The Mutual Obligations of the Public, Civilian Leaders and the Military
Author: Dr Risa Brooks
In any democracy, the military’s relationship with the country’s civilian leaders and the public—its civil–military relations—is foundational to its capacity to safeguard its national sovereignty from external threats and challenges. Those relations shape the quality of interaction between military and civilian leaders in strategic assessment, ensuring that a state’s strategies in armed conflict are thoroughly tested, evaluated against resource and other constraints, and aligned with national objectives. Civil–military relations also affect accountability for how the military is used and how well it performs, and the capacity to address organisational problems or resource misalignments within it. And ultimately, they affect public trust and confidence in one of the most important institutions in the state: the military. Such trust is foundational to building the societal consensus necessary to adequately and appropriately fund the armed forces. These are just some of the ways in which civil–military relations are vital to the state’s ability to develop the strategies and capabilities essential to deterring foreign aggression and to fighting wars effectively if deterrence fails.
Despite its importance, the topic of civil–military relations is too often neglected by national security professionals, by civilian leaders, and within the professional development of military personnel. For the military, in particular, the issues associated with civil–military relations can seem abstract or remote from the more concrete and tangible tasks required to prepare for a potential war. Yet without due attention to civil–military relations, the armed forces’ ability to perform this essential work is undermined.
Civil–military relations describe a set of interactions and mutual obligations between three sets of actors: the public, civilian leaders and the military. In those relations, each group has divergent perspectives, equities and responsibilities.[1] This article explores the roles of the public, civilian leaders and the military, describing essential responsibilities and outlining common challenges and obstacles that can work against each group fulfilling its respective obligations.[2] It conceptualises these obligations in general terms so that the core principles and issues can be assessed in the context of the unique and evolving experiences of different democracies, including Australia’s distinctive national experience. The text draws on many examples from the United States, where there has long been lively scholarly debate about civil–military relations, as well as on examples from other democracies, including Australia’s. The article aims to provide a descriptive survey of the variety and diversity of civil–military relations concerns so that readers have a sense of the full landscape of issues that can arise. The salient problems in a given political or strategic moment or national setting will inevitably vary; therefore, this article should be taken as a point of departure for future debate and research about civil–military relations tailored to different national contexts.
The Public’s Obligations
Of the three core actors, the public’s obligations in civil–military relations are probably the most straightforward, if also the least appreciated and reflected upon. At the most basic level, these obligations entail that the public thoughtfully and respectfully consider—and, when needed, scrutinise—the military organisation and its activities, as well as its performance in the missions and armed conflicts in which its forces and personnel are engaged on behalf of the country. The public should hold the military—and the civilians who oversee it—to a high standard, expecting accountability for problems and shortcomings, while understanding the vital role the military plays in protecting the country’s security.
To be sure, that ideal is rarely achieved in any democracy. In part, this arises from the simple fact that citizens’ time and attention are limited. Many democracies also maintain primarily professional militaries drawn from a narrow segment of society. In these contexts, citizens are less likely to have a baseline exposure to the military, and they lack significant incentives to devote time and attention to matters pertaining to it.
While these are challenges that are common across democracies, there are also specific cultural and societal dynamics that can further undermine the capacity of the public to meet its obligations in civil–military relations. One of these dynamics occurs when society evinces what author and journalist James Fallows characterises as a kind of blind reverence towards the military: a situation in which the military is highly revered symbolically and culturally, but the public knows very little about it. In his article ‘The Tragedy of the American Military’, Fallows describes how this dynamic is expressed in the United States.[3] He observes that the public deeply admires the military—often putting it on a pedestal—while noting that this regard is often superficial. Fallows frames this as a tragedy because what he believes the US military needs to remain healthy and protect the country’s security is the public’s attention, not simply its adulation.
There are several indications of this social esteem for the military in the US context. Since the 1990s, the military has been at or near the top in biannual polling by the Gallup organisation about Americans’ confidence in institutions, beating out the courts, police, and even religious institutions.[4] There are also many signs of this reverence in popular culture. At sporting events, soldiers are sometimes brought onto the playing field or into the arena with an array of patriotic symbols. At the same time, service members and veterans enjoy a variety of perquisites in civilian society, such as discounts at retailers or early boarding on airlines, that are often not made available to other service professions. Members of the public may approach soldiers in uniform, greeting them with the phrase, ‘Thank you for your service’. That sentiment is well-meaning and sincere but nonetheless frequently indicates a lack of familiarity or knowledge about how else to interact with service members. For some on the receiving end of that message, the interaction can feel alienating and distancing. As Marine Corps veteran and author Phil Klay explains, it can be disorienting for ‘warriors at the mall’[5] to interact with a society that knows little about the experience of military service.
