Civil-Military Relations in the US
There have been important lessons learned in civil-military relations in the US as well as overseas. While they have not involved serious violations of human rights (with the exception of the Indian wars and the Kent State incident) they do provide important lessons in military legitimacy and useful precedents for the future.
The US Army has been closely integrated with civilian society over its 219 years of existence, often as a matter of military and political necessity. Charles Heller has noted that the Army has spent far more time with domestic civil-military activities than with war-fighting:
The Federal Army has: explored and mapped the continent, pioneered medical science, forecast the weather, delivered the mail, quelled civil disturbances, provided disaster relief, run youth programs, engaged in public works projects, and a host of other non-military missions.24
In A Times to Build, henry F. Walterhouse noted many examples of successful civil-military activities that have contemporary applications.25 His first example of civil-military co-operation came from West Point - an appropriate place to begin since Samuel Huntington used West Point to symbolize the traditional military ethic discussed in the previous chapter. The Army Corps of Engineers
In reverent terms, Huntington compared the 'ordered serenity' of West Point to the 'commonplace' Highland Falls, a village just outside its gates.26 Huntington's idealized comparison of his West Point Camelot and its inferior surroundings illustrates a subtle but important conflict between military and civilian values. The commonplace diversity of Highland Falls represents the ambience of a free society, while the structured uniformity that characterizes West Point is the insipid norm for authoritarian regimes.
Huntington's West Point could not have been imagined by George Washington and his fledgling Corps of Engineers when they made it their home in 1794.
It did not become the US Military Academy until 1802, and for many years was the nation's only engineering college, scarcely distinguished from its civilian surroundings. The demands of an undeveloped frontier placed a high priority on engineering skills, and West Point and its Army Corps of Engineers met the challenge for civilian as well as military needs. Its faculty was also the primary source of academicians to staff the new technical schools developing across the country.27Perhaps the Army's greatest civil-military project was the Panama Canal, completed in 1914 after eight grueling years battling the elements and tropical diseases. The engineers shared the victory with Army doctors, who were instrumental in winning the battle against malaria and yellow fever in the festering Canal Zone. When President Teddy Roosevelt turned to the Army and chose Goethals to direct the project after earlier failures, he remarked:
... the great thing about an Army officer is that he does what you tell him to do'. During World War II, McGeorge Bundy recalled these words when Teddy's cousin, F.D.R., was considering the Army for military government in Europe. Bundy noted: 'Discipline without brains was of little value, but both Roosevelts learned to their cost the uselessness in administration of brains without discipline.'28
Today the Army Corps or Engineers continues its civil engineering projects and manages national flood control. It plays a major role in disaster relief, and has the potential for managing a wide range of environmental projects. With offices in major cities around the country, it provides a model for civil-military co-operation. For the Corps, civil engineering has a double meaning that requires its officers to combine public service with military skills - the attributes of the diplomat warrior. The military in domestic civil administration
In spite or the traditional aversion of the military to domestic politics, there have been occasions when politics and the military have intentionally been mixed.
Until 1849 the Army was responsible for Indian affairs - perhaps because the native Indian was their primary adversary. Among those officers assigned duty in Indian affairs was Lieutenant Colonel Zachary Taylor, who administered an Indian school for two years. Colonel Taylor, like most of his fellow officers, preferred combat command and was not happy with a civil-military administrative assignment, but it may have prepared him for his later political career.29During the Mexican War, Army and Navy othcers administered civil government in California, and continued until it became a state in 1850. Later the Army was called upon to administer the huge Alaska territory. Military government was required because conditions on the early frontiers were just one step removed from anarchy. There were problems, especially in California, related to jealousies and rivalries among military leaders who lacked political skills; other difficulties were inherent in the lawless and undeveloped environment. But the military demonstrated it could perform civil administation in primitive and violent conditions when required to do so.30 The legacy was recalled when widespread lawlessness in the 1992 Los Angeles race riots required military assistance.
