Civil-Military Relations

Military and nonmilitary groups

Traditional and modernizing societies
The modern state
Military interventions in politics
BIBLIOGRAPHY
The term “civil–military relations” refers to the role of the armed forces in a society. It is not,
perhaps, a happy phrase. It implies that the relations between the military and the civilian
population are like labor-management relations, legislative-executive relations, or Soviet-
American relations, where two concrete, organized groups with real conflicting interests contend
and bargain with each other. It thus suggests a basic dichotomy and opposition between the
civilian and the military viewpoints. This is a false opposition. First, in many societies, little
unity of interest, skill, or viewpoint exists among the military. Second, even where there is a
distinct and identifiable military viewpoint, interest, and institution, in no society is there ever
comparable unity among civilians. The word “civil” in the phrase civil–military relations simply
means nonmilitary. Publicists and authors often talk about civil-military relations and, more
especially, about civilian control as if there were a single civilian interest. In practice, they
simply identify their own interest and viewpoint as the civilian interest and viewpoint in
opposition to a hostile military interest and view-point. Any society, however, which is
sufficiently well developed to have distinct military institutions also has a wide variety of
civilian interests, institutions, and attitudes, the differences between any two of which may be
much greater than the difference between any one of them and the military Thus, civil–military
relations involve a multiplicity of relationships between military men, institutions, and interests,
on the one hand, and diverse and often conflicting nonmilitary men, institutions, and interests, on
the other. It is not a one-to-one relationship but a one-among-many relationship.
Military And Nonmilitary Groups
Civil–military relations in any society reflect the over-all nature and level of development of the
society and its political system. The key question is the extent to which military men and
interests are differentiated from nonmilitary men and interests. This differentiation may take
place on three levels: (1) the relation between the armed forces as a whole and society as a
whole; (2) the relation between the leadership of the armed forces (the officer corps) as an elite
group and other elite groups; and (3) the relation between the commanders of the armed forces
and the top political leaders of society. Thus, at the society level the military forces may be an
integral part of society, reflecting and embodying its dominant social forces and ideologies. The
military order, indeed, may be coextensive with society, with all meḿbers of society also
performing military roles. At the opposite extreme the military order may be highly
differentiated, its members playing no important roles except military ones. At the second level,
connections between military officers and other leadership groups in society may be very close;
the same people may be military, economic, and political leaders. At the other end of the
continuum, military officership may be an exclusive professional career, incompatible with other
roles. Finally, at the top level the same individuals may exercise both political and military
leadership roles, or these roles may be quite distinct and their occupants recruited from different
sources through different channels.
In general, high differentiation on one level tends to be associated with high differentiation on
other levels, but this is by no means invariable. In the European armies of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries, for instance, social, economic, political, and military leadership functions
were all concentrated in the person of the monarch. Similarly, officership was, in general, a
perquisite of the aristocracy; aristocrats acquired by ascription military as well as social,
economic, and political leadership roles. The rank and file of the European armies, however, was
recruited from the lower ranks of society for long periods of service, and their ties with any
groups in civilian society were often tenuous at best.
In the nineteenth century these relations tended to be reversed. Political and military leadership
roles became differentiated. Prime ministers and cabinets emerged from parliaments and party
politics; commanding generals and chiefs of staff were the products of the military bureaucracy.
Similarly, the military officership became professionalized; entry was usually at the lowest ranks
and required specialized training. A career as a military officer became incompatible with other
leadership careers. The relation of the enlisted personnel to society, however, tended to become
closer. The core of modern armies remained the long-service soldier, but the rank and file was
increasingly supplemented by large numbers of short-term “citizen-soldiers” initially recruited
through conscription or universal military service and then organized into reserves, militia,
territorial army, National Guard, or Landwehr.
At each level of civil-military relations military groups may differ from nonmilitary groups in
terms of skills, values, and institutions. Military men may differ from nonmilitary men in their
skill in the use of violence or in the management of violence. In a frontier society, such as
eighteenth-century America, the differentiation was relatively small. The average farmer
possessed most of the skills of the soldier; the social, economic, and political leaders of the
society either possessed or could easily acquire most of the skills necessary to command armies.