Many Americans lack even basic knowledge about the military. In surveys by the US Army Recruiting Command in 2023, 50 per cent of respondents reported knowing little to nothing about military service.[6] A survey by the Association of the United States Army in 2022 found:
[N]early one-third of Gen Z respondents believe that most Army jobs are combat roles, though the Army offers over 200 jobs across a variety of fields. Further, just 51% of Gen Z respondents think that soldiers are allowed time to pursue their hobbies or recreation.
To try to counter this knowledge deficit, the US Army has invested in a promotional program called ‘Know your Army’, in which it develops short videos that are shown on various media platforms.[7]
The reasons for this disengagement are complex. One factor is the family basis for military service; nearly 80 per cent of those who join the US military have had a family member who served.[8] This makes it less likely that other citizens will get to know service members and naturally interact with them. The disproportionate location of military bases in the country’s sun belt, as well as the end of conscription in 1973, also contribute to this dynamic. Regardless of its causes, however, this ‘blind reverence’ can yield a superficiality in how the public views the military.
Equally unhelpful is a circumstance in which the public is simply uninterested in the military and shows little inclination to learn or engage with its affairs. In these cases, the military is not part of the national conversation in a meaningful sense. An atmosphere of complacency or even of scepticism about the importance of national defence in general—and the military in particular— may prevail. The public looks to the government to manage the affairs of the state and adopts a stance of indifference or what is assumed to be benign neglect.
A society’s understanding of the military may also be coloured by historical metaphors that are out of sync with its contemporary character or with the nature of the threat environment in which it operates. A mythology or mystification of the military, its history and its accomplishments can obscure current challenges in both domains. To be sure, commemoration and national memory, as well as honouring the sacrifices of those who have served, are essential in democratic societies; they help provide a shared national identity and help maintain a commitment by society to care for its veterans.
Yet deeply rooted cultural metaphors can also complicate the contemporary societal–military relationship. In the United States, the cultural perception of those who fought in World War II as the ‘greatest generation’ has served as a powerful narrative of unity and victory and a foundation for veneration of those who served in the war. In her book Looking for the Good War, however, Elizabeth Samet describes how this romanticised view can also foster a distorted understanding of how wars occur, and cause confusion and disorientation when they depart from that simple narrative.[9] Iconic films like Saving Private Ryan reinforce that theme, suggesting that wars worth fighting are defined by moral clarity and unfold in discrete failures and successes that ultimately build towards victory. Perhaps similarly, in Australia, the ANZAC spirit provides an important source of inspiration in its narrative about the grit and determination of young, inexperienced soldiers fighting heroically on behalf of their fledging nation. That conception is foundational to Australians’ national identity and to how they understand the role of the Army within it.[10] Yet that image is in some ways at odds with the modern Army’s character and the strategic challenges it faces today. That historical vantage point for viewing the military may make it harder for people to relate to and understand what is involved in military service and to support and honour service members in the concrete ways they may need in the present.[11]
All of the above dynamics inhibit both the society’s engagement with the military and the society’s capacity to meet its obligations to civil–military relations, especially in ensuring the military’s health and capacity to perform its ultimate job: fighting wars in defence of the country.
Why is such engagement important? The public plays an essential role in guaranteeing that elected leaders, who are ultimately in charge of the military, have the incentives to investigate problems and provide the military with adequate and appropriate resources, guidance and direction to protect the country’s security.[12] Public pressure is also essential to ensuring that myriad organisational inefficiencies, from those associated with procurement and acquisitions to those involving personnel recruitment and training, are addressed; absent that public attention, politicians can sometimes neglect their responsibilities and fail to promote reform, especially when it is politically difficult to do so or when the problems are complex and difficult to solve.[13] Demands for societal change create incentives for politicians to exercise oversight and address such issues.[14]
External pressure from society is especially important in addressing serious and systemic problems in the military organisation. Societal problems that afflict the military, such as sexual assault and harassment, can prove intractable without it. The record of how militaries deal with such problems on their own is not always encouraging. The US experience is once again instructive, showing how disruptive organisational changes needed to address endemic problems are less likely to occur without civilian direction.[15] Other serious deficiencies, such as the failure to address abusive or ineffectual leadership in the military, can prove similarly challenging without external pressure by civilian leadership prompted by societal attention.[16] Failure to address such problems can, in turn, have severe consequences for the health of the military. For example, one study found that mid-grade officers in the US Army are especially inclined to consider leaving service when they experience destructive leadership of this kind. In contrast, other studies have shown that concerns about sexual assault are a significant driver for women to leave the military.[17]
This accountability function is also especially important in wartime or when the military is engaged in domestic and foreign missions. Defects in how the military is prosecuting operations otherwise may be less likely to be addressed, and questions about when and whether such missions are a good use of the military’s resources are less likely to be aired.