Following the American Civil War, the Army was called upon to administer the Freedman's Bureau, which was responsible for the welfare of former slaves. It was required to establish schools, distribute relief supplies, regulate labor, administer justice and provide medical assistance, job training and limited land redistribution. In many ways the responsibilities of the Freedman's Bureau were similar to those of modern nation assistance and refugee control.31 Civil-military youth programs
The Great Depression gave birth to the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), another domestic civil-military project relevant to contemporary public needs, both in the US and overseas. The CCC was formed in 1933 for the jobless, putting them to work on national resource and conservation projects.
The no-frills program was successful because the military personnel who administered it understood the importance of civil-military relations.When the CCC was initiated in 1933, the active Army totaled only 137,000 officers and men. But within the year 3,641 officers from the Regular Army, Navy and Marine Corps and 1,774 reserve officers were administering the camps. By 1935, enrollment in CCC camps exceeded half a million men, and more than 9,000 reserve officers had assumed the primary burden of camp administration. The CCC began to wane as the economy improved in 1939 and was terminated with the onset of war in 1942.32
In South Carolina alone, 200,000 erosion control dams, 97 fire towers, 25 parks and recreation areas and 57,000,000 trees were added to the landscape.33 The Army provided something essential for the unemployed young people in the CCC: discipline. Those selected (less than half of the 8,000 applicants in South Carolina) were treated like military recruits - given medical examinations, issued uniforms and fed well.34
The accomplishments of the CCC in conserving both human and natural resources have inspired a new generation of civil-military programs. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Georgia) used the CCC as one of the models for the Civil-Military Co-operation Program which was incorporated in the 1993 defense bill. It authorized military assets to be used for such projects as infrastructure and housing construction and repair, and the education and training of disadvantaged youth.
Domestic civil-military activities can promote better civil-military relations through a sharing of values and provide opportunities and discipline for disillusioned young people. The military values of duty, loyalty, integrity and selfless service can inspire civilians as well as the military; and a new generation of American youth need an introduction to discipline. The CCC demonstrated how civil-military activities could contribute to military legitimacy half a century ago; the same concepts can be adapted to stem the troubling trends plaguing the US today.
The lessons of history are evident in a new generation of civil-military activities that have been emerging across the country. They relate the military to civilian needs in a positive and constructive way. Military-style boot camps for youthful offenders in California are an example:
From personal observation and interviews with mmates and corrections officers, the results were remarkably successful. People on the lowest rungs of society can be salvaged by using military techniques and training to build self-respect, confidence and structure into their lives.35
Other new civil-military youth programs reach beyond youthful offenders. From a summer camp that teaches survival skills to underprivileged youth in San Antonio to a proposal for Special Operations Forces to provide military civic action in a Montana Indian reservation,36 such programs serve public needs related to internal security, enhance military proficiency and improve the civil-military relations so essential to military legitimacy.
Civil Affairs: From Military Government to Nation Assistance
Civil Affairs (CA) provides an operational concept and structure well suited for civil-military activities at home and abroad, as will be discussed in the next chapter. CA was born in the Second World War out of the need for military government in occupied territory. Since then CA personnel have provided an interface between the military and civilians and helped mobilize public (civilian) support when required for military and political objectives.
The Second World War illustrated how the role of CA changes dramatically when hostilities cease and the transition to peace begins. As the Allies drove into Germany the people who had been obstacles to combat operations became the objectives of peacetime military operations. In newly liberated areas the military was required to establish temporary governments to provide essential services to civilians. This was a command responsibility, and combat commanders were quick to recognize CA personnel as force multipliers, relieving their combat troops for battlefront duty.37
General Dwight D.
