Integration of Women into the Armed Forces: Is there a Gap between the Attitudes of Civilian Elites and Military Elites?

A fundamental concern in the debate about a civil-military gap in the United States is that the space between the values or attitudes of civilian society and the military may become so wide that it threatens civil-military cooperation and military effectiveness. This study sheds light on that concern by examining the attitudes of the civilian and military elite on women in combat, a social issue at the heart of the civil-military gap, as the US regrouped after the Gulf War then fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. The study reveals that by expanding women???s roles in combat, the wars served as a proving ground which illustrated to the civilian and military elite that women???s service had both society???s acceptance and a positive impact on military effectiveness, thereby harmonizing their attitudes.

This paper serves to present the Swiss data in the framework of the international project “Civil–Military Gap” of ERGOMAS Working Group “Military Profession”. Its theoretical basis has been developed in a common working paper (Jelusic, Caforio, Haltiner, Moelker, & Szvircsev Tresch, 2003) and will be presented in a more detailed way in a forthcoming common cross-national analysis. The main research hypothesis and its implied research questions refer to the existence of a growing cultural gap between the military and its parent democratic society: Is there such a gap between the armed forces, mainly its professional bodies and democratic society? If yes, what is the nature of that gap? According to the planning of the research project, the following research steps are carried on in the participating countries: (1) investigate the political culture of future (civilian and military) elites by simultaneously surveying cadets at military academies and students at civilian universities; (2) carry out semi-structured interviews with present elites (an expert survey) in order to assess changes in civil–military relations over time; and (3) elaborate and compare results at cross-national level and compare and contrast them with data from the American (Feaver, Kohn, & Cohn, 2001) research. This paper first outlines some peculiarities of the Swiss military system, considering them as somewhat important for the question of the nature of a possible civil–military gap. It then presents the methodological procedure and the main findings of Switzerland.

SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security, Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, eds., The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2001, 545 pages, $28.95. The national debate on U.S. civil-military relations is alive and heated in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn's book Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security. As the title suggests, the book discusses the increasing divide between soldiers, specifically the senior officer corps, and U.S. society, specifically civilian elite society. Although the findings of the book do not substantiate what some have termed a crisis in civil-military affairs, they do find schisms between the two that might, if not addressed, lead to a crisis. The book is a compilation of several multidisciplinary studies that aim to answer the following questions: * What is the nature or character of the civil-military gap today? * What factors shape it? * Does the gap matter for military effectiveness and civil-military cooperation? * What, if anything, can and should policymakers do about the gap? The authors obtained the research data for their work through a survey instrument completed by the Triangle Institute for Strategic Studies. Surveying what they considered military and civilian elites, the authors analyzed the survey data and chose 12 of 21 studies to publish. Those studies make up the chapters in the book and are clustered into three sections, each with four chapters. One section addresses the opinions of the soldiers and civilians surveyed. One section explores the gap in civil-military relations over time-a brief history if you will. The final section explores what implications the gaps have on military effectiveness and the cooperation between civilians and the military. What the reader will find in this important, scholarly work is that there is a chasm between the military and the civilians it serves. The divide, argue the writers, makes it harder to recruit soldiers; makes it easier for midcareerists to leave the military before retirement because of disillusionment; and makes obtaining funds from Congress difficult. The authors also discuss many of the problems the average soldier faces, such as high operating tempo and personnel tempo; the difficulty of integrating policies like ask, don't tell into military values; and the apparent disconnect in military values with those of mainstream society's. …