Civilian Leaders’ Obligations
The country’s elected civilian leadership—its political leaders—also maintain essential obligations to their country’s civil–military relations. In liberal democracies, political leaders play a vital role as the political translation mechanisms through which the will of the people is channelled into how the military is resourced and organised, and when and how it is used for different missions and in armed conflict. Civil servants support elected leadership and provide expertise and bureaucratic capacity to help the military realise the objectives that elected leaders set for the armed forces; they help administer the military, including in processes of civilian oversight.[18] But the ultimate authority over the military in democratic settings, and the accountability for it, resides with political leaders.[19] This is true even in democracies with a well-developed and highly capable public service.[20]
Put otherwise, a key responsibility of elected leaders is to exercise civilian control over the military.[21] While many are familiar with the broad concept of civilian control, however, its meaning is often poorly misunderstood as reducible to the exercise of command and to the authority of the civilian leadership. Civilian control is thought to be intact as long as civilians are in charge and the military follows their orders and complies with their directives.
In practice, civilian control entails much more than following orders; rarely is civilian authority challenged and overt disobedience an issue in democratic militaries. Rather, civilian control is better understood as a process of oversight and coordination within the military domain that varies across and within democracies. Ultimately, that process aims to promote military effectiveness in service of the state’s overarching national security priorities: the integration of military activity, its responsiveness to internal and external constraints, the skill of its personnel and the quality of its weapons and equipment.[22]
The process of civilian control is a function of the institutions, routines and informal conventions through which civilians interact with the military and oversee its activities.[23] Effective civilian control requires a robust process through which the activities of the military—whether in peacetime planning or in wartime operations—are carefully scrutinised by elected leaders, supported by their executive and/or legislative staffs and civil servants in the defence bureaucracy. Civilian control is operationalised through the multiplicity of regular and routine interactions between and among civilians and uniformed officials.[24] It is only through these interactions that one can ensure that what is done in the military domain will support and promote elected leaders’ ultimate objectives.
Despite the centrality of civilian control to democratic civil–military relations, very few democracies have fully developed processes for its practice.[25] Therefore, one responsibility of political leaders is to maintain sufficient capacity and investment in civilian oversight of the military. In addition, political leaders must prioritise defence matters themselves and routinely devote the scarce time and resources of their staff to such concerns. It is essential that elected civilian leaders understand their unique roles and identities as actors in the civil–military sphere and how they diverge from those of both civil servants and the uniformed military.[26] Elected leaders have obligations and perspectives that are distinct from those of public servants; similarly, the obligations and perspectives of public servants differ from those of their uniformed counterparts, even when the two groups work closely in the defence bureaucracy.[27] Ambiguity and poor role differentiation can be contrary to the exercise of civilian control.[28]
In particular, elected leaders’ distinctive expertise includes their exposure to and focus on domestic political concerns that include but are also beyond the military and defence sphere; this broad perspective is essential to ensuring that policy and strategy across the state’s institutions are integrated. As part of their jobs, elected officials cultivate the political skills and acumen to help them play this role. Through civilian oversight they can ensure that developments within the military align with government priorities and that the institution is pressed to both report on and address any shortcomings.
This point underscores the importance of a related obligation, which is that politicians must ensure that adequate resources are devoted to cultivating civilian expertise in military affairs; this provides capacity for their staffs, political appointees and bureaucracy to support civilian oversight.[29] The acquisition of such expertise can be complicated for civilians who lack the structured educational opportunities that officers have access to at different career progression points in professional military education. The barriers to entry can be significant for civilians interested in military and defence matters, given the required technical knowledge, insight into and experience of military organisations, and knowledge of the fundamentals of armed conflict.[30] Even when civilians working in the political sphere or bureaucracy have prior military experience, that exposure is often a snapshot, at best, of the kinds of work or issues they must deal with when they become part of the defence establishment. Supporting investments in educational opportunities—such as building distinctive professional development programs or tracks primarily for civil servants in the defence space, freestanding technical programs for journalists or civil society groups, or curricula on defence issues in higher education—are ways that elected leaders can help build a pipeline of expertise. Indirectly, these actions promote a robust process of civilian control and oversight and thereby fulfil the obligation to promote healthy civil–military relations.
