Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: Military Society, Politics and Modern War. Edited by Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020.

The book Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations does many great things. Among them—as the title suggests—it offers a major reassessment of the state of U.S. civil-military relations. This book is a first systematic attempt I’ve read that seeks to surpass the dominance of Samuel P. Huntington’s model of civil-military relations, introduced in 1957 with his manuscript The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations. Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations focuses, however, on the country in the world that has perhaps been most dominated by Huntington’s influence on theorizing and practicing civil-military relations: the United States. And naturally Huntington’s influence looms very large. Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations embarks on an extensive review of U.S. civil-military relations and unpacks U.S. civil-military relations in systematic ways. The book is structured around four main foci: the military’s roles and responsibilities; the civilian leadership’s roles and responsibilities; the public’s role and responsibilities; and the nature of modern war and civil-military relations. As such, it provides a comprehensive assessment of U.S. civil-military relations. The book also provides a good introduction for the newcomers, which is both informative, concise, and systematic. Perhaps, though, the book’s most important contribution is to open up the conversation about other models(s) of civil-military relations beyond Huntington.

After the introduction, the first chapter by Risa Brooks starts with the iconic statement that “discussions of American civil-military relations have been grounded in Samuel Huntington’s classic formulation of what it means to be a military professional” and continues with a reflection outlining the paradoxes of Huntingtonian professionalism.[1] The starting point of her chapter, of her broader research, and of the book is how much Huntington’s theories have become the normal theory of civil-military relations and how the construct of objective control and Huntington’s distinctive version of apolitical professionalism has had pervasive consequences. Huntington’s idea of objective control is premised on the clearly defined division of responsibility between the military and civilians, a division that would create an apolitical ethos among officers who would abstain from engaging in all dimensions of politics and policy debates. His theory has the appeal of parsimony whilst at the same time addressing itself prominently to the U.S., which partly explains its traction in both the U.S. and abroad.

One key theme of the book is whether there are “changes upending norms governing the use of force and the perception of an apolitical, professional nature of the military and its leadership? Moreover, are modern means and methods of warfare , and evolving norms on the use of force reshaping the contours of what professional implies and of what healthy civil-military relations look like in practice.”[2] For students of civil-military relations, an underlying question looms large: What is the alternative to the Huntingtonian approach to civilian control of the military? Huntington’s model is so influential that it may blind us to alternative useful conceptual tools to understand civil-military relations. But what is the alternative to the Huntington model and how can an alternative  coexist with it? Relatedly, what does this tell us about the status of U.S. civil-military relations today?

This tension between the Huntington model and a new model seems to take two main facets throughout the book: the boundaries between civilian and military populations and the politicization and militarization processes. On the one hand, the boundaries between the civilian and the military sphere are becoming more fluid. On one side we see the diminution of the military’s exclusive domain of expertise:

“In other words, expertise will no longer be the sole province of the military but will reside in research and development labs in the civilian technology sector. If military officers are no longer the main sources of expertise, it stands to reason they will be relied upon less to provide advice to civilian policy makers.”[3]

On the other side of the boundary, military officers are increasingly present in the public space and in key political roles, as illustrated by Peter White’s chapter “Militarized Ministries of Defence? Placing the Military Experience of Secretaries of Defense in Comparative Context.” He writes about  how the U.S. is considered an exception among consolidated democracies because its defense ministers have extensive military expertise.[4] On the other hand, while the military’s exclusive expertise is eroding and the boundaries are becoming more fluid, the isolation of the U.S. military from society persists. The editors write: “America’s armed forces span the planet, yet they remain culturally and physically isolated from the communities from which their members are drawn…Equally worrisome is how it (the military) does not seem to be representative anymore of either the public or Congress it serves compared to previous generations.”.[5] Jessica Blankshain, in her chapter “Who has ‘skin in the game’? The Implications of an Operational Reserve for Civil-Military Relations,” underlines how also the U.S. Army Reserve is increasingly composed of the volunteer professional more than to the “reluctant citizen soldier” thereby reinforcing these dynamics on the reserve side.[6] This isolation widens the so-called civil-military gap even as the military is more present in the public space.

The second tension between Huntington’s model and the possibility of a new option is how to make sense of one distinct element of civil-military relations: the military’s individual and collective agency within the military structure in relation to politicization. Huntington’s idea of clear-cut separation between the civilian and military sphere clearly “loses in application to a world in which political realities are complex.”[7]  Several chapters in the book reflect on the worrying trend of an increasingly partisan military and the fact that the military is losing its apolitical or non-partisan nature. This is not only a problem for the U.S. military. Several chapters of the book reflect on the level of partisan divisiveness that characterizes the current state of the American polity, which according to many authors “threatens to politicize the profession of arms.”[8] This is partly manifested by the persistent isolation of the military professionals. In her chapter “Civil-Military Norms and Democracy: What Every Citizen Should Know,” Marybeth Ulrich talks about the concepts of an apartisan and a nonpartisan officer corps. Apartisanship implies the lack of politics within the officer profession while nonpartisanship points to the importance of reflection of the military profession itself. Michael Robinson, Lindsay Cohn, and Max Margulies, in “Dissent and sensibility,” criticize Huntington for placing “outsized confidence in the ability of the ‘military ethic’ alone to constrain military behavior.”[9] One element that is interesting is the issue of militarization and the processes by which these are normalized among American culture, a trend that is becoming increasingly common globally in other established democracies too.[10]

Perhaps surprisingly, politicization may become even more extreme in times of war. The reactions of NATO member states to the Russian invasion of Ukraine seem to confirm both the changing character of contemporary warfare and the persistence of old patterns. “Today´s conflicts are no longer a simple ‘I won, you lost,’ binary but rather operate along a continuum of relative successes and failures.”[11] As wars drag on indefinitely and the motives behind them become more ambiguous, civil-military relations become more ambiguous and easily instrumentalized by a polarized polity, as we have seen with war in Ukraine.