Eisenhower initially requested 960 CA officers, and their number was later increased to thousands of personnel. Of these, approximately 200 were highly qualified lawyers, most of whom were assigned to military government duties. In some instances, however, unit staff judge advocates also provided legal support to US military governments.38The emphasis on lawyers in military government reflected the priority of legitimacy in civil-military operations. The legal standards applicable to the treatment of civilians and the provision of essential legal services were priorities of military government. These priorities have since been incorporated into a principle applicable to all CA operations and activities: to ensure that commanders comply with their legal and moral obligations to civilians.39
During the Second World War, CA was synonymous with military government. Early post-war doctrine made a distinction between CA and military government by operational environment: operations in friendly countries were considered to be CA, while those in occupied enemy territory were military government. In and after the war, CA operations (now known as civil administration) were conducted in North Africa, France, Holland, Belgium and the Philippines, while military government operations were conducted in Sicily, Austria, Germany, Okinawa, Japan and Korea.40
Okinawa, the largest island in the Ryukyu chain southwest of Japan, illustrated how military government evolved into other forms of CA. The battle of Okinawa was the only US combat operation conducted against a Japanese land area with a large civilian population. The island was devastated by the fighting, with 95 per cent of its housing destroyed. With a population of shell-shocked, sick, homeless and scared people, Okinawa placed a tremendous welfare burden on the military.41
The Army responded to the challenge. Its military government provided tractors, farming implements, seeds, fertilizers and farm animals to restore agriculture; it helped restore the fishing industry with boat construction, provided essential utilities, and began long-range industrial promotion projects. The Army also promoted political and social reform; it helped to revise legal codes, re-established courts, introduced universal suffrage and promoted improved education.42 In later years it conducted civic action projects throughout the Ryukyu Islands. By the time Okinawa reverted to Japan in 1971, it was a relatively prosperous island.
Korea represented another step in the evolution of CA from military government to nation assistance. Following the Second World War the first CA effort consisted of the Army disarming and repatriating Japanese troops, maintaining law and order, and providing essential public services. This phase of CA operations came to an end in August 1948,43 but the new Korean administration lasted less than two years. The invasion by North Korea in June 1950 overran all of South Korea except the small port city of Pusan.
The role of CA was minimal during the Korean War, but afterward a variety of CA projects helped Koreans rebuild their country both politically and economically:
Troop units down to company size, while maintaining their combat readiness, engaged in a comprehensive plan of repair, renovation, and restoration. Korean civic leaders indicated requirements; Korean agencies furnished local materials and labor, while US forces provided engineering skills, equipment, and the essential constituents for reconstruction. They concentrated efforts on schools, hospitals, civic buildings, land reclamation, and improvement of public health and transportation facilities.44
The Philippines was combatting an insurgency at the time of the Korean War. Immediately after the islands achieved their national independence in 1946, Louis Taruc, a popular communist leader who had been denied a seat in the Philippine Lower House, left Manila to lead his Hukbalahap guerrillas (Huks) against the new government. Taruc was aided in his efforts by a corrupt government that had only a facade of democracy to cover 'a wave of get-rich venality involving both Filipinos and Americans'.45
Hatred and distrust of the government grew among the disillusioned people of the Philippines. Had it not been for Taruc's own excesses of violence against the people, his Huks might have overthrown the government before 1950, when President Quirino appointed Ramon Magsaysay as his minister of defense. As defense minister and later as president, Magsaysay fashioned a combination of counter-insurgency and nation assistance activities in the 1950s that are as relevant today as they were then. First, he set his own house in order, ensuring that the Defense Department was supportive of his plans and competent to carry them out. Second, he bolstered political legitimacy with government programs that responded to public needs, such as legal assistance for the poor and limited land reform. Third, he infiltrated the Huks and, using all the instruments of political warfare, won over many guerrillas. Finally, he used limited but effective military force to ferret out the last hard-core Huks.46
Magsaysay had limited but able US assistance in the person of Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Edward G. Lansdale, whose concepts of leadership are cited as an ideal for the diplomat warrior in Chapter 5. Lansdale coined the phrase 'civic action' in the Philippines and became the prototype for the socially-conscious Colonel Edward Hillandale in The Ugly American.47 Lansdale understood the interrelationship between public support and legitimacy in operations other than war. He also understood the need for strategic and operational restraint to prevent collateral damage that can undermine legitimacy.
