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The New Civil-Military Relations*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Gene M. Lyons
Gene M. Lyons*
Affiliation:
Dartmouth College
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Extract

Historically the character of civil-military relations in the United States has been dominated by the concept of civilian control of the military. This has largely been a response to the fear of praetorianism. As recently as 1949, for example, the first Hoover Commission asserted that one of the major reasons for strengthening the “means of exercising civilian control” over the defense establishment was to “safeguard our democratic traditions against militarism.” This same warning was raised in the report of the Rockefeller Committee on defense organization in 1953. While the overriding purpose of the committee's recommendations was to provide “the Nation with maximum security at minimum cost,” the report made it clear that this had to be achieved “without danger to our free institutions, based on the fundamental principle of civilian control of the Military Establishment.” Finally, during the debate on the reorganization proposals of 1958, senators and congressmen used the theme of a “Prussianized” military staff to attempt to slow down the trend towards centralization in the military establishment.

Despite this imposing support, the concept of civilian control of the military has little significance for contemporary problems of national security in the United States. In the first place, military leaders are divided among themselves, although their differences cannot be reduced to a crass contrast between dichomatic doctrines. Air Force leaders who are gravely concerned over the need to maintain a decisive nuclear retaliatory force are by now acknowledging the need to develop a limited war capability.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 55 , Issue 1 , March 1961 , pp. 53 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1961

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Footnotes

*

This article was originally prepared for the 1960 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. In the preparation and in the revision I have profited from the comments of several colleagues, at Dartmouth and elsewhere, particularly my confrere, Louis Morton.

References

1 Commission on Organization of the Executive Branch of the Government, The National Security Organization, A Report to the Congress, 02 1949, pp. 2–3 Google Scholar.

2 Report of the Rockefeller Committee on Department of Defense Organization, Committee Print, Senate Committee on Armed Services, 83d Cong., 1st sess. 1953, p. 1 Google Scholar.

3 See, e.g., Rept. No. 1765, Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958, House Committee on Armed Services, 85th Cong., 2d session, esp. pp. 24–33 Google Scholar.

4 The views of all three Generals have been documented in books they published shortly after they retired: Gavin, James M., War and Peace in the Space Age (New York, 1958)Google Scholar, Ridgway, Matthew, Soldier (New York, 1956)Google Scholar; and Taylor, Maxwell D., The Uncertain Trumpet (New York, 1959)Google Scholar. And see the preceding article in this issue of this Review, Huntington, Samuel P., “Interservice Competition and the Political Roles of the Armed Services,” above, p. 40 Google Scholar.

5 For a theoretical statement of the concept of civilian control of the military, together with references to other major analyses of the subject, see Huntington, Samuel P., “Civilian Control of the Military: a Theoretical Statement,” in Eulau, Eldersveld and Janowitz, (ed.), Political Behavior (Glencoe, Ill. 1956), pp. 380 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 See his letter to Chairman Chan Gurney of the Senate Armed Services Committee, reprinted in that Committee's Hearings, 80th Cong., 1st sess., National Defense Establishment, Pt. 1, p. 185. More generally, see Hammond, Paul Y., “The National Security Council as a Device for Interdepartmental Coordination,” this Review, Vol. 54 (Dec., 1960), pp. 899–910 Google Scholar, and his forthcoming book, Organizing for Defense (Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

7 Testimony of Admiral Sherman, ibid., p. 155.

8 First Report of the Secretary of Defense, National Defense Establishment, 1948, pp. 2–4 Google Scholar.

9 Report of the Rockefeller Committee on Department of Defense Organization, op. cit., p. 11.

10 See, for example, the dialogue between Senator Symington and the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Logistics and Supply) in Hearings, Senate Committee on Armed Services, 85th Cong. 1st sess., Nominations, pp. 12–14.

11 Almost two years after the passage of the Reorganization Act of 1958, the Army, Navy, Air Force Journal (May 28, 1960) summed up some of the ways Secretary of Defense Gates “is using the full powers of his office … to achieve increased unification within the terms of existing legislation.” These included centralization of missile test ranges, centralization of toxicological research, and establishment of an All-Service Defense Communications Agency. In addition, early in 1960, Secretary Gates sent a memorandum to the Chairman of the JCS, stating: “It is requested that I be promptly informed regarding any issue on which a difference of opinion is developing within the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I intend that either the Secretary of Defense and/or the Deputy Secretary of Defense will promptly meet with the Joint Chiefs at such times as they consider the issue in question …” (reprinted in Army, Navy, Air Force Journal, January 16, 1960).