In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the People's Republic of China appears intent on becoming a responsible great power. Beijing continues to insist--as it has for several decades--that peace and development are the key trends of the times. President Hu Jintao claims that China is focused on building a and moderately prosperous at home and a harmonious abroad. Beijing has taken great pains to stress that its growing power does not threaten any nation, and the world is witnessing China's rise or development. (1) China is increasingly integrated into the global economy and embracing multilateralism in unprecedented ways. Yet, at the same time, observers are alternately alarmed and perplexed by the recurring harsh, threatening rhetoric of senior Chinese leaders and the intermittent but provocative acts by the People's Liberation Army (PLA), as all branches of China's armed forces are collectively identified. Is there a civil-military gap in China's peaceful rise? The author suggests the answer is yes. Perhaps the most infamous bellicose blasts were those uttered by Chinese generals in late 1995 and mid-2005. These remarks concerned bravado about nuclear weapons and the targeting of the United States. The most incendiary actions were missile tests in 1995 and 1996 in the vicinity of Taiwan; a collision between PLA and US aircraft in 2001; an incident involving a Chinese submarine and US aircraft carrier in 2006; and an unannounced antisatellite test in 2007. The hawkish verbiage of PLA generals seems part of a deliberate and calculated Chinese deterrence effort, and the periodic provocative acts by the Chinese armed forces reflect a civil-military relationship in which civilian control is loose and hands-off. Mixed Messages What explains the outspokenness of Chinese officers and the audacious actions of China's military? Why does the PLA appear so belligerent? These harsh words and apparent provocations could be counterproductive. Indeed, they seem to contradict the peaceable image Beijing so assiduously tries to cultivate around the world. China insists that it seeks to have good relations with all countries, especially the United States. Many China analysts assume that Chinese commanders are more hard-line--but not bellicose--toward the United States and the Taiwan issue than are civilian leaders, and that the PLA is tightly controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). (2) Outspoken officers and belligerent events, however, raise questions about these assumptions. Is there a significant chasm between the thinking of Chinese civilian and leaders? Is there a worrisome laxity in civilian control of China's military? In other words, are there serious gaps in China's civil-military relations? The answers to these questions require an examination of China's civil-military relations. A Gap in Attitudes and Perspectives? The term gap is used in two ways: First, to refer to a possible serious difference or disconnect between the attitudes and perspectives of civilian and elites based upon different career paths and life experiences and, second, to refer to possible loose civilian control of the military. (3) Members of a nation's armed forces are part of the larger society and hence share key aspects of its culture and values. Nevertheless, due to the nature of their profession they possess their own distinct culture with a set of core values and attitudes that are significantly different from those of the civilian world. (4) Samuel Huntington's depiction of a conservative, pessimistic, and realistic military is born out in empirical tests: Military personnel hold different perspectives and mind sets than civilian elites, especially political leaders who have never served in the armed forces. These differences include how they approach the use of force. …

The gap between the American people and the United States military is growing, with implications for the preservation of democratic institutions. The gap has contributed to the erosion of democratic norms by negatively affecting perceptions of citizenship obligations and weakening the attachment to national institutions. Ironically, a feature of the gap is the rise of a “warrior caste” of men and women who self-select to join the all-volunteer force (AVF), leaving the remaining 99.5% of citizens to think that national defense is a concern for “other people.” With only 1 in 200 Americans directly involved in military service, the wars that the AVF serves in do not directly affect most Americans or their elected representatives. This indifference has led to perpetual wars with poor oversight, eroding the democratic norm of citizen oversight of and participation in the nation’s wars. The civil–military gap can be mitigated with a comprehensive expansion of programs that offer opportunities for military and national service, the adoption of more robust civic education in civilian and military education systems, and fostering a culture of defense among the citizenry.

: The military elites of many emerging nations are playing increasingly larger roles in the political development of their countries. It is the purpose of this essay to make some tentative judgments with respect to the role of the military elites of Pakistan, India, South Korea, South Vietnam, and Thailand in the development of viable political processes. Since World War II, large military forces have been established, equipped, trained, and deployed to deter or to fight aggression against each of the five countries. The armed forces of these nations have contributed indirectly, and in varying degrees, to political development through the conduct of military civic action programs. While the military elite of India has remained in an essentially nonpolitical posture, the elites of the remaining countries have become directly and profoundly involved in domestic political activities. This intervention is attributable primarily to the failure of the civilian political leadership to cope with pressing internal and external problems and to the lack of cohesion within and between the civil elites. In each case the military elite was the only organized and disciplined group capable of establishing the conditions of order and stability conducive to economic, social, and political progress.