Vietnam began as another low-level counter-insurgency effort similar to that in the Philippines. Unfortunately South Vietnam had no leader similar to Magsaysay and the US commitment there escalated from nation assistance to combat despite Lansdale's advice, creating the painful lessons learned in strategic and operational restraint discussed earlier. While the debacle in Vietnam has often been attributed to nation assistance, it was the escalation to direct combat that led the US to grief there, not the initial commitment to provide nation assistance. Strategic errors involving issues of legitimacy and the use of force determined the tragic outcome in Vietnam.
The evolving role of US Special Forces (SF) from advisors to fighters reflected the changing role of the use of US military force in Vietnam and its relationship to military and political legitimacy. Initially the focus of SF was advisory, with the emphasis on winning public support ('hearts and minds') for the South Vietnamese government (RVN) and its military forces. To their credit, SF advisors were successful with counter-insurgency and CA activities. In fact, it was their success training the Civilian Irregular Defense Group forces (CIDG) that caused the North Vietnamese to escalate the conflict, which in turn prompted President Johnson to send in the Marines in 1965. Unfortunately, the CIDG which had been effective in the guerrilla warfare against the Viet Cong was no match for the North Vietnamese regulars.48
Once US Marines directly engaged the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, it became a US war; from then on there would be no substitute for military victory. But as Philip Caputo's frustrations recounted in Chapter 1 illustrated, military victory was impossible given the political constraints imposed. Ultimate success still depended upon the public support of the South Vietnamese people, but the measure of success had shifted from winning hearts and minds to a more quantitative measure: the body count. Civilians once considered essential to mission success became obstacles to combat operations or, as Caputo discovered, even the enemy, in the dense fog of that convoluted war.49
Civil affairs units were utilized in Vietnam, but it was too little too late. The Marines were first with their Combined Action Platoon Program in 1965, followed by Army CA units in 1967. The effectiveness of CA combat support operations in mobilizing public support for military and political legitimacy, however, was largely neutralized by a combination of collateral damage and government corruption. When Robert W. Komer took charge of the Civil Operations and Revolutionary Development Support (CORDS) program in 1967 and for the first time managed to co-ordinate all military and civilian agencies in nation assistance, the battle for legitimacy had been irretrievably lost and with it any hope of US victory in Vietnam.50
Vietnam represented nation assistance gone awry. It remains a lesson in legitimacy for policymakers in the new strategic environment. The turning-point in Vietnam - the transition from nation assistance to war - came when US combat forces were committed to bolster a South Vietnamese government that lacked the military and political legitimacy to prevail. It was not the first time, nor the last, that US strategists forgot the rule that no amount of military force can substitute for a lack of legitimacy.
Cold War nation assistance was conducted during the Vietnam War under the rubric of counter-insurgency, quietly but successfully deterring communist-inspired civil war in other countries in South-east Asia, Latin America and Africa. The military instrument for Cold War operations other than war was the Special Action Force, or SAF; it was tailored around a Special Forces Group (SF Gp) and assigned the mission of promoting military and political legitimacy in its region.
The success of the SAFs was overshadowed by Vietnam, but they remain a military model relevant to the contemporary security environment. The modus operandi of the SAFs integrated CA into a co-ordinated nation assistance effort: SF personnel advised their indigenous counterparts on the lethal aspects of political warfare, CA and medical personnel focused on civil-military and civic action activities, psychological operations (PSYOP) forces provided the military media, and Military Intelligence personnel met intelligence requirements.51
Special Action Force Asia, or SAFAsia, was built around the 1st SF Gp, but had attached to it CA, PSYOP, military intelligence (MI) and medical elements. Once special operations in Vietnam shifted to the 5th SF Gp, SAFAsia devoted its attention to nation assistance in the rest of South-east Asia. In the Philippines SAFAsia worked with counterparts in the Philippine Army to continue Lansdale's policies until the early 1970s, when SAFAsia and the other SAFs were disbanded as part of the reduction in force following the Vietnam War.