During the nineteenth century and the first part of the twentieth century military skills tended to
become more sharply differentiated from civilian skills. In the mid-twentieth century in the
advanced societies the difference between military and other skills may again be decreasing
(Janowitz 1960).
Military men may also differ from civilian groups in terms of their attitudes and values. In most
societies presumably the outlook of the military more closely resembles that of some civilian
groups than it does that of other civilian groups. In the history of the West military values were
often closely associated with aristocratic and conservative beliefs. In many of the modernizing
countries in the second half of the twentieth century, the values of the dominant groups in the
armed forces closely paralleled those of upward mobile, nationalistic, reformist middle-class
civilians. The development of a professionalized officer corps generally stimulates distinctive
attitudes and values (often referred to as “the military mind”) that may differ significantly from
the attitudes and values dominant within the society. The professional military ethic tends to be
conservative in character. If the basic values of the society are liberal, fascist, or socialist, the
tensions between the military and political leadership may be intense, particularly if the military
leaders occupy a position of power or potential power in the political system or if the political
leaders feel that they must insist upon a high degree of ideological uniformity on the part of all
elements in the society, including the military. In these circumstances nationalism may furnish a
common ground for the accommodation of the revolutionary ideology of the political leadership
and the conservative outlook of the military.
Military institutions may also be differentiated in varying degrees from civilian institutions. The
key questions here concern the extent to which the armed forces are made up of long-service
career enlisted men and professional career officers; the extent to which men and officers are
recruited from special segments of the population and trained in special educational institutions;
the organizational position of the armed forces in the governmental structure; and the structure of
authority relationships between the leaders of the armed forces and the political leadership of the
society. At one extreme, military institutions may be so differentiated from other social
institutions that they become virtually a “state within a state.” In these circumstances they may
become relatively impervious to control by the legislative and executive institutions of
government. In societies with a tradition of hierarchy and executive leadership, such as Japan be-
fore 1945 and Germany before 1933, efforts by the legislature to exercise control over the
military institutions may become futile in the face of opposition from both the military and the
strongly entrenched and authoritative executive. In some societies, such as Burma and a few
Latin American republics, the military may become not just a state within a state but a society
within a society, performing many economic and social functions and achieving a high degree of
economic self-sufficiency. At the other extreme, in societies with a “nation-in-arms” pattern of
civil-military relations, the differentiation of military institutions from other institutions may be
very slight, and the armed forces may be identical with society as a whole (see Rapaport 1962).
Traditional And Modernizing Societies
In general, the more primitive a society, the less differentiated are military skills, values, and
institutions from those of other groups. In tribal systems the military forces typically consist of
all adult males, and the tribal chiefs are the leaders in war as well as peace. In more highly
organized fashion a somewhat similar system existed in the classical city-states of Greece and
Rome. The military role was a responsibility of citizenship; the army was the citizen body
organized for war. “The citizens of a free state,” Aristotle remarked, “ought to consist of those
only who bear arms.” In feudal society military, political, and economic roles were all
differentiated on a class rather than on a functional basis. The peasants or serfs occupied
subordinate positions in all three capacities; the nobility and knights combined political
authority, economic control of the land, and military leadership. In the centralized bureaucratic
empires, such as those analyzed by Shmuel N. Eisenstadt (1963), the military was one
component of the bureaucratic structure and usually did not reach a high level of differentiation
in skills, values, or institutions. The military group was, however, more differentiated than it was
in the city-state or feudal society, and at times military leaders played autonomous roles in the
political struggle.
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Civil—military relations in modern societies differ from those in these earlier societies because
of the existence of an autonomous, professionalized officer corps. The emergence of such an
officer corps is a key aspect of the process of modernization. In western Europe and the United
States the professional officer corps was a product of the nineteenth century. From the
breakdown of feudalism in Europe to the latter part of the seventeenth century, armies were
usually led by mercenary officers who raised companies of men for hire to kings and princes. In
consolidating their power in the seventeenth century, the national monarchs felt the need for
permanent military forces to protect their dominions and support their rule. Consequently, they
created standing armies and recruited the aristocrats they were subordinating to officer them.
