Society

Every year I look over everything I’ve read throughout the year and I can usual pull out a general theme: 2014 – travel and exploration; 2015 – world history; 2016 – conflicts and political institutions; 2017 – revolutions and Central America; 2018 – left wing politics and love; 2019 – IR Realism and non-state actors. So what can I say about this year?

Society. Looking at my reading during this year, the general theme has been society. In addition to novels, I’ve been reading and listening to podcasts about Civil-Military relations. Also, in contrast to my usual focus on Latin America, I’ve taken more of an American and Russian angle to my “societal” reads.

I must say, this has been a welcome change. I usually read about people by proxy. Whether it’s states or non-stare actors, for the most part I only come into direct contact with people while reading biographies. But reading novels — and to a certain extent, civ-mil relations — I’m grappling with norms, frankly, with a frequency unfamiliar to me. Risa Brooks actually says “It’s time for scholars and practitioners to develop a normative framework for military professionalism that is better suited to the contemporary era…”

To begin with, I’ll speak to the Russian literature. I won’t stress it because I wrote on it before, but the central themes of all the works I’ve covered are loneliness, darkness, and harsh realities of survival. The Russians’ reputation as hardened survivors seems to have merit. And the frigid darkness that I seem to always think of when envisioning Russia comes through simply through the tone of the prose. The standouts have been Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, Varlam Shalamov’s Kolyma Tales, and Vasily Grossman’s A Writer at War.

I must also mention Albert Camus. The most noteworthy work of Camus hasn’t been the oft-touted The Stranger or even the newly relevant The Plague, but his collection Algerian Chronicles. In it he makes some of the most compelling arguments against violence on a purely human level, which makes this book as relevant as The Plague in the United States today. As impressive as his prose is, his argument against the violence is equally good. He doesn’t go down the same road as most people do in situations of rebellion; he doesn’t make non-violence and respecting the grievances of the rebels mutually exclusive. Throughout the articles in the book he consistently acknowledges the grievances of the native Algerians while also stating that random people (both French and Algerian) shouldn’t fear losing their lives in random acts of violence against civilians. Some of his ideas should be more seriously considered and worked with intellectually to solve some problems we have today.

Moving on to civ-mil relations, I was first introduced to the field in 2019 when I came across an article by Peter Feaver in International Security titled “The Right to Be Right: Civil-Military Relations and the Iraq Surge Decision.” Feaver argued that President George W. Bush used a hybrid approach to the surge decision instead of either of the ideal types of professional or civilian supremacists. Afterwards I listened to War on the Rocks, Net Assessment, Bombshell, and several other podcasts that featured Feaver, Risa Brooks, Alice Hunt Friend, and other scholars in order to familiarize myself more with this world that I never knew really existed.

Most importantly, Civil-Military Relations needs to be a more accessible field. It is just as important as Comparative Politics and IR Theory, yet it isn’t as mainstream. Civ-mil may be one of the most important, understated, facets of our society right now. The norms are under just as serious a threat as any other institution in the US. With the increasing politicization of the military — whether it be former generals in senior civilian roles, serving with a military aura, or former generals speaking out against civilian leadership as a military professional instead of a private citizen — the norms need to reinforced or redefined for a future with civilian military relations that contribute to America’s society of civilian leadership and authority over the military.

Risa Brooks’s article “Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil-Military Relations in the United States” begins the conversation of redefining norms that have existed for decades. She offers a critique of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State, a book with a goliath-sized influence on the field of civ-mil relations. Huntington’s basic idea was that “[c]ivilian leaders would decide when and how to use force in international relations, and military leaders would plan and execute military operations pursuant to civilians’ goals.” In Huntingtonian thought, there is a clear separation of roles and they are not to be violated. This is also supposed to allow the military to adopt a professionalism that is completely free from electoral politics.

Brooks argues that the Huntingtonian model actually encourages military politicization and leads to the undermining of civilian control. According to the author “the reflexive self-identification of military officers as apolitical can encourage blind spots such that they fail to recognize the political content or impact of their actions.” Huntingtonian norms can also encourage political behaviors among the officer corps “by failing to clearly identify what constitutes such behavior and why it is intrinsically contrary to military professionalism.” The upshot is that military officers will believe that their actions are apolitical because they are apolitical by simple being officers, a natural tautology.

The existing norms can also lead to military ineffectivity. Because in this model militaries focus on tactical and operational objectives instead of strategic objectives, military leaders “may not even seem to absorb strategic failures, as long as metrics on the ground appear favorable.”

In order to maintain a good civilian leadership and authority over the military “[o]fficers need to be politically aware, so that they can distinguish negative and partisan behaviors that are contrary to civilian control from those that are essential to achieving strategic success and ensuring a healthy civil-military relationship.” Otherwise we could see some of the features we see in other countries develop in the United States. In my opinion this is one of the most important, underdiscussed issues in American society today.

It’s an interesting time. And somehow, no matter how far away I thinking I’m taking my mind from the rough and tumble issues of the day, my reading remains relevant.