In 1980 the election of President Reagan marked the beginning of a revitalized military and a new era in military strategy. Latin America became the focus of nation assistance, and CA personnel provided valuable leadership: military civic action projects were led 'by highly trained CA personnel, who can interface effectively with tactical planners, local civilian leaders and mid and high level officials of government ministries'.52 As discussed earlier, nation assistance and CA activities remain a continuing priority for USSOUTHCOM.
Post-combat civil affairs in Grenada, Panama and Kuwait complemented continuing nation assistance activities. The military interventions in Grenada (Urgent Fury) in 1983, Panama (Just Cause) in 1989, and Desert Shield/Storm in 1990/91 were far more dramatic than low-profile nation assistance activities and created issues of legitimacy with the use of force. In addition to the lessons learned on unity of effort and restraint discussed earlier, these operations also confirmed the value of CA both during and following combat operations. CA helped make the transition from military to civilian control and assisted the fledgling governments in providing essential services to civilians dislocated by combat operations.
In Grenada, CA personnel arrived early and helped mitigate the effects of collateral damage. During the brief hostilities, overzealous troopers of the 82nd Airborne Division had commandeered privatelyowned vehicles and modified them into armored vehicles by cutting off their tops and mounting machine guns. Claims and solatia payments were used creatively to compensate the owners of these customized cars. Following hostilities, CA projects were initiated to rebuild and improve the civilian infrastructure. In one such project, CA personnel worked with the Grenadian government and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) to train Grenadians in construction skills in building improved school facilities.53
In Panama, CA personnel once again proved to be force multipliers. Here they were involved from the beginning, arriving in the airborne assault to prevent civilian interference with combat operations, and then protecting civilians in the aftermath. They remained to provide a variety of civil administration functions, such as assisting the new government in rebuilding its law enforcement and judiciary systems after ousting General Noriega's cronies.54
During Desert Shield/Storm, CA personnel became even more involved in civil administrations. The Kuwaiti Task Force (KTF) mentioned earlier was made up of senior CA officers who worked with the US State Department and the Kuwaiti government in exile to prepare for its return to power. While CA personnel did not have the long-term relationship with the Kuwaiti government as in Grenada and Panama (Kuwait was unique in that it had the economic resources necessary to rebuild), the KTF CA advisors had a positive influence on Kuwaiti political leaders and helped smooth the transition from war to peace. Following Desert Storm, CA personnel in Provide Comfort demonstrated perseverance as discussed above, providing humanitarian and security assistance to the Kurds in Northern Iraq.55
Humanitarian assistance in Somalia presented CA challenges for combat soldiers. In the first phase, Restore Hope, there were few CA personnel involved but Army combat soldiers utilized CA techniques to achieve limited political and military objectives. In the next chapter General Edwin J. Arnold, commander of Army forces in Restore Hope, emphasizes the importance of CA in such humanitarian operations and recommends training Army leadership in the CA skills required of the diplomat warrior. But as described earlier, the UN nation-building phase of the Somalia intervention failed for reasons similar to Vietnam: civil war precluded effective nation assistance and political constraints precluded the effective use of combat force.
Creating order out of chaos in Haiti reflected the tension between exercising restraint and providing security through law and order. In Uphold Democracy CA direct support teams worked closely with Special Forces and Psychological Operations personnel to provide security to over 600 rural villages. In spite of frustrations such as those described earlier in this chapter, these teams have been successful. As one DOD official put it, they 'skillfully established the law west of the Pecos putting local thugs out of business'.56 A ministerial support team of CA lawyers and judges addressed longer term measures '... to establish an effective judiciary in Haiti, one that will live by the rule of law rather than live in the shadow of corruption and fear'.57