Document created: 29 September 03
Air University Review,
May-June 1974
The extent of military influence in the United States government has been a source of acerbic controversy for some time. The issue was heightened in recent years as a result of dissatisfaction with national security policies that developed during the unhappy Vietnam venture. Much of the voluminous criticism of the military-industrial complex has been based on assumptions about the nature and degree of an assumed military prominence in domestic and foreign affairs. The usual premise is that military influence has been increasing. “Increasing,” however, could be taken to imply a straight-line progression. Even within the post-World War II period, when the role of the military is generally recognized to be an expanded one, it seems that the tendency has been for military sway to be cyclical, rather than constantly growing.1 While to many the term military is self-evident, commentary on the subject of military influence in government shows that the distinction between the uniformed services and civilian administrators often is lost in attempting to press home a point. So the meaning of the term needs to be specified. Military we shall assign to the man in uniform, including retired military professionals where they are in positions of importance relating directly to national security matters. More practically for our purpose here, this means the upper ranks of the regular officer corps and retired ranking officers in defense industries. While others have a military-related (reserve officers, for instance), their primary role is not military.
The term influence is difficult to define and, especially at the macroanalytical level, extremely difficult to identify and measure. Even so, influence (I) might be expressed in the following terms:
I = A → T: D (GA)
to be read: Influence equals Actor causes Target to make a Decision that is believed to contribute to a Goal desired by the Actor.
Much of the problem with this representation, and where much influence analysis founders, lies in the area of causality. Without becoming embroiled in the complexities of this issue, let us say that the verb “causes” here does not involve explicit coercion but that it does require the Actor to exert an effort toward the Target and Goal. Some writers would have the Target acting somewhat against his will.2 It seems more realistic, however, to accept as a guiding rule that, while the Target might have acted differently if not influenced by the Actor, his actions need not go against the grain. Thus, if a husband and wife want to go on a trip, and the husband has no preference about where to go while the wife wants Bermuda and persuades him to buy tickets for there, the husband still can be contented with the decision. (All married couples will spot instantly the “joker” in this scenario: What happens to his contentment if the trip goes badly? And the same type of relationship problem can occur in political influence.) Still, no matter how the relationship is phrased in abstract terms, in practice there remains a “chameleon” or “mirror-image” problem in that it is difficult to determine who influences whom. The military might request “x” of the Congress largely because military leaders think that “x” is what influential Congressmen want them to ask for. This is a familiar problem in government and one that illustrates the mutual symbiosis that often characterizes political relationships.
The foregoing equation obviously does not solve many difficult problems of influence analysis. Hopefully, however, it does provide some clarity on a crucial point that much of the writing on political-military relations glosses over: it avoids the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy, in which it is assumed that those who benefit from a situation must have caused it. This aberration from logic is found in much of the critical commentary about military influence on civil government in the United States.
With this in mind, if we eschew the more extreme forms of analysis that claim to see a military conspiracy or resurrect the old (interestingly enough formerly “conservative”) bugaboo of runaway bureaucracy,3 we profitably can view the military, with its associated industrial and other elements (often lumped together under the rubric “military-industrial complex”), as a significant interest or pressure group of the within-government, without-government type.4 By approaching the proposition from this perspective, we can consider the bases for military influence in more or less the same manner as might be done with other interest groups.
The most crucial asset of an interest group is its “position” in society.5 This may, but need not, depend on variables such as leadership capability, wealth, size, and membership cohesion. Important to its “position” is the opinion that competitors, the public, and decision-makers have formed about the group, and the group itself must adjust to the distribution of effective political power within the political system. For purely private interest groups, factors such as wealth and size probably are more meaningful than for the military. While these factors are stressed in many analyses of military influence, and there is a great unresolved problem of when and to what degree politically acquired advantages tend to become self-perpetuating, wealth and size are fundamentally derived characteristics for the military. Thus, the more important factors for analyzing military political influence seem to be those that bear on political elites and popular opinion. At least this is likely to be so in an open, pluralistic, competitive, and democratic society like that of the United States,
Many items could be considered in the context of the military’s “position” with the public and political elites, including the “selling of the Pentagon” and race relations in the barracks. However, two items seem to stand out for the post-World War II period: (1) the sense of a threat requiring military preparedness and possibly military response, joined with a belief in the utility and acceptability of the military instrumentality (organized force) to attain political purposes; and (2) the extent of competition for available resources that must be shared by the military with other public purposes.
Possibly also worth noting, although it may be linked in cause and effect patterns with (1) above, is the prestige of the military in American society and views held of the military institution. This aspect may be disposed of at least in part if we accept Professor Huntington’s6 assertion that the period of high popularity of individual ranking officers largely ended with the passing of popular World War II commanders and James Clotfelter’s7 finding that the occupational prestige of the military never has been very high, even during that post-World War II epoch when the military institution was expanding rapidly.
Laurence Radway,8 among others, has noted how, in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Americans, with relatively little protest, abandoned their erstwhile isolationist views, reversed the trend of demobilization, and adopted and militarized a policy of containment. Many reasons might be given for this phenomenon, and Radway cites three: (1) the realization of a new U.S. strength; (2) the ethnic composition of the population, containing as it does many whose blood-countrymen were suffering Communist occupation; and (3), most important, hostility to totalitarian Communism and a resolve not again to permit a wave of totalitarian expansionism to engulf Europe and the world. Revisionist historians have argued that this apocalyptic vision of the world was unreal. We may choose to believe the revisionists or not. But the tenor of the times was such that a fundamentalist anti-Communism served as the core attitude for policies that, with tactical variations between “massive retaliation” and “flexible response,” showed a high propensity, albeit still without unrestrained abandon, to favor at least readiness for military solutions to political problems or, in another interpretation, military responses to provocations of force, of which the Soviet Union usually was thought to be the author.
This was and to a degree still is a situation tailored to the pursuit of the military “interest.” But even here we must tread with caution. We often encounter a simplistic syllogism that runs like this: Major premise: The military are the possessors and proponents for the use of force in international relations. Minor premise: The United States gets into a lot of wars. Conclusion: Therefore, the military are formulating American foreign policy. Whatever military influence is in the making of United States foreign policy, it does not seem to be of that nature. The military have espoused preparedness but have been reserved in advising commitment of forces to armed action.9 The reasons vary for specific cases, but the pattern seems to be one of greater caution by military leaders than by top civilian decision-makers.
Military reservations notwithstanding, there continued to be a fairly widespread faith in the efficacy of military force in solving critical international problems. We can seek the explanation in several facets of U.S. national character, such as a sense of technological superiority or of superiority of white Westerners over brown, black, or yellow people (it is in their lands that we fight most of our battles, but it should be observed that conflicts in which we might join militarily most often break out there). There have been periods of disillusionment, such as that growing out of the Vietnam experience. But it is difficult to say even that Vietnam permanently turned American opinion around on this score. There were strong parallels between the growing unpopularity of Korea and Vietnam,10 and yet Korea did not keep us from trying Vietnam. Also, the interpretation of war unpopularity trends is a tricky matter,11 a fact sometimes overlooked by the “limited war is politically passé” school of analysts. Even so, there does seem to be some downturn in confidence in the military answer, at least for the time being.
Having enjoyed such a favorable “position,” the military, not surprisingly,
has managed to obtain a significant slice of the resources pie during the past
two decades. How big that portion has been and what effects can be attributed
to defense spending are questions that have been much debated, often in terms
that would have brought joy to the heart of Darrell Huff, author of How to
Lie with Statistics (1954). Critics have depicted Congress as a pushover
for the military-industrial complex, yet in the next breath have averred that
the time was ripe for Congress to assert itself against the military. Various
studies of defense budget requests before Congress (leaving aside that
restraints likely had been applied before the requests left the executive
branch) show that the Congress has been concerned not only with the “how much”
but also with the “how” of the defense budget: Congress has not been merely
passive.12 There has also been a certain volatility in Congressional
action on defense estimates not found for other areas of government in the
aggregate.13 So the brake has not simply worn out, but driving
conditions did not seem to require much use of it. That circumstance may be
changing. Disenchantment with the decision-making process, concern over the
dominance of the defense establishment, and pressure for action on nonmilitary
priorities have been cited as reasons for increased Congressional concern with
defense spending.14 Indeed, by several measures there already has
been a retrenchment in the defense establishment, although this tends to be
obscured by the continued high absolute size of defense budgets.15
Francis Castles suggests that pressure groups fall into two basic categories: (1) interest groups that serve to protect “shared sectional interests” and (2) attitude groups set up to seek a limited end, identified not by the common interest of the members but by shared attitudes.16 Interest groups are likely to be fairly permanent, while attitude groups, based on the more subjective criterion of issue-oriented views, are inclined to be less lasting. The present seems to be a period of high visibility of attitude groups in the United States. While those whose cohesion was based on an antiwar, antimilitary persuasion seem to be on the wane, those whose ends involved competition for resources with the military—proponents of actions to reduce pollution, increase automobile safety, improve living standards of the poor and the aged, etc.—seem to be going strong. And, when we look at the present and projected major segment of the federal budget going to direct social welfare expenditures,17 we again can raise the unresolved question of when and to what degree politically acquired advantages tend to become self-perpetuating.
The foregoing has been largely without reference to the Actor in the equation, the military establishment. This was intended but not terminal. That the professional military has been able generally to set its course while it has benefited from favorable seas, that the impact of military activities is widespread, but also that the military has been buffeted by dissatisfaction and criticism—all have been documented and ranted about ad nauseam.18 Assuming a lesser relative access to societal resources for the military in the near future, and taking into account that this is in the face of drastically increased personnel costs, we still must answer the question, How will the military maneuver from a still significant position? Following Professor Morris Janowitz, various authors (Palen, for example)19 have pursued the growth of the bureaucratic-managerial type of military professional and the demise of the heroic leader role. Some (Sarkesian)20 have followed another line of modern military sociology and pressed for increased political awareness and skills in the military. Others (Yarmolinsky)21 have worried over whether the military would adjust to the Vietnam debacle or react against the military’s reduced position with an avenging soul that would lead to greater conflict between the military and the country.
One might surmise that such changing aspects of military sociology and psychology would affect the way in which the military attempts to play its hand. But, without the benefit of a crystal ball or greater insight into the changing mores of the military than I care to claim, I will not try to ascribe a future new political style and role to the military. Possibly this will happen, but it seems unlikely in the short run that we are in for any such notable changes as those that took place through World War II and the subsequent period of confrontation with Communism. A more likely guess is that we will have basically a continuation of what we have been having, only with the military writ somewhat smaller. In any event, a summation of these remarks, to the extent that they aptly describe the situation, would be that military fortunes and setbacks are much more the result of the impact of the society on the military than the reverse.
Auburn University
Notes
1. Peter Beckman, “Influence, Generals and Vietnam,” paper prepared for delivery to the International Studies Association annual convention, March 17-30, 1971.
2. Graham Wootton, Interest Groups (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1970).
3. John K. Galbraith, “How to Control the Military,” Harper’s Magazine, June 1969, pp. 31-46.
4. Thomas I. Dickson, Jr., “Military Industrial Complex,” Military Review, December 1971, pp. 29-35.
5. Henry Ehrmann, “Interest Groups,” International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, vol. 7, 1968, pp. 486-92.
6. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State (New York: Random House, 1957), chapter 13.
7. James Clotfelter, The Military in American Politics (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), pp. 34-36.
8. Laurence I. Radway, Foreign Policy and National Defense (Atlanta: Scott, Foresman and Co., 1969), chapters 2 and 8.
9. Clotfelter, chapter 9.
10. John Mueller, “Trends in Popular Support for the Wars in Korea and Vietnam,” American Political Science Review, vol. 65, no. 2, June 1971, pp. 358-75.
11. André Modigliani, “Hawks and Doves, Isolationism and Political Distrust: An Analysis of Public Opinion on Military Policy,” American Political Science Review, vol. 66, no. 3, September 1972, pp. 960-78.
12. Arnold Kanter, “Congress and the Defense Budget,” American Political Science Review, vol. 66, no. 1, March 1972, pp. 129-43.
13. Douglas Fox, “Congress and the U.S. Military Service Budgets in the Post-War Period: A Research Note,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, vol. 15, no. 2, May 1971, pp. 382-93.
14. Sam Sarkesian, “Political Soldiers: Perspectives and Professionalism in the U.S. Military,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, vol. 16, no. 2, March 1972, pp. 239-54.
15. Department of Defense (Comptroller), The Economics of Defense Spending: A Look at the Realities (U.S. Department of Defense, July 1972).
16. Francis Castles, Pressure Groups and Political Culture (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), p. 2.
17. Charles Schultze et al., Setting National Priorities: The 1973 Budget (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1972), p. 415.
18. For one summary see The Power of the Pentagon (Washington, D.C.: Congressional Quarterly, Inc., 1972).
19. John Palen, “The Education of the Senior Military Decision-Maker,” The Sociological Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 2, Spring 1972, pp. 147-60.
20. Sarkesian, op. cit.
21. Adam Yarmolinsky, “Picking Up the Pieces: The Impact of Vietnam on the Military Establishment,” Yale Review, vol. 61, no. 4, Summer 1972, pp. 481-95.
Dr. Thomas I. Dickson, Jr. (Ph.D., University of Texas) is Associate Professor of Political Science, Auburn University. He previously served as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer and as a Research Associate on the staff of the Texas Legislative Council. As a colonel in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, he recently completed a four-year assignment on the adjunct faculty of the Marine Corps Command and Staff College.
Disclaimer
The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document
are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic
environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the
U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air
University.
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