In addition to ensuring that there is sufficient human capital to provide for comprehensive civilian oversight, civilian officials need to ensure that the institutional infrastructure and routines are adequate. While the character of defence-related institutions will reflect and need to align with the particularities of a country’s national institutions, there is often room for improvement in most democratic systems. To illustrate, the United States maintains Congressional committees in both the Senate and the House that are devoted to the armed forces, and each of these committees has designated subcommittees specialising in specific issues pertinent to the US military. These committees commonly call on the Pentagon’s civilian leaders and its senior leaders to testify on concerns they have about the functioning of the defence bureaucracy or the uniformed military. While some hearings can become mired in partisan politics, considerable oversight work is undertaken on a routine basis in private. Even so, concerns persist that committee staffs are sometimes overburdened or lack the requisite expertise to help members of Congress in carrying out their oversight functions. A recent comprehensive study of oversight suggests that such problems in democracies are common and that, in some cases, those deficits are serious.[31]
However they are structured institutionally, oversight processes also need to enable interaction and feedback mechanisms across the military and civilian divide at different levels of the defence bureaucracy and military commands and staffs. Absent that institutional infrastructure, the civilian and military spheres can become siloed. In his study of civil–military relations in India, for example, Anit Mukherjee illustrates what can happen when civilian and military interaction is underdeveloped or truncated.[32] Bureaucrats are solidly in charge of administering the military; in this respect, civilian control is well established. But the nature of civilian control processes as they are practised often inhibits full engagement at different levels across the military and civilian divide. This is magnified by dynamics in which some in the civil service are less than receptive to the expertise, experience and perspectives of their military counterparts. They may discount the advice of military personnel, attributing it to parochialism, or assume that these personnel lack broad exposure or even the sophistication to engage with complex defence problems. Mukherjee shows how in India, dynamics in which civil servants discount military expertise in this manner have hindered procurement, operations, jointness, military education, promotions and defence planning, thereby harming the country’s national security.[33] To be sure, these biases can run both ways. Military personnel sometimes maintain negative stereotypes about public servants, viewing them as lacking essential technical expertise or experience, or as being overly caught up in bureaucratic routines. Bridging these culture divides is a challenge, but efforts to do so are vital to maintaining healthy civil–military relations.
Another key domain of civilian responsibility lies in the process of strategic assessment. Strategic assessment, broadly understood, refers to the interactions among military and civilian leaders at the apex of decision-making, where vital questions of military strategy are at stake. It encompasses examining the overall political goals of the country and what they imply for the military.[34] In support of the process of strategic assessment, core assumptions need to be probed and consideration needs to be given to how political objectives are translated into strategic concepts, operational plans and (at times) tactical engagements, and to how all of the above intersect in force development activities related to training, recruitment, procurement and the like.[35]
In the event of armed conflict, political leaders at the highest levels solicit advice from their military counterparts, weighing the costs and risks of different military options and assessing how well they advance strategic and political goals. Those consultative processes ideally involve a healthy and forthright discussion in which elected leaders, because they are accountable to and represent the population, have the final say.[36] The significance of those processes, however, goes well beyond the exercise of civilian authority. Equally important is the quality of how civilians and the military interact within them. In that advisory domain, the military and civilian leaders naturally and appropriately bring to the table divergent expertise, perspectives and priorities. Some differences in views and even some friction are therefore not unexpected and can be productive; they are necessary to ensure adequate investment in search and analysis and in constructive and thorough probing of the issues. Too much friction can prove dysfunctional, however, leading to competition, gamesmanship and rivalries between military and political leaders—as occurred in British civil–military relations under Prime Minister David Lloyd George during the First World War—or to a breakdown in communication, as occurred in the United States during the planning for the 2003 Iraq War under then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld.[37] President Abraham Lincoln’s interactions with the military in the American Civil War are sometimes cited as a more constructive example.[38]
Specifically, there are several pitfalls for civilians to avoid in the domain of strategic assessment and in advisory processes and interactions. First, civilians should be wary of viewing the military and civilian interface in transactional terms. Such an approach is sometimes associated with the scholar Samuel Huntington’s objective control model of civil–military relations, which he develops in his classic work The Soldier and the State.[39] While military officers may not be familiar with Huntington’s name, his concepts have diffused throughout military organisations in many democracies and have strongly shaped military culture.
