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Civil-Military Relations Research: The SSRC Committee and Its Research Survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

William T. R. Fox
William T. R. Fox
Affiliation:
Columbia University
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Extract

In June 1952 a Social Science Research Council committee was established to take stock o? research on civil-military relations and make proposals with respect to the further development of research in this area. The members of the committee were not entirely satisfied with the phrase “civil-military relations” as describing the focus of their attention, but it was understood that the committee's interest lay in research bearing upon those problems of public policy which were posed by the prospect of a continuing high mobilization even in peace time, and by the continuing necessity for a careful coordination of military, diplomatic, and industrialization policy.

Type
Research Note
Information
World Politics , Volume 6 , Issue 2 , January 1954 , pp. 278 - 288
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1954

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References

1 This committee has consisted of McGeorge Bundy, Gordon A. Craig, John P. Miller, Harold Stein, and William T. R. Fox as chairman. Bryce Wood has been the Social Science Research Council's staff member; and the Council's president, Pendleton Herring, has been a regular participant in these discussions. Mr. Bundy resigned from the committee in August 1953.

2 The bibliography, entitled “Civil-Military Relations: An Annotated Bibliography, 1940–1952,” will be published shortly by Columbia University Press, New York. For publications prior to 1940, see the bibliography prepared for the Committee on Public Administration of the Social Science Research Council, Civil-Military Relations: Bibliographical Notes on Civilian Mobilization, Chicago, III., Public Administration Service, 1940.Google Scholar

3 A volume of readings prepared by Gordon Turner of Princeton University in connection with the offering of an experimental course in the history of military affairs has just been published under the title, A History of Military Affairs (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1953). It is not only an important teaching aid, but a useful contribution to defining the scope of a military history which seeks to be more than battle history.

4 Coale, Ansley J., The Problem of Reducing Vulnerability to Atomic Bombs (Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1953)Google Scholar, is a notable exception. See also Carl Kaysen, “The Vulnerability of the United States to Enemy Attack,” in this issue of World Politics.

5 Stouffer, Samuel A., et al., eds., The American Soldier, Princeton, N.J., Princeton University Press, 1949.Google Scholar The studies were based on data collected during World War II by the Research Branch, Information and Education Division of the United States War Department.

6 Social scientists on the staff of the RAND Corporation are among those who have demonstrated that scholarly research and publication are by no means necessarily incompatible with employment by an organization whose raison d'être is to meet needs of a federal government agency.

7 Cf. note 2 above.

8 Chicago, III., University of Chicago Press, 1951. Dean Smith's book has as its subtitle “A Study of Civil Control of the Military Power in the United States.”

9 University, Ala., University of Alabama Press, 1953.

10 The interest in analyzing and shaping the impact of high mobilization on American political institutions is by no means fully reflected in introductory survey volumes in American government. It is still the rule, rather than the exception, for a general survey volume to devote a few pages out of several hundred to the national defense activities of the federal government, which consume 80 per cent of the nation's budget, 20 per cent of the national income, and a good many years of the lives of most of the male readers of these general works.

11 Not only in the universities but in the field of journalism has there been a growing interest. See, for example, the syndicated column of Walter Millis, “Arms and Men,” which began to appear in the New York Herald Tribune in 1952.

12 For the studies in the Inter-University Case Program, see Stein, Harold, ed., Public Administration and Policy Development, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1952.Google Scholar

13 The June 1953 conference was attended by a group of junior faculty and advanced graduate students from five institutions, which included Samuel Huntington (Harvard), Kurt Lang (Chicago), Maury Feld (Columbia), and Elizabeth Marvide (Michigan). This group reviewed a document prepared by Professor Janowitz, “A Working Paper on the Professional Soldier and Political Power” (Ann Arbor, Mich., University of Michigan, Bureau of Government, Institute of Public Administration, 1953; mimeographed).

14 Coincidentally, a massive study tentatively entitled “Diplomacy' and Defense: The Soldier and the Conduct of Foreign Relations in the Cycle of Peace and War” has been brought almost to completion by Alfred Vagts as part of a program of “Topical Studies in International Relations” planned by Grayson Kirk in1947–1948. The author of this research note is now sharing with Dr. Kirk editorial responsibility for this series of manuscripts, of which Dr. Vagts's study is to be one. For a description of the Topical Studies program, see Kirk, Grayson, “Materials for the Study of International Relations,” World Politics, I (April 1949), pp. 426–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar