Civil–military relations is one of the most important topics of our time, as changes in the global security environment have necessitated key transformations in the relationship between soldier and state. With the incidents at Abu Ghraib in 2004 involving tensions between civilians and the military, and the firing of General Stanley A. McChrystal in 2010 reflecting tensions between military and political leadership, the proper way to optimize civil–military relations in all circumstances has yet to be fully discovered and implemented. Thus, further probing into this topic is to be welcomed.
These two books exhibit two important commonalities. First, the perspective of the United States Military Academy at West Point plays a pivotal role in both, for Jason K. Dempsey (who is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army) was a student at West Point in the early 1990s, and Suzanne C. Nielsen and Don M. Snider both have taught at West Point. This common background is not insignificant, as much in both books reflects the admirable but occasionally normatively tilting “duty-honor-country” approach of that venerable institution. Moreover, the result is a scarcity of comparative context, in terms of any analysis across the military services (particularly between Army and Navy, Marines, and Air Force) or across countries. The emphasis in both books is on the active duty Army, with particular attention paid to military officers. Second, both volumes pay extensive homage to the two pioneers of civil–military relations research—Samuel Huntington and Morris Janowitz—whose work done a half century ago still has a major influence on current thinking. The downside of this emphasis (particularly on Huntington's work) is that there is too little attention paid to the major strides in civil–military relations scholarship that has transpired since that time.
In Our Army, Dempsey's objective is quite narrow and well defined. He wishes “to add some depth to our understanding of the people who serve in the American military,” replacing “the stereotype of the American soldier with a more nuanced understanding of how soldiers think about social and political issues and a better understanding of the ways in which they are similar to, or different from, the civilian population” (p. xv). He also wishes “to highlight to members of the army the dangers, and impropriety, of conflating identification with a political party or political ideology with military service” (p. xv). The book particularly aspires to debunk the common assumption that the American military is Republican and conservative. In the process, Dempsey reveals right from the outset (p. 1) his strong normative preference for soldiers following the example set by George Washington of resisting the temptation to use their military position to pursue political power and influence.
Being an edited collection of chapters aspiring to be a foundational textbook in the field, Nielsen and Snider's American Civil–Military Relations has a much broader scope. A primary impetus for this volume was to review and critique Huntington's original concepts about civil-military relations (p. 7). It covers such diverse topics as questioning whether or not civil–military relations is still a problem area; expanding the military profession to incorporate nation building and stability operations; challenging the need for universal obedience by military professionals; chronicling changes in the education of military officers over time; tracking shifting conceptions of required military expertise; detailing recent relationships between military and civilian leaders; identifying norms that do or should guide the relationship between soldier and state; and building trust between the civilian and military sectors.
Despite these differences in scope, one central issue that both volumes address in a parallel way (but with differing conclusions) is how attitudes of members of the Army translate into political activity. Chapter 7 (pp. 127–51) of Our Army is devoted to this issue, and it details the major political activities by military service members—“voting, donating money to political campaigns, and displaying support for political candidates in the form of buttons, bumper stickers, and signs” (p. 127). Dempsey emphasizes that “the army is not as politically active as many believe it to be” (p. 127). In American Civil–Military Relations, Risa Brooks in Chapter 11 (pp. 213–38) takes a comprehensive look at this issue but with different conclusions: She finds “many instances in which military officers and their organizations have engaged in activities that are indisputably political” (p. 213), including public appeals, grandstanding, politicking, alliance building, and “shoulder tapping” (p. 219). Indeed, the editors (Nielsen and Snider) themselves point out that “since the end of the Cold War, there has been a marked decrease in partisan neutrality among the U.S. officer corps” (p. 291). Both books nonetheless agree that too much Army involvement in political activity can be dangerous (Our Army, pp. 27–33; and American Civil–Military Relations, pp. 233–36).
