The Requirements of Military Legitimacy

All military operations are an extension of politics by other means.¹ But the requirements of military legitimacy for operations other than war are different from those for warfighting.

Values are the context of legitimacy; they are the virtues or vices that make people and their institutions what they are. Values give meaning to standards by providing a frame of reference for the decisions that have an impact on issues of legitimacy. There are two categories of values that relate to military legitimacy: national and personal values.

National values are principles that have been institutionalized by common usage. The principles of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law are values enshrined by the US Constitution and have long been a common thread in the fabric of US national security strategy.³ The relationship of these principles to military legitimacy is discussed in the next chapter.

National values are not always dominant security considerations. When vital US interests are threatened, national values have little effect on the legitimacy of combat operations; and when national survival is at stake, might makes right - at least until survival is assured.

The Constitution is the bedrock of military legitimacy. It gives definition to democracy, human rights and the rule of law by providing a democratic framework for US government, a definition of fundamental human rights and the mechanism for making and enforcing the rule of law.

The Constitution addresses a major issue of military legitimacy and leadership: it provides the structural framework for an authoritarian military within a democratic society. The drafters of the Constitution understood the need for a strong national defense; but they also knew that the military could be both a shield to protect freedom and democracy and a sword to destroy them. To prevent a dangerous concentration of military power, the Constitution provides for civilian supremacy and a separation of powers.

Civilian supremacy is provided in Article II, Section 2, which designates the President as commander-in-chief; but the President's power over the military is balanced by powers conferred upon Congress in Article I, Section 8 to declare war, control military purse strings, make rules regulating the military, and make all 'necessary and proper' laws. To guard against the danger of a large professional army isolated from civilian society, the Constitution ensures a major role for civilian soldiers in the armed forces. Article I, Section 8, provides for state militias (the national guard) '... to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions'.

The Just War tradition had produced institutional values at the international level that restrain the use of force. Just cause and right intention are strategic principles, while discrimination and proportionality are primarily operational.⁴ These principles reflect the influence of religion - specifically the Christian religion - upon the rules regulating the means and methods of warfare, and will be discussed further under the principle of restraint.

In addition to national values derived from the Constitution and the Just War tradition, there are personal values or character traits that have traditionally been associated with military leadership. The traditional values of loyalty, duty, selfless service and integrity make up the Professional Army Ethic and are recognized to be a frame of reference for ethical decision-making.⁵

Personal values influence decision-making when specific standards are inadequate, as is often the case in the ambiguous environments of peacetime operations. But because values are abstract they can produce different frames of reference for civilians and military personnel. Most civilians value individual rights and liberty above order and discipline, while the opposite is true for military personnel. All military officers have sworn allegiance to the Constitution, but their perspectives of duty and loyalty are shaped by the demands of an authoritarian military organization and its mission, where there is little tolerance for individual rights and liberty. Conflicting values can be expected; and while such conflicts have little effect in wartime, they can undermine civil-military relations and the legitimacy required for operations other than war.

Some within the military believe that collective military values should be protected from what they perceive to be deteriorating individual civilian values:

The Army is a total institution that replaces individual values with the institution's values... [through] powerful liminal forces which create intense comradeship and egalitarianism. The success of these processes can be attributed to the Army's unique and pervasive culture. The Army's future challenge is to monitor these liminal processes to ensure they are not accommodated to society's paradigm shift... The more insular the military community, the better it will reinforce desirable values and minimize society's adverse influence.⁶

Recent events have illustrated conflicts of military and civilian values in sexual harassment and sexual preference.

The role of homosexuals in the military is an even more contentious issue that will ultimately be resolved in the courts. But conflicting military and civilian values on sexual harassment and homosexuality must be reconciled to ensure civil-military relations that are conducive to military legitimacy and effectiveness:

The services will have to review policies on acceptable conduct, on and off duty. Research on maintaining cohesion without scapegoating homosexuals and treating women as sex objects will have to be undertaken.