The editors conclude their introduction by reminding us of how Huntington contrasted the U.S. military Academy at West Point and its discipline and ordered serenity with the small town just outside, Highland Falls, which represented the “discordancy” and “commercialism” in the United States.[12] But civil-military practice and theory in the United States powerfully suggest that Huntington was wrong. Pockets of discordancy and ordered serenity are both widespread in both civilian and military spheres. Huntington theorized that the military class embodied soldierly virtue and sacrifice as a model for civil society. This is very particular to the U.S. and rare in other established democracies. As the editors acknowledge:

“If it is still like a fortified castle, the facade of military professionalism has been re-engineered, giving the public and civilian leadership greater visibility into its formerly impervious halls and hallowing those in uniform inside an equally visible perspective on what professionalism means outside.”[13]

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations shows how the various views of civil-military relations have transformed in a dramatic fashion, but also how much we rely on old conceptual tools to study new phenomena. It definitely shifts existing conversations about civil-military relations, allowing us to imagine that it is possible to move beyond Huntington. As Brooks rightly points out, there are reasons to be concerned about U.S. civil-military relations.[14] Moving past Huntington's model means recognizing complication and fluid boundaries. This departure from Huntington could also build better military and civilian expertise to understand and navigate civil-military relations, rather than dangerously assuming superiority in a military class that is isolated from democratic society.

The only antidote to this is continuing to consolidate expertise, critical thinking, and fact-based knowledge within the institutions of professional military education throughout the world. As scholars, we should continue to trace the evolution of these dynamics over time and try to understand the extent in which they are a new normal. Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations does that by putting several ongoing phenomena—such as the military background of Defense Ministers and Secretaries, both longitudinally and in a comparative perspective—into context. We should continue to push in that direction. We also need to acknowledge that the Huntingtonian model persists and remains influential. We must also imagine alternative models to capture dynamics, processes, and instruments to fully understand military involvement in politics in a truly global way, which seems to be an increasing trend in other established democracies.

Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations is empirically and conceptually innovative. All kinds of students of civil-military relations, public administration, political science and sociology should read this book, as should anyone working on or affected by these issues in practice. This book is not only a must-read for everyone interested in U.S. civil-military relations, but also for anyone curious to understand where the frontier of civil-military relations is heading.

Chiara Ruffa is a full professor in political science (specializing in International Relations) at the Centre for International Studies (CERI) at Sciences Po. Her research is about multilateralism on the ground, peacekeeping operations, norms, cultures, and civil-military relations. She is the author of Military Cultures in Peace and Stability Operations and of Composing Peace: Mission Composition in UN Peacekeeping, the latter with Vincenzo Bove and Andrea Ruggeri.

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Header Image: U.S. President Joe Biden at Fort McNair, Washington, D.C., in 2021. (Leah Millis/Reuters)

Notes:

[1] Risa Brooks, “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism,” in Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations. Military Society, Politics and Modern War, ed. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Daniel Maurer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 1; Risa Brooks; Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States. International Security 2020; 44 (4): 7–44. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/isec_a_00374.

[2] Brooks, “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism,” 2.

[3] Brooks, “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism,” 3.

[4] Peter B. White, “Militarized Ministries of Defence? Placing the Military Experience of Secretaries of Defense in Comparative Context,” in ed. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Daniel Maurer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 129.

[5] Lionel Beehner and Daniel Maurer, “Introduction,” in Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations. Military Society, Politics and Modern War, ed. by Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Daniel Maurer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 3.

[6]  Jessica D. Blankshain, “Who has ‘skin in the game’? The Implications of an Operational Reserve for Civil-Military Relations,” in Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations. Military Society, Politics and Modern War, ed. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 101.

[7] Michael A. Robinson, Lindsay P. Cohn, and Max Z. Margulies, “Dissent and Sensibility: Conflicting Loyalties, Democracy, and Civil-Military Relations,” in Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations. Military Society, Politics and Modern War, ed. Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2020), 63.

[8] Brooks, “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism,” 2.

[9] Robinson, Cohn, and Margulies, “Dissent and Sensibility,” 63-64.

[10] Vincenzo Bove, Mauricio Rivera, and Chiara Ruffa, “Terrorist Violence and Nonviolent Military Involvement in Politics,” European Journal of International Relations 26, No. 1 (202): 263-288; Chiara Ruffa, “Militarization in established democracies? The case of France,” in Security Threats, Militarization and Democratic Control of the Military, ed. Yagil Levy and David Kühn (New York, NY: Lynne Rienner, 2021), 139-160.

[11] Beehner and Maurer, “Introduction,” 4.

[12] Beehner and Maurer, “Introduction,” 10.

[13] Beehner and Maurer, “Introduction,” 11.

[14] Brooks, “The Paradoxes of Huntingtonian Professionalism,” 17-40.