the assumed nuclear battlefields of the future to both policymakers and the American public. To bridge this perception gap, the Army turned to an innovative technology and growing communication medium: television. Beginning in 1951 and running for twenty years, the Army produced and distributed a show called The Big Picture. Initially debuting in primetime on ABC before moving to a syndication model, the half hour show highlighted a wide array of topics related to the Army. With over eight hundred episodes, the show is among the longest running in television history, won an Emmy, and was a launching pad for many who would find success in the broader television and movie industries. Historian John Lemza notes The Big Picture was a point of contact between the Army and the American people and “a mediating point between the Army’s internal image-makers and the wider world of public opinion.”[15]
Beginning as a showcase for the Army in the Korean War, the show expanded, covering the service’s history, special initiatives and technology, soldier experiences, and the roles of different branches and units. Ideas for episodes came from a variety of places and shifted frequently, allowing it to show “mud-level GI perspective, complementing it with a broader understanding of events.”[16] The show ended in 1971 amid rising concerns about its budget, around three-quarters of a million dollars annually, and accusations, most prominently from Senator Fulbright, that it attempted to influence foreign policy.[17] As it went off the air, it was still reliably carried by over 350 stations in the U.S. as well as 50 tied to the Armed Forces Radio and Television Service.[18] In Lemza’s telling, the cancellation meant the U.S. Army “surrendered a key piece of media terrain that might have served it well into the future as it continued to defend its relevance with the American public.”[19]
Reacquiring this terrain should be a focus of the military as it seeks to close the civil-military gap. While the media environment is vastly different, today making a literal return of The Big Picture an unlikely solution, the content-hungry nature of contemporary mass media should create opportunities for partnership. As with The Big Picture, doing so would require an investment in both people and capital. Many in uniform are trying to take their stories to a broader audience via social media, publishing on sites like this one, and public speaking around military communities. However, these efforts tend to stay within the increasingly small military and military-adjacent audiences. The resources available to the Department of Defense could help push them onto a larger stage. The benefit of reintroducing the American people to what their military does for them makes it a worthy effort. Reversing the chasm between the public and their military is too important to wait for another unlikely convergence of a popular war, mega pop star and a Bills Super Bowl appearance.
Ben Griffin is an Army officer and the chief of the Military History Division in the History Department at the United States Military Academy. He is also the author of Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency from the Naval Institute Press and is currently working on a follow up, Imagined World Orders: Tom Clancy and U.S. National Security. He can be found on Twitter/X at @BenGriffin06. The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not reflect those of the U.S. Military Academy, U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.
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Header Image: U.S. Air Force Honor Guard Ceremonial Flight, Washington, DC, 2017 (Sgt. Kalie Frantz).
Notes:
[1] Melani McAlister, Epic Encounters: Culture, Media, & U.S. Interests in the Middle East since 1945, (Berkeley; University of California Press, 2005), 252.
[2] “Super Bowl Ratings History (1967-present)” Sports Media Watch, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/super-bowl-ratings-historical-viewership-chart-cbs-nbc-fox-abc/.
[3] Variety Staff, “CNN Reigns in Desert Storm,” Variety January 20, 1991, accessed December 3, 2023, https://variety.com/1991/more/news/cnn-reigns-in-desert-storm-99128411/.
[4] Jonathan Vespa, “Those Who Served: From World War II to the War on Terror”, Report ACS-43, US Census Bureau, June 2, 2020, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2020/demo/acs-43.html.
[5] Vespa.
[6] “Base realignment and Closure (BRAC) Sites by State,” Environmental Protection Agency, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.epa.gov/fedfac/base-realignment-and-closure-brac-sites-state
[7] Ralph Vartabedian, “Decades Later, Closed Military Bases Remain a Toxic Menace,” New York Times October 2, 2023, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/27/us/military-base-closure-cleanup.html.
[8] “State of Competition with the Defense Industrial Base,” Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment, February 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Feb/15/2002939087/-1/-1/1/STATE-OF-COMPETITION-WITHIN-THE-DEFENSE-INDUSTRIAL-BASE.PDF.
[9] “Confidence in Institutions,” Gallup, accessed December 3, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/1597/confidence-institutions.aspx.
[10] “Reagan National Defense Survey” Ronald Reagan Institute, November 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.reaganfoundation.org/media/359970/2022-survey-summary.pdf.
[11] Benjamin Griffin, Reagan’s War Stories: A Cold War Presidency, (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2022), 172.
[12] Daniel M Peat and Jaclyn Perrmann-Graham, “Where Do I Belong? Conflicted Identities and the Paradox of Simultaneous Stigma and Social Aggrandizement of Military Veterans in Organizations” in The International Journal of Human Resource Management, VOL 34, NO 17, (September 2022): 3410.
[13] Jonathan Ahl, “Most Military recruits Come From Families of People Who Served. Experts Say That’s Not Sustainable,” The American Homefront Project, June 2, 2022, accessed December 3, 2023, https://americanhomefront.wunc.org/news/2022-06-02/most-military-recruits-have-family-members-who-served-experts-say-thats-not-sustainable.
[14] Ben Kesling, “The Military Recruiting Crisis: Even Veterans Don’t Want Their Families to Join,” The Wall Street Journal, June 30, 2023, accessed December 3, 2023, https://www.wsj.com/articles/military-recruiting-crisis-veterans-dont-want-their-children-to-join-510e1a25.
[15] John Lemza, The Big Picture: The Cold War on the Small Screen, (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2021), 36. Many of the episodes of The Big Picture are available online through the National Archives.
[16] Lemza, 31.
[17] Lemza, 137, 90.
[18] Lemza 137.
[19] Lemza, 263.