Civilian control of the military: Encyclopedia II - Civilian control of the military - Rationales

Civilian control of the military - Rationales

Advocates of civilian control generally take a Clausewitzian view of war, emphasizing its political character. The words of Georges Clemenceau, "War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men" (also frequently rendered as "War is too important to be left to the generals"), wryly reflect this view. Given that broad strategic decisions, such as the decision to declare a war, start an invasion, or end a conflict, have a major impact on the citizens of the country, they are seen by civilian control advocates as best guided by the will of the people (as expressed by their political representatives), rather than left solely to an elite group of tactical experts. The military serves as a special government agency, which is supposed to implement, rather than formulate, policies that require the use of certain types of physical force. Kohn succinctly summarizes this view when he writes that

[t]he point of civilian control is to make security subordinate to the larger purposes of a nation, rather than the other way around. The purpose of the military is to defend society, not to define it ^[4].

A state's effective monopoly of force is an issue of great concern for all national leaders, who must rely on the military to supply this aspect of their authority. The danger of granting military leaders full autonomy or sovereignty is that they may ignore or supplant the democratic decision-making process, and use physical force, or the threat of physical force, to achieve their preferred outcomes; in the worse cases, this may lead to a coup or military dictatorship. A related danger is the use of the military to crush domestic political opposition through intimidation or sheer physical force, interfering with the ability to have free and fair elections, a key part of the democratic process. Many of the Founding Fathers of the United States subscribed to this suspicious assessment of the virtues of standing militaries; as Samuel Adams wrote in 1768, "Even when there is a necessity of the military power, within a land, a wise and prudent people will always have a watchful and jealous eye over it" ^[5]. Even more forceful are the words of Elbridge Gerry, a delegate to the Constitutional Convention, who stated that

[s]tanding armies in time of peace are inconsistent with the principles of republican Governments, dangerous to the liberties of a free people, and generally converted into destructive engines for establishing despotism ^[6].

A strong assertion of the principle of civilian control was considered the best means of maintaining the "watchful eye", and informed military policy in the United States for much of its early history. The Posse Comitatus Act, passed in 1878, prohibits federal military personnel from engaging in domestic law enforcement activities (with certain exceptions, typically involving states of emergency, domestic unrest, and natural disasters).

Maoist military-political theories of "people's war" and democratic centralism also support the subordination of military forces to the directives of the Communist party (although the guerrilla experience of many early leading Chinese Communist Party figures may make their status as civilians somewhat ambiguous). In a 1929 essay On Correcting Mistaken Ideas in the Party, Mao explicitly refuted "comrades [who] regard military affairs and politics as opposed to each other and [who] refuse to recognize that military affairs are only one means of accomplishing political tasks", proscribing increased scrutiny of the People's Liberation Army by the Party and greater political training of officers and enlistees as a means of reducing military autonomy ^[7]. In Mao's theory, the military — which serves both as a symbol of the revolution and an instrument of the dictatorship of the proletariat — is not merely expected to defer to the direction of the ruling non-uniformed Party members (who today exercise control in the People's Republic of China through the Central Military Commission), but also to actively participate in the revolutionary political campaigns of the Maoist era.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Rationales", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki