Civilian Control: Army Passivity, Naval Responsibility, and the Council of National Defense. The origins of the theory and practice of objective civilian control in the United States stem from the institutional separation of the military forces from society during these years, the ideas of the officers as to the proper distance between the military forces and politics, and their deepening professional esprit and sense of professional autonomy. To the extent that objective civilian control became effective in the United States, it was military in its inception and maintenance. Army and Navy officers emphasized their subordination to the political arms of government. The military services were but the muscle of the government “controlled and directed,” as one Navy man put it, “by the intellectual parts comprising the legislative, executive and judicial.” The Army’s “subordination to the civil power,” an officer of that service echoed, “segregates it as a power distinctive from all others, executive, legislative or judicial.” Within this fundamental allegiance to civilian superiority, however, the differing experiences of the two services led them to phrase their ideals in slightly different form.
The Army participated in a diversity of tasks — Southern reconstruction, Indian fighting, labor disorders, the Spanish War, Cuban occupation, Philippine pacification, construction and operation of the Canal, the Mexican punitive expedition. Accordingly, the Army developed an image of itself as the government’s obedient handyman performing without question or hesitation the jobs assigned to it: “the country’s general servant, well-disciplined, obedient, performing civil functions.” It had no peculiar field of responsibility; instead, it was a vast, organic, human machine, blindly following orders from on high. The analogy of the Army to a machine, both in the sense of its dependence upon an operative to start it and guide it in action and in the sense of a complicated slowly constructed whole which alone gave meaning to its parts, was frequently employed, underlining as it did the Army’s passive role. “When called into action, it is merely a machine, and is as irresponsible.” Consequently, “military power is but an instrument in the hands of a superior will. It is passive to the exercise of other governmental functions.” Army writers admitted that the military were only bound to obey lawful orders, but they held that it was not for them to judge their legality. “Soldiers are soldiers and not lawyers.” By following all orders literally the Army attempted to divest itself of political responsibility and political controversy despite the political nature of the tasks it was frequently called upon to perform.
The situation of the Navy was somewhat different. Its role was more limited to enforcing the national will in foreign affairs. It was also, obviously, the nation’s first line of defense. Consequently, while stressing the subordination of the Navy to the political direction of the government, naval officers also stressed its responsibility for the country’s safety. “Let us remember,” warned Fiske, “that the naval defense of our country is our profession, not that of Congress.” The naval profession must obey its civilian superiors, but it also has the duty to make its professional opinions known. If an ordered course of action ran counter to “professional convictions” and seemed “fraught with harm,” a “proper representation” to the senior officials was “of course obligatory.” The naval profession must have room to work out its own “rules of strategy, tactics, and discipline,” but in the end, these were, of course, subject to the “general control of the civil authority, to which it must render absolute obedience.” The Navy view of civilian control thus assigned a more positive and active role to the military profession than did that of the Army.
Both branches of the profession had roughly the same ideas on the over-all relationship between strategy and national policy. Military policy depended upon statesmanship. It was the function of the civilian policy-maker to determine the ends of national policy and to allocate the resources which the military might use to achieve those ends. It was then the job of the military to apply the resources to the achievement of the goal. Planning this application constituted strategy. If military activities developed ends of their own which conflicted with those laid down by the statesman, the military goals had to give way. “In the highest sense,” one officer wrote about naval policy, “it depends on the foreign policy of the government, and is therefore beyond the sphere of our discussion as naval officers.” Officers unanimously agreed that strategy was “the servant of statesmanship” and that the determination of national goals had to precede the decisions on strategy. The continuity of policy through peace and war was also stressed. Policy developed with the nation and would have no end so long as the nation existed in a world of sovereign states. It should be obvious, one naval officer argued, that “policies make war; that war is conducted to further policies, and that treaties carry forward these policies when war decides in their favor.” By 1914 the theory of the American military man on war and policy was strictly Clausewitzian.
This view, as Fiske pointed out, presupposed that the ends of policy would be defined before strategy had to be prepared. Given the American system of government, however, this was not always a safe assumption. Frequently, the military men found themselves forced to work in a vacuum and to guess as to the nature of national policy. Such a situation tended to undermine either civilian control or national security, forcing the military men to make their own policy or give up any serious strategic planning. Consequently, the military profession was virtually unanimous in its demand for some sort of organ, such as a Council of National Defense, which would lay down definite policies for them to follow. Over and over again, fifty years before the National Security Council was created, they pleaded the need for such a body. Without it, they were directionless. Most of the military proposals suggested the inclusion of congressional as well as executive leaders, and they were, consequently, another manifestation of military hostility to the separation of powers. The military writers recognized that a defense council was needed more in peace than in war, and buttressed their arguments by pointing to the existing councils in foreign countries. Civilian officials such as Secretary Daniels and members of the State Department opposed the military recommendations. In 1916 when Congress did create a Council of National Defense, it was a far cry from what the military had in mind. The Secretary of State was not a member and there was no provision for regularized professional military advice. The work of the Council, consequently, was largely concerned with economic mobilization.31
National Policy: Realism or Pessimism? The attitudes of the American military toward national policy followed closely those of the ideal-type military ethic. Continuously, the officers warned of the inevitability of war. The causes of war were in the “unstable equilibrium” of international politics and the rivalry of sovereign states for power, glory, and trade. Wars might be postponed and they might be limited, but they could not be avoided. The United States, the officers counseled, was no different from any other nation in its susceptibility to conflict. War is “an occurrence,” Wagner reminded his countrymen, “to which all nations are subject.” While preaching the inevitability of war, the officers had to defend themselves against charges that they viewed it as desirable also. A few of them, to be sure, absorbed the militant version of Social Darwinism, and described the benefits of conflict. The great bulk of the officer corps of both services, however, stressed the evils and horrors of war. Sherman’s dictum on war was frequently quoted by Army writers, as were Moltke’s words to the same effect. The causes of war, the officers insisted, were civil in nature, and the military who have to fight them have little desire to foment them. Instead, the natural conservatism of the military man leads him to support the maintenance of peace. Before the Spanish-American War and before the United States entered World War I, the officers were conspicuously absent from the ranks of war advocates, and instead warned of the dangers involvement would entail for the United States.
The twenty years prior to World War I were the heyday of the belief that war might be prevented by treaties or in
stitutional devices. Again and again the military warned that Peace Palaces would not bring peace, and that treaties could only be relied upon so long as they reflected the underlying realities of power politics. Particularly popular in the United States, with its legal orientation, was Andrew Carnegie’s idea of international arbitration. American military men, consequently, directed most of their fire against this conception, warning that arbitration could settle nothing but the most minor disputes and that arbitration treaties were no substitute for armaments. As American delegates to the Hague Conferences, Admiral Mahan and General George B. Davis expressed these strictly military opinions. “They were an excellent tonic,” Andrew D. White remarked on Mahan’s views. “When he speaks the millennium fades, and this stern, severe actual world appears.”
The military’s answer to the problems of war and peace was, of course, stronger military forces. This was probably the most frequent theme in military literature after the 1870’s. Every argument which was subsequently to be utilized in the popular controversy over preparedness in the Wilson Administration may be found in the military thinking of these earlier years. The military particularly criticized the idea that the United States could rely on its “latent-strength”; when war came, military power in being, not potential resources, would determine its outcome. Military preparation was also argued for on the grounds of economy. Efficient forces in being were in the long run less expensive and would bring about quicker victory than wasteful efforts to put together an army after the opening of hostilities. The maintenance of strong forces would also tend to reduce the likelihood of war by deterring potential enemies from aggression. Germany, it was pointed out, had maintained the strongest and best army in Europe after 1871 and had been freer from conflict than any other European power. There was nothing inherent in the maintenance of substantial military forces which tended to provoke war. Instead, they prevented war. The standard by which American military strength should be measured was “the estimated force which the strongest probable enemy” could bring against us.32
The essence of the military thinking on national policy was power and the natural rivalry of nations. In this respect, their attitudes were more realistic than most American thinking on foreign policy. But, on the other hand, the military responsibility was to be pessimistic, and their pessimism was in many ways unrealistic during the years of isolation and peace. Their forebodings of disaster and their repeated pleadings for more force were out of place in the long, quiet years of the 1880’s and 1890’s. The officers were ahead of their times. Civilian complacency more accurately reflected the realities of international politics than military fears of imminent war and invasion. Although they started out with realistic assumptions about international relations, the military did not follow these through to the logical conclusion that the United States actually had little need for military force and that the protection of the oceans would give her time to transform resources into power once war began. Instead, the military writers substituted their own views on the essentiality of power which were, however, derived not from the needs of foreign policy, but from the needs of the military profession. After 1898, on the other hand, the military view more closely approximated national requirements than did the still complacent civilian attitudes. As World War I approached, the coincidence between national needs and military attitudes became closer, and the distance between national needs and the hitherto prevailing civilian view much greater. By this time, however, the military suffered the results of crying wolf in the previous century. Although the march of events was making realists out of the pessimists, the civilians by and large were slow in recognizing this change.
American Society: Jingoism, Individualism, Commercialism. The military officers were not pleased by what they saw when they looked out from their professional monastery on the bustling America of their age. Those aspects of American society which were most important were those which seemed most unmilitary. The image of America in the military mind was a picture of jingoism, individualism, and, most particularly, commercialism.
Back in the Military Enlightenment, D. H. Mahan had termed the American people warlike but unmilitary. He had hoped that this would change. A. T. Mahan, however, found it necessary to echo the words of his father: Americans were “aggressive, combative, even warlike,” but they were the “reverse of military; out of sympathy with military tone and feeling.” The naval Mahan’s Army contemporaries concurred in this judgment. Not only were Americans bellicose, but they suffered from an overweening and highly dangerous self-confidence. The military officers expressed great alarm at the “national conceit” rampant in the United States, warning of the effects of the persistent Jacksonian strain of thinking which led the American people to reject military skills and the military profession. Again and again the officers spoke of the danger of “blind faith in the manifest destiny of the Republic.” To them, there was nothing manifest about it at all. The American people had made a monetary motto — “In God We Trust” — into a military policy, without regard to the fact that faith must be supported by works. Military men criticized the rash and adventurous psychology, typified by the “On to Richmond” slogan of the Civil War radicals, and urged the primacy of prudence over courage and the necessity of accepting a “patient and costly defense.” Some military men almost seemed to regret that the United States had “never known a Jena or Sedan” to curb national arrogance and complacency.
While American national egotism was, according to the military view, a threat to national security, the egotism of individual Americans was viewed as a threat to the military services. Military writers never ceased to inveigh against the evils of individualism which they held to be the dominant social current in the American scene. The individualism and self-assertiveness of the civilian were contrasted with the discipline and subordination required of the professional soldier. The universal hostility of the American people to things military was “the result of our institutions inculcating pride and egotism.” Army officers despaired of ever inducing the American public to support universal military service, pointing out that the only compulsory civic responsibilities which Americans had accepted, and even these reluctantly, were jury service and education of the young. The pervading spirit of individualism was seen as infiltrating the services and undermining their effectiveness. “It is high time now,” pleaded one naval officer, “. . . that this individualism be brought under proper control.”
By far the most serious aspect of the unhealthy national psychology, so far as the military were concerned, was the prevailing spirit of commercialism. They reacted vigorously to the rise of industrialism and the dominance of business pacifism. The military attack, rooted in a thoroughly noneconomic conservatism, was much more fundamental than that of labor and radical groups who shared with business a basic utilitarian ethic. Officers deplored the “tremendous spirit of commercialism” which they had to face and the dominance of Congress by businessmen. Fiske warned that “the insistent requirements of business, society, and pleasure,” would enervate the nation and leave it wealthy and powerless, open to attack. Homer Lea, America’s brilliant if erratic soldier-romantic, was not always in tune with the conservative officer corps, but in his condemnation of the commercial spirit, he was speaking in true military tones. “The trouble with us,” one brigadier general agreed, “is that under the modern devil of sordid commercialism, which corrupts legislators and public servants and dulls public conscience, the average man considers that the state and the government exist for his sole personal benefit; he does not realize that the rights, privileges and immunities resulting from citizenship have corresponding responsibilities and duties.” The prevalence of technicism and the emphasis on material in the services were laid at the door of the national values. The cultivation of the proper military spirit, Mahan argued, required the military to withdraw from contact with the materialistic society which they served and to isolate themselves from the corrupting “spirit of the age.” The Infan
try Journal deplored the spread of “scientific materialism.” Industrial discipline was opposed to military discipline, and it was the former which was held to dominate the Navy. The only things military about the Navy, it was lamented, were the Naval Academy, the training stations, and the Marine Corps. Otherwise, it was simply a “fighting industrial association,” reeking with materialism and commercialism.
Rejected by a commercial society, the military services were contemptuous of the values of such a society and sure of the superiority of their own creed. One of the great advantages of West Point, it was held, was that it isolated its students from the “atmosphere of commercialism.” Cadets were strictly confined to the post for four years and were not allowed to receive, possess, or use pocket money — a minor indication of the Academy’s isolation as a military monastery. The moral superiority of the military life rested on its freedom “from the sordidness and misery of the money-getting trade.” The order, discipline, and regularity of the military existence led to “military contentment,” whereas the frantic rush and bustle, chaotic self-seeking, and injustice of civilian life made discontent endemic to civilian society. Peace of mind, freedom from the never satiated drives for material gain, were only possible in the self-discipline and restraint of the military life. In their criticism of American commercial democracy, the officers were treading on classical ground, unconsciously echoing Plato’s indictment of Athenian commercial democracy twenty-five hundred years previously.
The arrogance, individualism, and commercialism of American society gave the military the outlook of an estranged minority. “In the United States,” as the New York Sun observed in 1906, “the professional soldier has a feeling of detachment and futility.” The sense of alienation was complete and disturbing, and in the first decade of the twentieth century, the military began to wonder what might be done to effect a reconciliation. The frequency with which they discussed their unsatisfactory relations with the public increased noticeably. But, despite their concern, the basic conflict of values remained. Its deep-rooted nature was unconsciously but brilliantly pinpointed in one officer’s comments in 1905 on the “Cardinal Vices of the American Soldier.”33 These included his personal independence, rebellious spirit, excessive wants, deficient sense of obligation, criticism of superior authority, self-interest, ambition, and “contempt of humble things and duties.” These very characteristics to which the major objected were those which most civilian Americans would list, under different names, as national virtues rather than vices. With such an ideological gap between the military and civilian worlds, the attempts of officers to justify their services were bound to fall on deaf ears.
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