Thus, from the end of the seventeenth century to the French Revolution, officers, except in the
artillery and engineer units, were usually aristocrats who assumed their posts with little regard to
professional qualifications, experience, or talent.
The lead in developing a professional officer corps was taken by Prussia during the Napoleonic
Wars. On August 6, 1808, a decree formally opened officer ranks to all in Prussian society on the
basis of education, professional knowledge, valor, and perception (Überblick). During the
subsequent century Prussia took the lead in introducing educational requirements for entry into
the officer corps; prescribing a system of advancement within the corps on the basis of
experience, ability, and achievements; creating a system of professional military education
culminating in the Kriegsakademie; and developing a general staff system. The other continental
European countries followed in the wake of Prussia, the professionalization of European
officership being concentrated during two periods: during and immediately after the Napoleonic
Wars and in the 1860s and 1870s, after the victories of the professional Prussian armies over the
Danes, Austrians, and French. By the end of the nineteenth century most of the European
countries had made military officership at least in theory a career open to all, although in practice
a high proportion of the officers continued to be recruited from the aristocracy. They had also
instituted requirements of general education and specialized training for entry into the officer
corps; provided for advancement within the corps on the basis of examinations, achievement,
and experience; created a hierarchy of military schools and colleges; brought into existence staff
systems for the systematic analysis and planning of war; and through these devices created a
distinct, autonomous social group with its own sense of corporate unity and responsibility.
Similar developments also took place in Great Britain and the United States, although the insular
position of these two countries caused them to lag behind the less secure countries on the
European continent.
The pattern of military and political modernization in Europe and the United States contrasts
with that in many of the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In Europe and the United
States, political modernization usually preceded the development of a modern, professional
officer corps. Only in those countries, such as France, where constitutional issues remained
unresolved did military interventions play a critical role in politics. In other countries, such as
Germany, the military played a significant but less overt role in politics as a result of the
conflicting claims to legitimacy and authority on the part of monarchical and parliamentary
institutions. In general, however, the professional officer corps developed within the framework
of an established political order.
In the countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, by contrast, the military leaders have often
also been the leaders in modernization. Countries that retained some degree of independence
from European colonialism frequently felt compelled to engage in “defensive modernization”
and to transform their traditional military institutions into modern ones that might offer some
resistance to European penetration. As a result the army often became the most modern and
effective institution in the society and its leaders the most ardent exponents of modernization,
nationalism, and progressive reform. In these circumstances the military frequently possessed
advantages over other groups and institutions because of its greater organizational coherence and
discipline and hence its ability to get things done; its identification with society as a whole and
its concern with national goals rather than with the parochial interests of class, party, ethnic, or
communal group; and its technical expertise in terms of literacy, education, and engineering and
mechanical skills. Thus, the Young Turks who seized power in the Ottoman Empire in 1908
came out of the Westernized military schools that the sultans had created in the latter part of the
nineteenth century. Similarly, in the post-World War II era the military overthrew more
traditional oligarchical regimes and seized the leadership in modernization in such countries as
Egypt and Iraq.
In former colonies the military often seized power shortly after the achievement of
independence, ousting what it held to be corrupt party regimes of civilian politicians and
attempting to organize the society for more effective modernization (for example, in the Sudan,
Pakistan, and Burma in 1958; in South Korea in 1961; and in South Vietnam in 1963).
In Latin America the relation of the military to modernization was somewhat more complex.
During the nineteenth century neither effective political institutions nor professionalized officer
corps existed in most Latin American countries. During the first part of the twentieth century the
military officers became increasingly professionalized, increasingly middle class, and
increasingly in favor of progress and reform. This led to a new period of military interventions in
politics beginning in the 1930s. In Latin America, as in Asia and Africa, however, military
interventions in politics may produce short-run gains in terms of modernization at the expense of
continued long-term weakness of civilian political institutions. Only those countries that either
have inherited strong political institutions (parties and civilian bureaucracies) from the colonial
era (for example, India) or have been able to create effective modern political institutions
through revolution (Mexico) or reform (Uruguay) have been able to minimize the military role in
politics and to maintain nonpolitical professional military forces. [SeeModernization.]
The Modern State
“The great modern fact,” Gaetano Mosca wrote in 1896, “is the huge standing army that is a
severe custodian of the law, is obedient to the orders of a civil authority and has very little
influence, exercising indirectly at best such influence as it has.” This unique product of modern
civilization, Mosca went on to note, is “a most fortunate exception, if it is not absolutely without
parallel, in human history” ([1896] 1939, p. 229).
The phenomenon that amazed Mosca was the product of the emergence of constitutional
consensus in the modern state and the increasing differentiation of the military from other social
groups. In all societies military men differ from nonmilitary men by the possession of arms. In
primitive tribes and in the nation in arms, this difference in theory is eliminated in fact by
dispersing military functions among the citizens at large. In more advanced and differentiated
systems only a portion of the population bears arms. Prior to the development of the
professionalized officer corps in the nineteenth century, however, few inhibitions prevented such
military forces from exploiting their monopoly of violence for their own advantage. The military
could use its arms for purposes contrary to those of the acknowledged leaders of the polity or the
dominant groups in the society. In traditional societies the problem of minimizing the role of
force and violence and, hence, the dominance of the military in politics was the major continuing
problem of civil–military relations. In the modern state, however, the line between politics and
military affairs is much sharper, and the officer corps is a distinct professionalized body whose
leaders devote their careers to the study and practice of the management of violence. The role of
violence in the political order is latent; only during constitutional crisis and intense social
conflict does force become the arbiter of politics. The more pervasive problem of civil–military
relations concerns not the role of force in politics but the role of expertise in politics. The
parallels to the modern problem of civil–military relations are to be found not in the Praetorian
Guard but in the relations that exist in modern states between political leaders, on the one hand,
and such specialists as diplomats, civil servants, scientists, and economists on the other.
Despite these similarities civil–military relations are an object of concern in the modern state in a
way in which “civil–diplomacy” or “civil–science” relations are not. This concern may be
attributed to a variety of factors. First, among many civilian groups there is a legacy of fear
concerning past military participation in politics. Military officers and the armed forces are seen
as alien and sinister in a way in which the other expert groups are not. Second, the organizational
coherence and discipline of the armed forces contrast with the more egalitarian and voluntaristic
organizational patterns characteristic of constitutional democracies. The military often seems to
have a potential for disciplined political action not possessed by other groups. Third, in times of
war and of prolonged international crisis the military may exercise control over a substantial
portion of the resources of society. Forty per cent of the American gross national
product during World War II and about 10 per cent during the cold war years from 1947 to 1964
was devoted to military purposes; the Soviet Union allocated about 18 per cent of its gross
national product to military purposes in the latter period. Finally, the military is often identified
with war and is viewed as the major protagonist of war. Actually, in most modern societies,
including the United States, the officer corps and its leaders have played a moderating,
restraining role in the conduct of foreign policy. Bellicosity has been far more typical of civilian
groups and political movements than of the professional military. Nonetheless, the traditional
identification of the military with war has lingered on and has manifested itself in the view that
more political power for the military and the allocation of more resources to the military will
increase the probability of war.
These traditional attitudes toward the military are found, in varying degrees, in most Western
societies. In other ways, however, the image of the military has changed significantly. The
creation of a professionalized officer corps has been generally accompanied by a long-term
decline in the prestige and general status of the military. In eighteenth-century European society
the military and the aristocracy were closely linked in fact and in image. Since then in most
modern societies first upper-middle-class and then lower-middle-class elements have
increasingly made their appearance in the officer corps. The result has been to break the
identification of the military with the ruling class.