: The civil-military gap that exists in America today has the potential to weaken the military element of our national power required to execute our National Security Strategy. Stated another way, the civil-military gap can weaken our national security. How the military sees its roles, responsibilities, and requirements for executing this strategy may be at odds with what the public believes the military's roles, responsibilities, and requirements to be. With the world relatively at peace entering the 21st Century, America will turn inward to deal with her domestic challenges. These issues and problems will be competing for limited tax dollars. With the world at relative peace, can America afford to spend less on defense in order to support or bolster other national issues? The extent and nature of the civil-military gap will certainly influence the debate and subsequent answer to this question. In this paper, I will explore the gap, determining areas where it exists. I will define the gap specifically between the military and the American people, and why it is important. I will finally make some recommendations on how senior military leaders can either narrow the gap or at least keep it from widening further.

This work aims to study the formation of national elites in Sudan in the interbellum as this very period predetermined the countrys history since gaining independence in 1956. Within this article relations between three main groups are considered, namely religious, military and civil elites. The study is divided into three main parts. The first one concentrates on the history of Sudan before 1918, the second one is devoted to the interwar period, the third part aims to study the development of Sudan in World War II and the first post-war years. The special emphasis is given to the Sufi Tariqas as being not only religious but firstly political institutions. Directly within the context of Tariqas political and social influence, this article aims to study the formation of movements, political parties and associations, whose representatives later entered the political authority of the country. The Sudanese specifics of the national elites formation studied in this work is that the conservative religious elites managed to maintain the leading position within the struggle between traditional and modern political powers. The work explains how the inner nature of these elites, as well as their relations with the military and civil elites, predetermined the subsequent events.

Choosing Your Battles: American Civil–Military Relations and the Use of Force. By Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. 268p. $22.95. In their book, Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi have several agendas. They succeed at some better than others. Their first goal is to establish the fact of a civil–military opinion gap over the use of force. They find that civilian elites are more willing to expand U.S. foreign policy goals to include nontraditional missions related to human rights, whereas military elites are more supportive of a traditional Cold War foreign policy agenda (p. 42); and that nonveteran civilian elites are more willing to use force incrementally, whereas elite military officers support the decisive use of force enshrined in the Powell Doctrine. Both insights have been documented in the case study literature, but Feaver and Gelpi bring large-n analysis and original survey opinion data to bear on the topic.

Maurer suggests that while jurisprudential law of agency offers a solution to the diagnostic problem, the ironic fact is that nothing in the law that manages these strategic civilian and military elites—the Constitution, statutes, case law, regulations, or military doctrine—neatly dictates the parameters or even the norms of these relationships. This chapter surveys the primary sources of legal and bureaucratic authority for these parties, ranging from Articles I and II of the U.S. Constitution to the Goldwater-Nichols Act and its predecessors, and from criminal statutes and courts-martial to governmental ethics regulations to military doctrines and customs.

For almost three decades prior to the end of Cold War, South Africa's defence policy was focused on combating a “so-called” total onslaught on the country. This found the former South African Defence Force (SADF) deployed extensively in neighbouring states to counter an enemy invasion and internally, in support of the police to suppress the rising tide of black resistance against the state's Apartheid policies. With the collapse of communism and the unbanning of the African National Congress (ANC) and South African Communist Party in 1990, the country would witness a fundamental reform of its armed forces, their role and purpose, civil control of the armed forces and in civil–military relations (Nathan, 1994).

