Thinking about Civ-Map Gaps: So Many Gaps!!

Jim Golby has a great, great thread on the different kinds of gaps that can develop between civilians and military.  I want to engage a few bits of the thread.

In my view, the demographic gap primarily matters to the extent it limits available talent and manpower. But it also can have an impact on who bears the costs of mil service, who pays attention to mil policy, indirectly on pressure for legislative oversight, & the other gaps. 5/

— Jim Golby (@jimgolby) March 10, 2019

As I told Jim on twitter, this is a bit limiting as I think that having a largely white male officer corps is likely to make matters of sexism and racism worse, and that affects not just recruitment and retention but also cohesion and all that other stuff militaries care about.  While I had an argument with my daughter yesterday about Captain Marvel being used as a recruitment tool for the USAF (she is opposed, does not want younger folks joining the imperial war machine), I think a more diverse force is a better force for a variety of reasons, not just a deeper, wider pool.

The Party Gap. The mil, esp the officer corps, is more Republican than society. The prevalence of Republicans increases with rank and the mil has been growing more Republican since 9-11. But there are still a lot more Dems in the ranks that many assume. 6/ https://t.co/pNUXpHVUmq pic.twitter.com/x5CHNuM9QN

— Jim Golby (@jimgolby) March 10, 2019

This might be the worst gap for many reasons, and with my fixation on oversight, I will focus on that.  Polarization in civilian politics makes it harder to oversee the military--the Republicans will try to use officers who appear before them to appear as allies, Dems might start appearing as enemies, and then oversight hearings become show trials and lose whatever legitimacy they have.  And we need Congressional oversight in a big way.

Resource Gap. The military dwarfs other agencies in terms of manpower, infrastructure, resources, & capacity. The DOD budget is ~7 times the budget for State. When new missions arise that need to be done quickly and/or at scale, the military is often the easy button. 16/

— Jim Golby (@jimgolby) March 10, 2019

The resource gap also affects oversight.  One bit of evidence is how much interest there is in serving on the committees that oversee the military versus the State Dept.  With so much more money going to Defense, Congresspeople and Senators have a greater incentive to sit on the Armed Services Committees--they can direct some of the money to their districts, and their constituents will care about pre-existing investments (bases, defense contractors).  Not nearly the same amount of attention for State these days.

As Mara Karlin and @ahfdc discuss here, high confidence can turn into military worship that undermines civilian control & effective policy. It could even threaten democracy if people begin to look to the mil rather political leaders for leadership. 21/ https://t.co/C9YonBUvYx

— Jim Golby (@jimgolby) March 10, 2019

Jim says it for me--too much respect for the military means folks don't ask the tough questions and hold the military accountable when things go wrong.  Has any branch paid a price for recent failures?  Crickets.

Values Gap. The last gap has to do with the belief the military is superior to civilian society in terms of its character & values. @KaurinShanks has an excellent discussion of this here: https://t.co/lmTXxs6HWV 24

— Jim Golby (@jimgolby) March 10, 2019

This is one that bothers me a lot.  When Mattis as SecDef tells the military that they are better than the civilians and they have to be patient and hold on, I worry a great deal.  I strongly prefer Stan McChrystal's take in a recent podcast--that military folks are just as flawed as civilians--they have no superiority or monopoly when it comes to integrity.  Thinking otherwise is dangerous.  While the folks in the military do engage in service for country, not all of them are wonderful people.  Think about the white supremacists who serve now or who had served and then left and did harm. 

What I like most about this thread is it forces us to think about we mean when we say civ-mil gap.  I think there can be much good social science done to pull apart these different gaps and figure out how they are related to each other and to topics like oversight and effectiveness.