12 This contrast has risen to plague subsequent Secretaries of Defense. Secretary McElroy facing questions on it during the reorganization hearings in 1958, offered the following: “I have heard others report to me about the expressions by Jim Forrestal about getting along with 100 people, and that kind of thing. I have also heard that after he got into the job, he found that he needed a great many more. The history is nothing that I am prepared to support because I don't know precisely what did go on there. But I honestly—while I agree with you fully that numbers are not a measure of the importance or efficiency of an organization, I mean large numbers, I wouldn't know how anybody could operate a department of this size and complexity with 100 people.” Hearings, House Committee on Armed Services, 85th Cong., 2d sess., Reorganization of the Department of Defense, p. 6072 Google Scholar.

13 These misgivings are suggested by the questions raised by the staff of the Senate (Jackson) subcommittee on national policy machinery. See Organizing for National Security, Interim Report of the Committee on Government Operations made by its Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, 86th Cong., 2d sess., pp. 17–19. The problem of turnover has been the subject of a proposed Senate resolution “that it is the sense of the Senate that nominees appearing before its committee shall indicate their willingness to serve so long as the President desires” (S. Res. 338), 86th Cong., 2d sess.; see also Rept. No 1753, 86th Cong., 2d sess., Resolution Expressing Concern of Senate over Turnover in Administrative and Policymaking Posts.

14 Hearings, Senate Committee on Armed Services, 84th Cong., 2d sess., Assistant Secretaries for Research and Development, pp. 20–22 Google Scholar.

15 Hearings, Senate Committee on Armed Services, 83rd Cong., 1st sess., Nomination of Charles Wilson, Pt. 2, pp. 110–111 Google Scholar. For a general discussion of this problem, see Perkins, John A., “Staffing Democracy's Top Side,” Public Administration Review, Vol. 17 (Winter, 1957), pp. 1 ffCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 This was also true in programs outside the field of foreign and military policy, e.g., the members of the regulatory commissions and directors of TVA. For a discussion of its impact on career executives, see Somers, Herman M., “The Federal Bureaucracy and the Change of Administion,” this Review, Vol. 48 (03 1954), pp. 131 ffGoogle Scholar.

17 For example: Thomas Gates, the Secretary of Defense, had served (with one short break) since October 7, 1953, as Undersecretary and Secretary of the Navy, as well as Deputy Secretary and Secretary of Defense; James Douglas, Deputy Secretary of Defense, had served continuously since March 3, 1953, as Undersecretary and Secretary of the Air Force, as well as Deputy Secretary; Herbert York, Director of Defense Research and Engineering, came to this post (and was the first incumbent in 1958) after long experience in defense work with the Advanced Research Projects Agency, various scientific advisory committees, and non-profit institutions engaged in defense activities; Charles Finucane, the Assistant Secretary of Defense for manpower affairs, had served as Assistant Secretary and Undersecretary of the Army for almost four years when (after a short break in service) he was brought back to the post at the Defense level in 1958; similarly, the three service secretaries, Brucker in the Army, Franke in the Navy, and Sharp in the Air Force had all had almost continuous Pentagon service for at least five years.

18 In both cases, these views were expressed in testimony before the Senate subcommittee on National Policy Machinery and were largely supported by the testimony of other witnesses, particularly James A. Perkins, John Corson, and Roger Jones. See Hearings, Subcommittee on National Policy Machinery, Senate Committee on Government Operations, 86th Cong., 2d sess., Organizing for National Security, Pts. II and III.

19 Patronage proved to be a vexing problem when the Eisenhower Administration took office in 1953 after twenty years of Democratic rule. Very early in the game Secretary Dulles was reported to have made it clear that “his department could not be run on the basis of patronage,” Donovan, Robert J., Eisenhower, The Inside Story (New York, 1956), p. 98 Google Scholar, though this did not prevent the appointment of “fat cats,” e.g., to ambassadorial posts, or the wholesale purge of departmental personnel—referred to as “Stassenization”—in 1953, carried out in the name of a budget cut that Dulles did not resist. By the end of the second Eisenhower term—i.e., in hindsight, a quite different vantage point—a nonpartisan policy was considered valid for the Defense Department (see reference above to testimony of Secretary of Defense Gates). For a general discussion, see Mansfield, Harvey C., “Political Parties, Patronage, and the Federal Government Service,” in The Federal Government Service: Its Character, Prestige, and Problems, The American Assembly, 1954, pp. 81 ffGoogle Scholar.

20 The following discussion borrows from Sayre, Wallace S., “The Political Executive in the National Government: The Constitutional and Political Setting,” prepared for the Conference on the Political Executive, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University, 1956, pp. 23–24 (mimeographed)Google Scholar. The literature on executives for government is particularly pertinent to the problems discussed here. See, for example, the report of the task force on personnel and civil service of the second Hoover Commission, dated February 1955; David, Paul F. and Pollock, Ross, Executives for Government, The Brookings Institution, 1957 Google Scholar; and Bernstein, Marver H., The Job of the Federal Executive, The Brookings Institution, 1958 Google Scholar.

21 Gavin, op. cit., p. 166.

22 See, for example, Appleby, Paul H., Policy and Administration (University of Alabama Press, 1949)Google Scholar. For an earlier statement on this issue, see Friedrich, Carl J., “Public Policy and the Nature of Administrative Responsibility,” Public Policy (1940, Cambridge, Harvard University Press), pp. 3 ffGoogle Scholar.

23 Several of the essays in McLean, J. E. (ed.), The Public Service and University Education (Princeton, 1949)Google Scholar are concerned with this issue. See particularly Egger, Rowland, “A Second View: An American Administrative Class?” pp. 205 ffGoogle Scholar.

24 For a general discussion of the development of such innovations in government administration, see Price, Don K., “Creativity in the Public Service,” Public Policy, Vol. IX (1959, Cambridge, Harvard University Press), pp. 3 ffGoogle Scholar. For a discussion of some of the aspects of Defense Department contracting for advisory and consultative services, see Hearings, Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 86th Cong., 2d sess., Department of Defense Appropriations for 1961, Pt. 7, pp. 164–196 Google Scholar.

25 Annual Report II, Institute of Defense Analyses, 1958, p. 1 Google Scholar.

26 See Laurence I. Radway, The Study of Military Affairs, prepared for delivery at the 1958 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association (mimeographed).

27 Col. Lincoln, George A. and Col. Stilwell, Richard G., “Scholars Debouch Into Strategy,” Military Review, Vol. 40 (07 1960), p. 70 Google Scholar. See also CaptainBeebe, Robert P., “Guardians of Sea Power,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 86 (06 1960), pp. 27 ffGoogle Scholar. The trend suggested here seems to contradict Bernard Brodie's thesis that “any real expansion of strategic thought … will … have to be developed largely within the military guild itself.” ( Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, 1959), p. 9 Google Scholar. Indeed, one might say that Brodie's own pioneering work refutes his prognosis.

28 White, William S., “The End of the Old Army,” Harper's, 06 1959, pp. 82–85 Google Scholar. The contrast might have been more apt had Lemnitzer been compared with General Ridgway who was wholly a soldier's soldier while Taylor has certain professorial features of his own.

29 The terms in quotations are borrowed (as is much that follows) from Janowitz, Morris, The Professional Soldier (Glencoe, Ill., 1960)Google Scholar.

30 Lyons, Gene M. and Masland, John W., Education and Military Leadership (Princeton, 1959), esp. ch. IGoogle Scholar.

31 Ibid., chs. VI and VII.

32 Masland, John W. and Radway, Laurence I., Soldiers and Scholars (Princeton, 1957), p. 5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. This work is a study of the response of military education to the widening policy role of military leadership.

33 See ViceSabin, Admiral L. S., “Deep Selections,” United States Naval Institute Proceedings, Vol. 86 (03 1960), pp. 46 ffGoogle Scholar; also the large number of comments on Admiral Sabin's article in the June 1960 issue of the Proceedings (Vol. 86, No. 6), especially Admiral Carney's letter, pp. 104–106.

34 Department of Defense Directive 1320.5, reprinted in Army, Navy, Air Force Journal, December 19, 1959. For a summary of the reaction of the services to this directive, see the article (p. 1) entitled “Pentagon Orders New Barriers to General and Flag Ranks,” in the same issue.

35 Dispatch from Secretary of the Navy William B. Franke to Admiral Herbert G. Hopwood, President of the Flag Selection Board, reprinted in the Army, Navy, Air Force Journal, July 16, 1960.

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