Historically our national security and our social, legal, and constitutional practises have had to be balanced.

To resist change would only make the adjustment more time-consuming and disruptive, and would itself undermine military effectiveness.

The strength of our military depends ultimately upon its bonds to the people; the armed forces will be stronger the more they reflect the values and ideals of the society they serve.⁷

The challenge to military legitimacy raised by changing civilian standards of social behaviour cannot be solved by isolating the military from the civilian society it must serve. Good civil-military relations require that military and civilian personnel share the best values of our society and reject negative trends. Society benefits from such a sharing of values, and the military will not be contaminated by the experience.

Conflicting military and civilian values are the result of different cultures within the US. Conflicting values are even more likely between different tribal, ethnic, racial and religious groups where culture clash is more obvious. Behaviour acceptable in Catholic Latin America may not be considered legitimate in Islamic Asia, and neither norms may conform to those of US culture. Because cultural standards are often associated with deeply held religious beliefs, their violation can produce negative emotional public reactions. Whenever public support in the area of operations is important to mission objectives, compliance with cultural norms is a requirement of military legitimacy.⁸

Cultural issues are pervasive in the increasingly violent strategic environment. Samuel Huntington has called it 'The Clash of Civilizations', and Robert D. Kaplan has referred to it as 'The Coming Anarchy'. By whatever name, increasing primal conflict has made Cold War military strategies obsolete.⁹ Huntington has argued that new strategies must place more reliance on understanding and cooperative efforts than on conventional military power. Achieving world peace and stability in the new era will require

... a more profound understanding of the basic religious and philosophical assumptions underlying other civilizations and the ways in which people in those civilizations see their interests. It will require an effort to identify elements of commonality between Western and other civilizations. For the relevant future, there will be no universal civilization, but instead a world of different civilizations, each of which will have to learn to coexist with the others.¹⁰

Cultural standards are often made obligatory for US military forces by incorporating them in directives, general orders and rules of engagement, But military leadership requires more than knowing the rules; it requires cultural orientation, a language capability and diplomacy in politically sensitive peacetime environments.¹¹ The law

The rule of law gives meaning to the requirements of legitimacy.

The law of war has proved to be an adequate standard of military legitimacy for wartime, but not for operations other than war. The unique characteristics of wartime operations are not present in operations other than war, one of which is the clear distinction between combatants and non-combatants. This distinction is critical to the legitimate use of force since the law of war authorizes the killing of combatants but requires humanitarian treatment of non-combatants. Because such a distinction is rarely possible in operations other than war, issues of targeting are more complex and require greater restrictions on the use of force.

Operations other than war are also subject to additional regulations by a Congress skeptical of peacetime military operations. At the strategic level it has attempted to limit the President's power as commander-in-chief through the War Powers Act, and at the operational level it has enacted a wide range of restrictions on military activities, as indicated in the previous chapter. Law and anarchy

The law should have a new strategic priority in future conflict according to Robert Kaplan in 'The Coming Anarchy'. The law is synonymous with security, and anarchy its arch rival. Kaplan has cited West Africa as a dark harbinger of things to come, with criminal anarchy a strategic threat to world peace and stability:

Disease, overpopulation, unprovoked crime, scarcity of resources, refugee migrations, the increasing erosion of nation-states and international borders, and the empowerment of private armies, security firms, and international drug cartels are now most tellingly demonstrated through a West African prism.¹²

Kaplan predicts that these elements have produced a new kind of war fought by people who prefer war and anarchy to peace and the rule of law - not unlike urban gangs in US cities. Kaplan cites Martin Van Creveld's Transformation of War as supporting Huntington on culture clash and his own views on the naivety of US strategies in Haiti and Somalia. Kaplan joins Creveld in predicting a new kind of lawless war, with religious fanaticism playing a larger role, the disintegration of nation-states and their armed forces, and urban crime developing into low-intensity conflict by coalescing along racial, religious, social, and political lines'.¹³

