The Soldier and the State

by Samuel P Huntington

  Civilian Control by Social Class. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the European aristocracy and bourgeoisie struggled for control of the military forces. Each class attempted to identify civilian control with its own interests. Since the aristocracy generally dominated the military forces, however, the liberal bourgeois groups made the greatest use of the slogan and identified aristocratic control with military control. Military institutions merely furnished one battleground for the struggle between the two classes which permeated all areas of society; the issue was simply whether aristocratic or liberal interests were to prevail in the armed forces.

  Civilian Control by Constitutional Form. A broader application of this same identification of civilian control with a particular civilian interest occurs when the claim is made that only a specific constitutional form — usually democracy — can insure civilian control. Civilian control is identified with democratic government, military control with absolute or totalitarian government. In democratic countries, it is argued, policy is determined by persuasion and compromise; in absolutist countries it is determined by force and coercion (or at least the implied threat of force or coercion). Hence, the military, who control the most powerful instrument of violence, will be more powerful in totalitarian countries than in democratic ones. Actually, however, this argument is not necessarily true. In a democratic country, the military may undermine civilian control and acquire great political power through the legitimate processes and institutions of democratic government and politics (for example, the United States in World War II). In a totalitarian regime, on the other hand, the power of the military may be reduced by breaking the officer corps up into competing units, establishing party armies and special military forces (Waffen-SS and MVD), infiltrating the military hierarchy with independent chains of command (political commissars), and similar techniques. Terror, conspiracy, surveillance, and force are the methods of government in a totalitarian state; terror, conspiracy, surveillance, and force are the means by which the civilians in such a state control their armed forces. If employed sufficiently ruthlessly, these means may virtually eliminate military political power (for example, Germany in World War II). Subjective civilian control thus is not the monopoly of any particular constitutional system.

  The rise of the military profession transformed the problem of civil-military relations, complicating the efforts of civilian groups to maximize their power over the military. Such groups were now confronted not only with other civilian groups with similar goals but also with new, independent, functional military imperatives. The continued assertion of the particular forms of subjective civilian control required that these imperatives be either denied or transformed. If this could not be done, civilian control in the subjective sense became impossible. Some new principle was needed to govern the relations between the functional military imperatives and the rest of society. So long as civilian control was simply an instrumental value of particular civilian groups, it was, of course, impossible to secure general agreement as to its meaning. Each group defined it as a distribution of power favorable to its own interests. This explains the peculiar historical fact that, although civilian control was regularly invoked in politics and frequently written about in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it was, nonetheless, never satisfactorily defined. The rise of the military profession, however, while making the particular forms of subjective civilian control obsolete, also made possible a new and more meaningful definition of civilian control.

  OBJECTIVE CIVILIAN CONTROL: MAXIMIZING MILITARY PROFESSIONALISM.Civilian control in the objective sense is the maximizing of military professionalism. More precisely, it is that distribution of political power between military and civilian groups which is most conducive to the emergence of professional attitudes and behavior among the members of the officer corps. Objective civilian control is thus directly opposed to subjective civilian control. Subjective civilian control achieves its end by civilianizing the military, making them the mirror of the state. Objective civilian control achieves its end by militarizing the military, making them the tool of the state. Subjective civilian control exists in a variety of forms, objective civilian control in only one. The antithesis of objective civilian control is military participation in politics: civilian control decreases as the military become progressively involved in institutional, class, and constitutional politics. Subjective civilian control, on the other hand, presupposes this involvement. The essence of objective civilian control is the recognition of autonomous military professionalism; the essence of subjective civilian control is the denial of an independent military sphere. Historically, the demand for objective control has come from the military profession, the demand for subjective control from the multifarious civilian groups anxious to maximize their power in military affairs.

  The one prime essential for any system of civilian control is the minimizing of military power. Objective civilian control achieves this reduction by professionalizing the military, by rendering them politically sterile and neutral. This produces the lowest possible level of military political power with respect to all civilian groups. At the same time it preserves that essential element of power which is necessary for the existence of a military profession. A highly professional officer corps stands ready to carry out the wishes of any civilian group which secures legitimate authority within the state. In effect, this sets definite limits to military political power without reference to the distribution of political power among the various civilian groups. Any further reduction of military power beyond the point where professionalism is maximized only redounds to the benefit of some particular civilian group and only serves to enhance the power of that group in its struggles with other civilian groups. The distribution of political power which most facilitates military professionalism is thus also the lowest point to which military power can be reduced without playing favorites among civilian groups. Because of this, the objective definition of civilian control furnishes a single concrete standard of civilian control which is politically neutral and which all social groups can recognize. It elevates civilian control from a political slogan masking group interests to an analytical concept independent of group perspectives.

  The subjective definition of civilian control presupposes a conflict between civilian control and the needs of military security. This was generally recognized by adherents of particular civilian groups who commonly asserted that continued military insecurity made civilian control impossible. By this they simply meant that intensified security threats result in increased military imperatives against which it becomes more difficult to assert civilian power. The steps necessary to achieve military security are thus viewed as undermining civilian control. On the other hand, the effort to enhance civilian control in the subjective sense frequently undermined military security. Because they did not, for instance, recognize the existence of a separate military profession with its own outlook on national policy, civilian groups frequently assumed that the reduction of military power was necessary to preserve peace. This decrease in the power of the military, however, often resulted in increased power for much more bellicose civilian groups. Consequently those civilian groups which tried to minimize the risks of war by reducing the power of the military frequently encouraged exactly what they were attempting to avoid. It is hardly coincidental that the years immediately prior to World War II saw the systematic reduction of the political power of the military in all the future belligerents except Japan, or that the temperature of the Cold War seems to vary inversely with the political power of the generals in the Soviet Union. If civilian control is defined in the objective sense, however, no conflict exists between it and the goal of military security. Indeed, just the reverse is true. Objective civilian control not only reduces the power of the military to the lowest possible level vis-à-vis all civilian groups, it also maximizes the likelihood of achieving military security.

  The achievement of objective civilian control has only been possible, of course,
since the emergence of the military profession. Subjective civilian control is fundamentally out of place in any society in which the division of labor has been carried to the point where there emerges a distinct class of specialists in the management of violence. The achievement of objective civilian control, however, has been hampered by the tendency of many civilian groups still to conceive of civilian control in subjective terms. Like nineteenth-century aristocrats and bourgeoisie, or twentieth-century French constitutional factions, they are unwilling simply to accept a politically neutral officer corps. They continue to insist upon the subordination of the officer corps to their own interests and principles. Consequently a high level of objective civilian control has been a rare phenomenon even among modern western societies.

  THE TWO LEVELS OF CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS

  What conditions are likely to maximize military professionalism and objective civilian control? The answer depends upon the relation between the two levels of civil-military relations. On the power level, the key issue is the power of the officer corps relative to civilian groups within society. On the ideological level, the key issue is the compatibility of the professional military ethic with the political ideologies prevailing in society. On the one hand, criteria are needed by which to measure military and civilian power. On the other hand, some notion is required as to where the professional military ethic fits into the spectrum of political opinion.

  THE OFFICER CORPS AND POLITICAL POWER. Power is the capacity to control the behavior of other people.2 A power relationship has at least two dimensions: the degree or amount of power, that is, the extent to which a particular type of behavior of one person is controlled by another; and, secondly, the scope or locus of power, that is, the types of behavior which are influenced by the other individual or group. The relations between any two people or groups normally involve the exercise of power in both directions although in all probability in somewhat different if overlapping loci. Power exists in two forms, formal authority and informal influence, both of which may be measured in terms of their degree and scope. Formal authority involves the control of one person over the behavior of another on the basis of their respective positions in a defined social structure. Authority does not inhere in the individual but is an attribute of status and position. Authority, consequently, is ordered, structured, or legitimate power. It is a continuing pattern of relationships which remains relatively constant through successive changes in the individuals involved in the relationships. Its exercise has the sanction of constitution, statute, bylaws, decree, or long accepted custom. It is a truism of politics that formal authority tells only part of the story of power. Informal relationships also exist where one person, or group of persons, controls the behavior of other persons not because they occupy particular positions in a formal structure, but because they control other sanctions or rewards. This influence may stem from personality, wealth, knowledge, prestige, friendship, kinship, or a variety of other sources. Its distinguishing characteristic, however, is always that it inheres in specific individuals or groups, not in the roles or statuses which those individuals or groups occupy.

  Authority. In analyzing the pattern of authority in civil-military relations the key criteria are the relative level, the relative unity, and the relative scope of the authority of the military and civilian groups. The higher the level of authority of a group, the greater the unity of its structure, and the broader the scope of its authority, the more powerful it will be.

  The level of authority refers to the position which the group occupies in the hierarchy of governmental authority. Vertical control is exercised over the military to the extent that they are reduced to subordinate levels of authority. The level of authority of the officer corps is maximized if it is placed at the peak of the hierarchy and the other institutions of government are subordinate to it: if, in other words, it or its leaders exercise military sovereignty. A level of somewhat less authority exists if the military do not possess authority over other institutions, and no other institutions possess authority over them. In this case, two parallel structures of authority exist; one military and one civil. This situation is military independence. Thirdly, the officer corps may be subordinate to only one other institution possessing effective final authority. In other words, the officer corps has direct access to the sovereign. After this, the officer corps might gradually be further subordinated in the governmental structure. Such subordination, however, is generally not carried very far and usually only one level of authority is interspersed between the officer corps and the sovereign. Since this one level is normally in the form of a civilian departmental minister, this level of military authority may be called ministerial control.

  The unity of authority refers to the extent to which a given group is structurally unified with relation to another group. A monopolist possesses advantages in dealing with a large number of firms on the other side of the market place. So also, a group which is structurally united possesses great advantages in dealing with a group which is structurally disunited. If the officer corps is originally divided into land, sea, and air elements, and then is unified under the leadership of a single, overall staff and military commander in chief, this change will tend to increase its authority with regard to other institutions of government. It will speak with one voice instead of three. Other groups will not be able to play off one portion of the officer corps against another.

  Thirdly, the scope of authority refers to the variety and type of values with respect to which the group is formally authorized to exercise power. The authority of military groups, for instance, is normally limited to military matters. If the chiefs of staff were also authorized to advise the government with respect to agricultural subsidies, the scope of their authority would be significantly expanded. Horizontal civilian control is exercised against the military to the extent that they are confined within a limited scope by the parallel activities of civilian agencies or groups roughly at the same level of authority in the government.

  Influence. The political influence of a group and its leaders is even more difficult to judge than their formal authority. Four rough indices exist, however, by which the influence of the officer corps may be evaluated.

  (1) The group affiliations of the officer corps and its leaders. One test of the influence of a group is the extent and nature of its affiliations with other powerful groups and individuals. For the officer corps these affiliations are generally of three types. First, preservice affiliations arise from the activities of officers before they enter the officer corps. If the bulk of the officers are drawn from a particular social class or geographical section, this may be assumed to enhance the influence of the corps with that class or section. Secondly, officers may develop inservice affiliations in the course of their military duties, as for example, special ties with congressional committees, or with those industries whose products are consumed by the armed services. Finally, postservice affiliations may reflect a general pattern of officer activities after leaving the corps. If, for instance, officers upon retirement normally entered into a particular type of work, or settled in a particular part of the country, this would also presumably increase the influence of the officer corps in those segments of society.

  (2) The economic and human resources subject to the authority of the officer corps and its leaders. The larger the proportion of the national product devoted to military purposes, and the larger the number of individuals serving with the armed services in either a civilian or military capacity, the greater will be the influence of the officer corps and its leaders. An increase or decrease in the resources subject to military authority, however, need not involve any change in that authority itself. The level, unity, and scope of military authority may well remain constant throughout changes in the resources subject to military control.

  (3) The hierarchical interpenetration of the officer corps and other groups. Military influence is increased if members of the officer corps assume positions of authority in nonmil
itary power structures. Military influence is decreased to the extent that nonmilitary individuals penetrate into positions within the formally defined officer corps.

  (4) Prestige and popularity of the officer corps and its leaders. The standing of the officer corps and its leaders with public opinion and the attitudes of broad sections or categoric groups in society toward the military obviously are key elements in determining military influence.

  These four factors will help give some index of the political influence of the military. The more or less quantitative extent of these relationships indicates the degree of military political influence. The specific content and nature of the relationships furnish some idea of the locus of military influence. For instance, an increase in the total number of military men occupying positions of authority in the normally civilian branches of government warrants a conclusion as to an increase in the degree of military influence. The specific type of agency in which the military men are working would lead to conclusions as to the locus of this increased influence: they might all be in the foreign affairs department or they might be scattered generally throughout the government.

  THE PROFESSIONAL ETHIC AND POLITICAL IDEOLOGIES. Just as there is a variety of civilian groups engaged in the struggle for power, so also is there a variety of civilian ethics or ideologies. Consequently, it is impossible to assume a continuum stretching from military values at one end to civilian values at the other. The military ethic is concrete, permanent, and universal. The term “civilian” on the other hand, merely refers to what is nonmilitary. No dichotomy exists between the “military mind” and the “civilian mind” because there is no single “civilian mind.” There are many “civilian minds,” and the difference between any two civilian ethics may be greater than the difference between any one of them and the military ethic. Consequently, the military ethic can only be compared with particular civilian ethics. In this analysis, it will be compared with four manifestations of one species of civilian ethic — the political ideology. A political ideology is a set of values and attitudes oriented about the problems of the state. The ideologies which will be compared with the military ethic are four which have been among the most significant in western culture: liberalism, fascism, Marxism, and conservatism.3 Each ideology will be considered generally and abstractly, independent of its specific historical manifestations. The point at issue in each case is the extent to which the ideology, viewed as a system of ideas, is compatible with or hostile to the military ethic.