I read and then blueskied about this post by a former general, Mark Hertling, about the Trump Regime politicizing the military. In the course of my skeets, I realized that folks may not get why we civil-military relations scholars talk so much about civ-mil norms. So, a quick civ-mil norm explainer since my flight is delayed.*
First, when we speak of norms, we are basically talking about standards of appropriate behavior. That such standards exist and that they serve us well when respected.
Second, we need norms because laws and policies are inadequate. The relationship between civilian officials and military officers is dynamic, chock full of gray areas, and there is a great need for some trust and respect. But to have trust and respect, people need to have relatively clear ideas of what is good behavior--what is respectful, what is appropriate. We cannot simply legislate civil=military behavior as it violate people's rights. Saying that retired officers cannot speak, for instance, would violate their first amendment rights. Expecting them to speak responsibly is a norm thing.
For instance, the piece linked above is by a retired general who is commenting on contemporary US civ-mil relations. I tend to get uncomfortable about retired senior military officers speaking up as they can be seen as speaking for the active military, whether the active military wants them to or not, and thus gets the military a bit more involved in politics. In this case, I don't mind so much because Hertling is explaining how officer promotion works, and what the impact of inteference in promotion would do to the army.
It is political, of course, as all things involving the military are inherently political, and, yes, it is also partisan. But it is partisan because the government itself is engaged in an effort to politicize promotion, a very partisan move to benefit the Trump Regime and the Republican Party, and not an effort to improve American national security. To fight such partisan efforts may make one appear to be partisan, but to stay silent may make one appear complicit.
See, this stuff is hard to legislate. Good civil-military relations requires both sides to have an idea of what is appropriate and what is not. Interfering in promotions because the SecDef doesn't like one specific colonel who did his job very well but for someone the SecDef doesn't like is really problematic. Congress can't really stop this by making a new law. It could hold hearins that might clarify the norms and how the administration is violating them. Two problems for that right now: the majority in the House and Senate don't care about their constitutional role AND the Trump regime revels in being inappropriate, so no education about norms will limit their behavior. As I keep saying, a man who will lech after his daughter in public really has no shame or sense of appropriateness.
The question then becomes where do these norms come from and how do folks learn what they ought to do? The norms generally come from past behavior--the prior restraint from Washington to Marshall to Ike help to set the model for how best to behave. The historians and political scientists and philosophers and the like outside, and yes, inside professional military education programs, help to clarify the norms and convey them to the next generation.
There have been lively discussions about where the lines are--when is it necessary, if ever, to resign if the civilians don't follow one's advice, should one speak out in public, when should civilians fire military officers, how best to engage in a respectful but unequal dialogue so that the military folks convey the info and recommendations as clearly as they can without publicly boxing in the politicians, and so on. I have been told by senior Canadian military leaders about their conversations with their bosses and how they try to socialize them about what is expected.
If the next generation of the CDSN is funded, the Civil-Military Relations Network will be building a list of civ-mil norm questions for helping to foster better conversations so that both sides can navigate the gray areas. In principal-agent parlance, all delegation relies on some level of trust--the more distrust, the less delegation, the more oversight, the more friction. More trust can produce more delegation with adequate but not intense oversight, which can lead to flexibility and adaptation.
To be clear, this government revels in being inappropriate and transgressive and wants to erode all institutions. If we ever get out of this, we will need to remind folks of how one ought to behave so that the civilians listen to the military and then chose the best course of action for the country and that the military then obeys those orders.
Doing research in this area always makes me think of Oprah and therapists--lots of talk about relationships and trust. Because when one's life is on the line, you want to trust not just the buddy next to you to fire when you need them to do so, but also for the rest of the actors to show up when needed and that the orders make sense and won't waste lives.
*And, yes, I am not an expert on the normative side of civ-mil relations--I study what countries are doing nd why they do it when it comes to oversight. But teaching civ-mil means reading much of the normative stuff and talking about it.
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