This chapter argues that there is no civil–military gap – a key concern in civil–military relations scholarship – in Singapore, transcending the civil–military problematique. While the military naturally plays a different role, it does not occupy a different world. Singapore presents a curious case of how its military evolution has been embedded within the operational role of the SAF as opposed to a changing relationship between different worlds. While this edited volume highlights Asian militaries can indeed slowly evolve to defuse disputes between themselves and civilian leaders within Asian democracies to achieve developmental and security goals more synergistically, Singapore is different from this novel conception of the study of civil–military relations. The SAF was already structured at its inception to minimize such disputes and maximize efficiency in reaching national goals. It was an institution designed to fit in with, and not stand apart from, civilian governance. The influence of Singapore’s colonial legacy and how the SAF is embedded socially and politically situates the argument. The chapter concludes by emphasizing that Singapore’s civil–military relations need to be understood in terms of the ‘everyday’ transition between military and civilian roles by members of the SAF.

Civil–military clashes that result from tensions or even a ‘gap’ between the military organisation and civil society are rather seldom. However, from time to time the headlines of the newspapers report of ‘scandals’, ‘abuses’ or ‘wrongs’ that result from civil–military tensions. Sometimes those wrongs came out in the open after some delay. This happened in respect to a coup-attempt by General Kruls shortly after World War II (Hoogenboezem, 2004). Evaluation of and reappraisal of the war against Indonesian freedom fighters in 1946–1947, euphemistically called ‘police actions’, led to large-scale public discussions 20 years later. In the 1970s, the Dutch citizens acknowledged that these police actions actually were deeds of war and the legitimacy of this war was intensely discussed as were the war crimes committed during the anti-guerrilla operations (Doorn & Hendrix, 1970). In the 1980s, the soldiers’ union published a black book on hazing practises in the armed forces that made it into the headlines. It led to research (Stoppelenburg, 1990) and attempts to stop these practices that often stemmed from the conscripts themselves. Union work and societal forces in favour of democratisation considerably contributed to civilianisation of the armed forces. The one-liner ‘as military as necessary, as civilian as possible’ became factual accepted policy. In the early 1990s, the suspension of conscription, the most important decision of defence restructuring, barely raised societal discussion (Joana et al., 2005; Moelker, Olsthoorn, Bos-Bakx, & Soeters, 2005), but the mishap in Srebrenica in 1995 certainly did! Peacekeeping gradually was seen and socially accepted as core business and when it became evident that keeping the peace in Bosnia was not without risks and when genocidal events befell the refugees in Srebrenica, the civil–military gap was clearly revealed and became the main issue of public debate. It led to discussion on the right of freedom of speech for civil servants when armed forces functionaries overtly expressed themselves in the newspapers (Kreemers, 2002). But the humanitarian debacle also led to a parliamentary inquiry (Parlementaire Enquête commissie, 2003) that, in 2003, caused government to fall. Parliamentary decision-making procedures regarding peacekeeping missions have been improved since. Article 100 of the Constitution states that parliament must be informed on peacekeeping operations unless there are very serious considerations not to do so. Government informs parliament by use of the ‘toetsingskader’ (Moelker, 2004). This is a list of criteria that is used to provide a checklist for informing parliament and to improve the quality of the decision-making. The ‘toetsingskader’ acknowledges that decision-making is an intertwined and convergent process that improves quality by inputs from civilian stakeholders and civilian and military experts. It enables a priori parliamentary control. A list for use by parliamentarians in other countries is given by Born (2003, p. 125).

(2003). The civil–military gap in comparative perspective. Journal of Strategic Studies: Vol. 26, No. 2, pp. 1-5.

The authors suggest that scholars mean very different things when they refer to the civil–military gap. To illustrate the point, the authors conceptualize the gap in terms of four distinct ideal types and show that scholars have referred to each variant as the civil–military gap at different times. Though the authors recognize that the four ideal types—cultural, demographic, policy preference, and institutional—are not always mutually exclusive, the authors suggest that they are divergent enough to warrant consideration as distinct variants and that their specification can enhance the civil–military relations literature by helping scholars identify and untangle the causes and effects of the gap.