One of the key issues of controversy, reflected in sharply different stances taken by the two books, is the state of the reputation of the military—and, consequently, the quality of civil–military relations—in recent decades. In his book, Dempsey presents a decidedly optimistic viewpoint: He states that “the reputation of the military has steadily increased since the late 1970s” (p. 2), and that “the military of the 1990s was a widely respected institution” by soldiers and civilians alike (p. 32). Dempsey adds that “the concerns that many have expressed over the civil–military gap in recent years have been driven by an impression of the military as a monolithic and active voting bloc” (p. 127), an impression he believes is mistaken and tries to refute. It would have been nice if, in reporting these trends, he had chosen to comment on some of the contrary evidence available, such as the media exposure of friendly fire incidents, low Army morale, high military suicide rates, or the increase in outsourcing of traditional military tasks to private contractors. In contrast, in the edited volume, General Barry McCaffrey more pessimistically notes “the troubled quality of American civil–military relations” (p. xiii), and Michael Desch notes “the marked deterioration of the relationship between civilians and the senior military leadership” within the United States (p. 91). Unfortunately, in parallel fashion, this volume makes little effort to address why it rejects the more optimistic assessment of the image and relationship of the military in contemporary society.
This controversy relates to the question of how current each book's analysis is of American civil–military relations within a rapidly changing security setting. Our Army bases its conclusions on a survey of United States Army personnel in 2004 and on a survey of West Point cadets on the eve of the 2004 election (p. 5). Unfortunately, that election occurred a full six years before the publication of the book in 2010, a significant limitation not reduced by the inclusion of a very brief update on the 2008 presidential election (pp. 197–200) that is not able in its short space to link up and modify the book's major themes. In any case, basing conclusions about the nature of civil–military relations on a single presidential election at a single point in time seems downright perilous, calling for some form of longitudinal analysis. Since the insights in American Civi—Military Relations tend to be more conceptual than empirical, no similar handicap limits its applicability, even though it was published a year earlier in 2009.
Another point of contention between these two books concerns the level of similarity between the views of the American military and the views of American civilians. Dempsey asserts that “across a variety of issues the army, in the aggregate, holds opinions more similar to those of the civilian population than outside observers might expect” (p. 68). However, Nielsen and Snider identify a “gap” between America's armed forces and “the evolving values of the society from which these forces are drawn and in which they are rooted” (p. 299) that is so significant that, as James Burk notes, “military professionals require autonomy, including moral autonomy, to be competent actors who can be held responsible for what they do” (p. 162). Even though in his chapter Darrell Driver contends that no single ideology is shared by all military professionals (pp. 185, 189), this understanding does not mean that the military mind-set is indistinguishable from the mass civilian viewpoint.
The differing conclusions of these two books reflect their distinctively different tones. Following the reassuring tone in his book, Dempsey concludes that his analysis “should remove some of the apprehension and distance that Americans may feel between themselves and their army” (p. 182). In accordance with the more wary tone of the edited volume, Nielsen and Snider warn about tensions between American liberalism and the military perspective (p. 291), and they conclude that “tensions in U.S. civil–military relations are likely to continue, especially over use-of-force decisions, and especially when the decision is to undertake particular operations for purposes that can be seen as discretionary, with relatively tight limits on means” (p. 295). Even though in his chapter Matthew Moten argues that “civil–military tensions are natural and, to the extent that they foster informed decision making, can be productive” (p. 43), if one believes this book's perspective the nature of the predicted tensions would require serious attention.
In the end, while Our Army focuses on introducing new empirical evidence and American Civil–Military Relations focuses on summarizing existing conceptual perspectives, they both make valuable contributions to the understanding of American civil–military relations. Although outlining solutions is not the primary goal of either book, together they lay the foundation for future scholarly work in the area and for policy changes that might address dysfunctional dimensions of the perception, as well as the reality, of relations between civilians and soldiers in the United States. However, even if these problems are successfully addressed, it is well to keep in mind Christopher Gibson's cautionary insight in the edited volume that “functional civil–military relations do not guarantee successful policy outcomes” (p. 239).