The decline in social status has been accompanied by increasing technical expertise. The
aristocratic image of the officer has, in large measure, been replaced by the expert image. In
many instances military leaders have elaborated upon and employed the complexities of modern
military science to erect a defensive wall against pressures from civilian politicians and to invoke
the authority of esoteric knowledge to buttress their policy recommendations. During periods of
rapid change in warfare, however, military leaders, committed to the truths of another day, may
lag behind civilians in adjusting military concepts and techniques to drastically changed
conditions. In World War i, Lloyd George and other civilian politicians, not the Imperial General
Staff, first appreciated the implications of total war. In the United States after World War II
civilian experts and intellectuals played a more important role than military officers in pointing
out the implications of nuclear weapons for American strategy.
In the modern state the top military leaders have three general responsibilities: (1) to represent
the needs of military security within the governmental framework, making claims on political
leaders for the resources they believe necessary for security; (2) to advise the political leaders on
the military implications of proposed courses of actions and to prepare plans for possible military
contingencies; and (3) to implement in the military sphere the policy decisions of the political
leaders. These responsibilities bring the higher military leaders into continuing conflicts with the
political leaders and with the civilian branches of government. The military typically want more
money, more weapons, and more men than the political leaders are prepared to allocate, their
claims on resources conflicting with the demands of civilian agencies and other groups in
society. The military also typically want political leaders to give them explicit and precise
definitions of policy to use as the basis for their military plans. At the political level, however,
policy inevitably has a tentative, ambiguous, and contingent quality, and the art of political
leadership frequently lies in avoiding decision and blurring commitments. Generally, military
leaders also want to have full control over the resources that may be necessary to the security of
the state. They are, consequently, likely to place less confidence in treaties and alliances than do
political leaders.
These differences in viewpoint give rise to the most typical controversies in civil–military
relations in the modern state. At the bureaucratic level these controversies regularly involve the
foreign office and the financial offices. The foreign office has general responsibility for external
relations and consequently has the initiative in defining the circumstances in which military
action may be necessary. The financial agencies (in the United States, the Treasury and the
Bureau of the Budget; in the United Kingdom, the Exchequer) supervise the allocation of
resources within the government and are usually the principal institutional interests attempting to
reduce military spending. As a result, the military agencies often claim to be caught between a
foreign office that is expanding their responsibilities and a financial office that is reducing their
resources. These controversies, of course, are mediated and arbitrated by the political leaders of
the state. To assist in this process, most constitutional states have created interagency committees
(in the United States, the National Security Council in the United Kingdom, the Defence and
Oversea Policy Committee) composed of the interested parties and designed to serve as forums
for consultation, bargaining, and advising the political leaders on the integration of foreign,
financial, and military policies. These interagency conflicts and controversies reflect the
functionally different roles of the military and other agencies in the modern state. They are thus a
normal aspect of modern politics.
The organizational position of the military forces in the modern state varies with the nature of the
political system. Both fascist and communist totalitarian states have taken extreme measures to
ensure against undue military influence in government. In Germany and the Soviet Union the
military were at one time deprived of their monopoly of violence, and large armed forces there
created under the control of the secret police. In communist countries the party organization
permeates the military forces, and often the military chain of command is paralleled by an
independent or autonomous hierarchy of political commissars or political officers.
Constitutional systems do not rely on such methods of control. In parliamentary systems the
chief of state usually is the titular commander in chief of the armed forces, but actual control is
vested in the prime minister and cabinet. In the United States the president is both head of
government and constitutional commander in chief. In constitutional democracies the minister in
charge of the armed forces is usually a civilian, although practice varies from country to country
and from time to time. The minister is normally assisted by a group of permanent civil servants.
