Legitimacy, Leadership and Military Professionalism

The military has traditionally considered itself a profession - the profession of arms. When this premise is challenged it can produce strong reactions from military officers. Is the Military Profession Legitimate? Colonel Lloyd J.

... that the military profession is the most vital, the most worthy of exaltation - and yes, the most legitimate - of all the professions...²⁶

To Colonel Matthews professionalism is vital to national security:

It the nation's defenders are not members of a true higher calling and if that calling is not accorded the reverence of taxpayers and political leaders alike, then as surely as night follows day, the soldier's advice will come to be depreciated, the fighting forces and their leadership will be depleted of numbers and quality, and the security of this nation will fall into jeopardy.²⁷

Colonel Matthews confuses professionalism with legitimacy. He apparently believes public acceptance of the military as a profession would ensure its legitimacy, generating public respect, even reverence for the military. Even in this he admits to having a long way to go, citing Samuel Huntington:

... the public, as well as the scholar, hardly conceives of the officer in the same way that it does the lawyer or doctor, and it certainly does not accord to the officer the deference which it gives to the civilian professions.²⁸

The public hardly reels reverence and deference for lawyers, who are the butt of many jokes; but no one would deny their professional status. This illustrates the disconnection between professionalism and legitimacy overlooked by Matthews.

Like his patron saint Samuel Huntington, Colonel Matthews justifies military professionalism (and legitimacy) exclusively on warfighting capabilities; but he does not make restraint in exercising those capabilities an issue of legitimacy. While he correctly defends the military against critics who have blamed them for the strategic errors of civilian policymakers, he fails to acknowledge restraint at operational and tactical levels as a primary issue of military professionalism (or legitimacy).

Rather than recognize that military legitimacy (a.k.a professionalism) is based on performance and recommend performance requirements, Matthews has chosen to discredit critics who have noted that military values can be at variance with those of the civilian society it must serve;

There are some who would contest that the armed services of the state are properly professional on the grounds that... military values are the antithesis of liberalism, the political philosophy upon which Western concepts of professionalism are based.²⁹

The professionalism advocated by Colonel Matthews makes the requirements and principles of military legitimacy irrelevant. According to his arguments, when the inevitability of war and the need for a military is understood and the technical requirements of a profession are met, the military is ipso facto legitimate, without regard to its conduct. And since the inevitability of war justifies a military profession, its legitimacy is entirely dependent on its warfighting capability - never mind that it spends far more time with operations other than war than with warfighting. This logic makes any distinction between legitimacy in war and operations other than war irrelevant to issues of professionalism.

According to Matthews military professionalism depends upon proficiency in the 'unique defining specialty' of warfighting, which he implies would be compromised by the broader leadership responsibilities required in operations other than war. Matthews acknowledges 'the versatility and adaptability of the soldier in performing a broad spectrum of non-martial functions useful to the nation', but criticizes those who promote the diplomat warrior as a professional ideal:

Additional to his sometime role as warfighter, in their view, he is diplomat, peacemaker, nation-builder, bureaucrat, advisor, teacher, manager, rescuer of the hurricane-beset, feeder of the starving and so on. I believe this claim is dangerously misleading.³⁰

This narrow, traditionalist view of military professionalism does not do justice to the many senior officers who understand the importance of operations other than war and the capability of the military to perform them. Such a restricted view is also dangerous to the legitimacy of the military. Budgetary constraints and public attitudes preclude the maintenance of a large full-time military profession dedicated solely to warfighting. While warfighting must remain the priority skill of the military, its primary focus today - in assigned missions if not in future orientation - is not warfighting but managing violence in operations other than war. Contrary to the traditionalists, these are not mutually exclusive missions.

Military legitimacy is the primary component of military professionalism and, as discussed earlier, the standards are different for war and peace. In the absence of a pervasive and palpable threat to US security, military careerists had better find a way to reconcile their notions of professionalism with the versatility required in operations other than war - that versatility reflected in the diplomat warrior and civil affairs. A military profession that can only conduct combat operations is likely to become an anachronism in the new millennium.