The Soldier and the State

The traditional paradigm of the soldier and the state and related concepts of military leadership and professionalism are based on a pure warrior ethic that calls for an unpolitical soldier, one clearly unsuited for civil-military operations in which political objectives predominate.

The author of the traditional paradigm is Samuel P. Huntington, the venerable Harvard professor who has described the current strategic environment as a clash of civilizations - one that requires coordinated military, economic, political and informational activities to achieve US security objectives. In such an operational environment military leaders must be able to bridge the formidable gap between military and political activities.

While Huntington's latest work implies the need for diplomat warriors in civil-military operations, his 1957 classic on The Soldier and the State minimized the importance or civil-military relations to military legitimacy, and described the military ethic as 'basically corporative [collective] in spirit and fundamentally anti-individualistic'.¹⁵

Huntington argued that civil-military relations should be minimal to avoid polluting the warrior spirit. He was convinced that military professionalism depended upon military officers remaining isolated from the politics of the civilian society they served. For Huntington, professionalism was defined by duty and loyalty to a military ideal: a robotic officer sworn to mindlessly obey hierarchical military authority, rather than a politically responsible officer who understood the principles and values of the Constitution and civil-military relations.¹⁶

While advocating the segregation of military and civilian activities, Huntington recognized the danger of conflicting military and civilian values to military legitimacy - or, as he termed it - the equilibrium of objective civilian control.

It there was ever a trend or civilian values toward Huntington s Cold War military ethic, it has since been reversed. The end of the 'evil empire' and defense budget constraints have upset the old equilibrium. Change is certain, but if contemporary missions are any indication, change will continue to be in the direction of developing more civil-military capabilities such as those of CA to balance traditional combat capabilities. This trend is reflected in the new Army doctrine on operations other than war.

Huntington was right about the need for an equilibrium between military and civilian values to ensure military effectiveness and legitimacy, but wrong in his predictions about changing civilian perceptions of military legitimacy. To achieve the equilibrium necessary to accommodate both military power and legitimacy in the new strategic environment, military values and concepts of professionalism must accommodate changing and sometimes conflicting civilian attitudes and values. The leadership paradigm of the diplomat warrior reflects a healthy balance of military and civilian values, a prerequisite for mission success in operations other than war.

The diplomat warrior is a political soldier who must understand the predominance of political objectives and the need for public support to achieve them. The diplomat warrior reflects the importance of civilmilitary relations to military legitimacy in operations other than war, where mission success requires that military leaders are knowledgeable in political affairs and work closely with civilians and foreign military personnel. An unlikely advocate, German General Ludwig Beck, warned of the dangers of military leaders isolated from politics, even in wartime:

'He who follows a false tradition of the unpolitical soldier and restricts himself to his military craft neglects an essential part of his sworn duty as a soldier in a democracy.' [Beck] warns that an officer corps that restricts itself to matters of craft may become indistinguishable from those Wehrmacht officers - honorable men by their own lights - who in doing their duty to the very end only propelled Germany that much further into the darkness.

These views contrast sharply with those of traditionalists who hold fast to the Huntington paradigm of the pure warrior ethic. One traditionalist dramatized the danger of politicizing the military with a hypothetical military takeover, led by military zealots who had acquired an insatiable appetite for political power through extensive civil-military activities. The protagonist, a colonel who resisted the coup, warned his friends of the dangers of politicizing the military: 'Demand that the armed forces focus exclusively on indisputably military duties.' The heroic colonel was in the mold of the pure warrior, isolated from the corrupting influence of civilian politics and values; he fit the Huntington paradigm of the soldier and the state.¹⁹ Another traditionalist was less subtle in warning that deteriorating civilian values could corrupt the pure values of military professionalism. He saw civilian values as a direct threat to military values and issued a call to arms:

The societal trends indicate a fundamental change in national values. The country's primary value-influencing institutions are promoting altered values for future recruits. These altered values are significantly different than the Army's values. The Army must preserve its integrity as an institution by resisting any tendency to accommodate these changed values.²⁰

If there is a danger to democracy, it will not come from a military integrated with the society it must serve, but from an isolated military elite. An isolated warrior class is likely to develop authoritarian values that conflict with the libertarian values of the society it must serve. If there were to be a military coup, it would likely be to conform society to the authoritarian military ideal.²¹

But the remote threat of a military takeover is not the reason to change the traditional paradigm; it is the need for diplomat warriors in operations other than war. The unpolitical soldier - the pure warrior - cannot fulfil the requirements for leadership in operations other than war.