Modern states usually have at least three services, each with its military head. After World War n
almost all modern states also had a superservice national military chief of staff or military
commander who was the senior military officer in the country, who was assisted by a military
general staff, and who exercised varying degrees of control or command over all the military
services. In the United States, for instance, the position of chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff was created in 1949 and strengthened several times during the next 15 years. The service
chiefs together with the national military chief were formed into a collegial organization, such as
the Chiefs of Staff Committee (U.K.), Joint Chiefs of Staff (U.S.), or Military Council
(U.S.S.R.). This committee usually had extensive authority over military planning, its actual
powers varying inversely with the authority and influence of the national military chief. Before
the increasing complexity of modern war required continual close coordination among the air,
sea, and land forces, each of these services, in Western democracies, was headed by a civilian
minister. The integration of the armed forces and the emergence in almost all states of the
position of minister of defense or minister of the armed forces have significantly reduced the
stature and power of the service minister.
The degree of influence of the military and other groups in day-to-day politics is also affected by
their degree of unity. The parliamentary-cabinet system, especially as it functions in Great
Britain, unifies executive and legislative leadership and tends to maximize the authority of the
political leaders in relation to the military. In the United States, on the other hand, control over
military affairs is divided between the president and Congress. Top military leaders are thus
compelled to be more political than they are in Great Britain. At times this may be awkward and
embarrassing; at other times the leaders may be able to benefit from it. The military services
often can generate support in Congress for particular projects; on the other hand, they may often
find themselves used by the executive leaders to support projects which the executive leaders
particularly favor. The definition of their lines of responsibility to the president and secretary of
defense, on the one hand, and to the Congress, on the other, represents a continuing problem for
American military leaders. In the 20 years after World War n the American Congress often
appropriated more money to particular military services and programs than was requested by the
president. In general, however, these 20 years saw a decline in the role of Congress in military
affairs and an increasing centralization of power in the civilian leadership of the Defense
Department.
Just as the unity of political leaders varies from country to country, so also does the unity of the
military themselves. Particularly during peacetime the competition between military services for
money and men may be extreme. Significantly, there seems to be some correlation between
military unity and political unity. Interservice competition exists in all modern states, but there is
little doubt that it achieved the most extreme forms in the United States, where the political
leadership was also less unified than it is in most states. This interservice competition has major
effects on civil–military relations. The inability of the military services to act together enhances
the power of the political leaders and of the civilian bureaucratic agencies. In the United States
after World War n, for instance, reductions in the military budget often exacerbated interservice
relations much more than they did civil–military relations. Potential civil–military conflict was
deflected into intramilitary conflict.
Military Interventions In Politics
The principal causes of military intervention in politics lie in politics, not in the military. In the
absence of a professional officer corps, the line between military affairs and politics is never
sharp. Even with a professionalized military establishment, however, military intervention may
occur when the political institutions of society become weak and divided. Military intervention is
encouraged by the absence of constitutional consensus and by intense conflict between classes,
regions, and ethnic or communal groups.
In a modernizing country in which the traditional political institutions have been overthrown and
modern ones have yet to achieve legitimacy, military intervention in politics is often continuous.
In such societies civil–military relations assume a praetorian form with a recurring cycle of
coups and countercoups (see Rapaport 1962). In those modern societies in which significant
elements of the population deny legitimacy to the political system (such as in the Weimar
Republic and the Third, Fourth, and Fifth French republics), the military are likely to play an
active role in politics. Even in societies with a generally authoritative and legitimate political
system, succession crises may enhance the role of the military. The intense struggle for power
which followed the death of Stalin in the Soviet Union also strengthened the political position of
the Soviet Army and enabled Marshal Zhukov to play a brief but important role in Soviet
politics, a role which was quickly and decisively terminated once Khrushchev consolidated his
political power.
Military intervention is also encouraged whenever the competence and decisiveness of a
government are called into question. Defeat in war and blunders in diplomacy often provoke
political action by the military. The most severe crisis in American civil–military relations after
World War II occurred during the prolonged and frustrating Korean War, in which the
government attempted to pursue political goals short of all-out military victory. In a more
extreme case, military intervention triggered the end of the Fourth French Republic when its
governments proved incapable of either maintaining or disposing of an empire.
Legitimate and effective political institutions are thus the first requirement for civilian control.