If Kaplan is correct in predicting the spread of primal violence and anarchy, re-establishing and preserving the rule of law will be a priority security objective in the new strategic environment. And if troubling trends in US cities are not reversed, the same seeds of anarchy could ultimately jeopardize the rule of law in the US. Public support

Public support represents the collective public perceptions that both determine and measure military legitimacy in a democracy. In wartime the civilian public has been recognized to be the medium within which military operations occur and popular will 'the center of gravity of a nation's ability to wage war'.¹⁴

If popular will or public support is a nation's center of gravity in wartime, it is even more crucial to legitimacy and mission success in operations other than war. The inter-relationship between legitimacy and public support is emphasized in doctrine on special operations:

In modern conflict, legitimacy is the most crucial factor in developing and maintaining internal and international support... Legitimacy is determined by the people of the nation and by the international community based on their collective perception of the credibility of its cause and methods. Without legitimacy and credibility, special operations will not gain the support of foreign indigenous elements, the US population or the international community.¹⁵

There are two publics that relate to the legitimacy of peacetime activities: the one at home and the one in the area of operations:

LIC [low-intensity conflict] is a political struggle in which ideas may be more important than arms. Therefore the US government, in coordination with allies and host nations, must fight for the minds of the people not only inside the host nation but also in the US and the international community. Gaining and maintaining popular consensus is essential.¹⁶

Public support for peacetime military operations varies with the perception of the threat: the greater the threat, the more likely is public support for military force. The public tends to forgive military excesses when the threat is clear, as in Desert Storm; but it has little tolerance for military excesses and collateral damage when the threat is more ambiguous, as was the case in Somalia.

Public support is based in large part on meeting the other requirements of military legitimacy, but the public has its own unpredictable dynamic as well. Elected officials understand this; and in the likely absence of a clear and present threat to simplify issues of military legitimacy in peacetime, military leaders must understand the importance of public support to mission success. Public support and the media

The pervasive publicity associated with the abortive US raid in Mogadishu in October 1993 was a reminder of the power of the press to shape the public opinion that determines the legitimacy of military operations.

Throughout the Cold War the relationship between the media and the military was characterized by mutual suspicion. The low point came during the Vietnam war, when a military made paranoid by a hostile media engaged in unwarranted censorship and cover-ups of military operations. The rocky relationship between the military and the media continued after Vietnam, as evidenced by the Iran-Contra affair and other incidents, primarily in Latin America, that threatened the legitimacy of US military operations.

Since Desert Shield/Storm the relationship between the media and military has improved. There have been few restrictions on media coverage of military operations, and until the abortive raid in Mogadishu coverage was mostly favorable, contributing to a more positive image of the military. But there have been extremes, such as in the pre-dawn darkness of December 1992 when the international press corps greeted Navy Seals on the beaches of Mogadishu with the blinding lights of network television. The farcical affair rendered night vision equipment inoperable; had there been opposition to the landing, American lives could have been lost.

This was the exception; most journalists have come to respect the danger of contemporary conflict. In both Bosnia and Somalia journalists have been among the casualties, These uncomfortable experiences have made journalists more sensitive to the need for military force to provide security for all non-combatants. When the media understands the need for military force it contributes to the public support required for military and political legitimacy - that is, so long as the standards of legitimacy are met.

The inter-relationship of legitimacy, public support, and the media make it essential to avoid 'bad press' in sensitive and unforgiving peacetime environments. This can be accomplished if military personnel understand and conform to the standards of military legitimacy and avoid conflicts between military and civilian values. The media can help maintain military legitimacy so long as the military remains a positive and constructive force promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law.

The First Amendment to the Constitution protects a free press as the cornerstone of liberty. Despite a history of mutual suspicions between the military and the media, recent experience indicates the two can be allies. Military personnel should understand that it is shortsighted to restrict coverage of military operations for other than security reasons.

Promoting democracy, human rights and the rule of law is inextricably linked with First Amendment freedoms of expression. To the extent that the media reports the truth, it fulfills the public's right to know, an important element of military and political legitimacy.