The requirements on the military side of the equation have been a subject of controversy. The
key issue has been the relation of civilian control to military professionalism and the
differentiation of the military from other groups. Huntington (1957) argues that a high degree of
civilian control can be achieved in the modern state only by a high degree of differentiation of
military institutions from other social institutions and the creation of a thoroughly professional
officer corps (“objective civilian control”). A professional officer corps, he argues, is jealous of
its own limited sphere of competence but recognizes its incompetence in matters that lie outside
the professional military sphere and hence is willing to accept its role as a subordinate instrument
of the state. The less professionalized the officer corps, on the other hand, the less differentiation
there is between military and political roles and therefore the less justification for military
obedience to political authority.
Other authors have challenged Huntington’s argument. Finer (1962) argues that professionalism
alone does not prevent military intervention in politics. Military officers must also have an
independent adherence to the principle of civilian control. They may also be deterred from
intervention by fear for the fighting capacity of their forces, fear of dividing the military forces
against themselves, and fear for the future of their institution if their intervention should fail. In
addition, Finer argues that professionalism by itself may spur the military to political
intervention because they may see themselves as the servants of the state rather than of the
government in power, because they may become so obsessed with the needs of military security
that they will act to override other values, and because they object to being used to maintain
domestic order.
Civil–military relations in wartime differ somewhat from those which prevail in peace. The
principal difference is simply quantitative. More resources are allocated to military purposes.
Undoubtedly, war also tends to increase the power of the military, but the experience of the two
world wars suggests that it is difficult to make any generalizations. The military played a key
role in the conduct of the war in Germany in World War i and in Japan and in the United States
during World War ii. They rivaled the political leaders in France and Great Britain in World War
i. They played distinctly subordinate roles in Britain and Germany in World War ii and in Russia
in both world wars. War does tend, however, to make generals, particularly successful ones, into
popular heroes and hence to give them political influence, particularly in democracies.
Hindenburg, Eisenhower, and de Gaulle became presidents of their countries largely as a result
of their wartime reputations. Stalin was perhaps prudent to exile Zhukov to an obscure provincial
command after World War II. In general, however, reputations made during a war can be
politically exploited only after the war.
The continuing international tension which began in the late 1930s stimulated arguments that the
modern polity was tending to become a “garrison state.” The “trend of the time,” in the words of
Harold D. Lasswell, “is away from the dominance of the specialist on bargaining, who is the the
businessman, and toward the supremacy of the specialist on violence, the soldier” (1941, p. 455).
In the garrison state military values dominate, and all activities are subordinated to war and the
preparation for war. Reviewing his concept in the early 1960s, Lasswell concluded that it was
still relevant and that “the garrison hypothesis provides a probable image of the past and future
of our epoch” (1962, p. 67). In The Power Elite, C. Wright Mills made a parallel analysis,
arguing that in the United States power was becoming increasingly centralized in a national
bureaucratic elite dominated by big businessmen and top military leaders. Similarly, in his
farewell address, President Eisenhower warned that the United States “must guard against the
acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial
complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist” (1961,
p. 180).
These images of increasing military power in the United States were, however, at best only
partially true. In actuality, military influence in the processes of government and in the
formulation of military policy declined continuously after World War II. The growth of a large
and permanent armaments industry, on the other hand, was a new phenomenon. The combined
military, political, and economic pressures from this complex made it more difficult to reduce
military spending. In addition, the emergence of vested economic and regional interests in certain
types of military activity enormously complicated the problem of adapting the military machine
to new requirements, eliminating old weapons and unneeded facilities, and securing the most
efficient use of military resources. Instead of a division between military and civilian interests as
a whole, top political and military leaders of the executive branch tended to favor rationalizing
the military establishment, while subordinate military groups, local interests, defense businesses,
and congressmen backed the continuation of particular military programs and facilities. The
available evidence suggests that Khrushchev and other Soviet political leaders have faced
comparable problems in dealing with the vested interests of the heavy industry and military
bureaucracies in their efforts to reduce and to rationalize Soviet military activities. In both
countries, the “military–industrial complex” poses problems for military efficiency as well as for
civilian control.