Specifically, Huntington posits that there are two discrete spheres: a political sphere, which is the realm of civilians and in which decisions about the objectives of armed conflict are made; and a military sphere, where those decisions are implemented by military leaders. According to this approach, civilians deliberate and decide among themselves the overall political goals for the use of force. They then hand off this guidance to the military to implement; the military approaches that process in a technical and apolitical fashion. This approach translates, more practically, into civilians offering guidance about preferred military outcomes, and military leaders devising and delivering options pursuant to those objectives. If civilians do not like these options, they ask the military to revise and revisit them. In other words, strategic assessment is practised in purely transactional terms.[40]
A transactional approach carries with it four main dangers. First, it supports a static and top-down approach to strategy rather than a dynamic, iterative approach, or what Frank Hoffman describes as an ‘“end to end” approach … that encompasses policy formulation, strategy development, planning guidance, resource allocation and alignment, implementation oversight, and performance assessment based on feedback loops’.[41] Second, the siloing of the military and political spheres means that military expertise may not adequately inform discussion about overarching political objectives in an international crisis or armed conflict, and that these goals will not reflect constraints posed by the resources and capabilities of the military, or associated risks and costs. It can also inhibit the formulation of grand strategy or the integration of all instruments of statecraft—including diplomacy, financial tools and the like—with military resources.[42] Third, it supports a view among military professionals that war and military operations are ‘politics-free’ zones.[43] This approach fails to prime the military culturally to think through how military activity intersects with the political context in which even discrete tactical engagements or missions occur. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it leaves—as Hew Strachan describes it—strategy by the wayside, an ‘orphan’ from war.[44] Strategy is the space between political objectives and military goals; it is the conceptualisation of how military actions generate strategic effects to advance political goals. With the military focused on implementation and devising alternative operational plans, and the political leadership devising preferred end-states in isolation, the conversation about strategy is truncated. Hence, the model of normatively appropriate civil–military relations embraced by military and political leaders can profoundly shape strategic assessment in ways both good and bad for the country’s security.
In this vein, civilians and military should be mindful of the cross-cultural differences that they must bridge in interacting with each other, especially with respect to strategy-making.[45] Military leaders, because of the functional demands of their jobs and the hierarchical style of their organisations, may favour a transactional style in which they seek guidance once civilian leaders have decided on their objectives and priorities, which the military leaders can then implement. Civilian leaders may favour the same style for political reasons—for example, if they anticipate that the military may have views that are at odds with civilians’ policy preferences.
Often, however, civilians will approach high-level assessment in a very different style from their military counterparts. Civilians may use a dialectical process to weigh their political goals in tandem with an exploration of possible military options; this style is out of sync with military leaders’ preferences for a clearly defined, discrete and efficiently delivered delineation of civilian goals that they can then act upon. Elected civilian leadership, in deciding how and when to use military force, may be looking for different things from the advisory process than military leaders are accustomed to offering. They may be looking for what amounts to a theory of how force might or might not be used in support of some coalescing political objectives.
A second pitfall relates to the dangers that arise when political leaders marginalise the military or fail to solicit military leaders’ views fully. Robust strategic assessment requires that political leaders seek forthright advice from the military, even when it is at odds with their preferences. In other words, it is incumbent upon elected leaders to encourage and seek out appropriate practices and routines (and ensure that they exist) to engage military leaders on strategic matters. In addition, political leaders need to signal clearly in actions and statements that they want to hear views that might weigh against their preferred policies or strategies. Unless civilian leaders convey that they are receptive to hearing unfavourable views, they are unlikely to receive them.
At the same time, civilians should be wary of the reverse dynamic in which they simply neglect their roles in strategic assessment, either through inattention or through undue deference, and delegate implementation to military leaders of inchoate or poorly conceived strategic objectives.[46] Elected leaders, supported by their personal staffs and defence bureaucracy, need to be actively involved in making decisions about strategic matters.
Among the risks of politicians devoting insufficient time to and investment in strategic assessment during periods of peace is that the country will lack developed strategic principles grounding the force development and planning activities essential to preparing for war. Capabilities—the acquisition of weapons systems, equipment, personnel and other resources—may then amount to de facto strategy without an adequate theory underpinning how those capabilities support strategic and political objectives.
In wartime, civilian disengagement can have other pernicious effects. It can leave military commanders on their own to improvise strategy, or lead to its wholesale neglect. This might manifest in commanders maintaining a mindset that success in war is achieved through campaign- or theatre-level objectives, or equating cumulative tactical accomplishments with strategic-level success. Civilians can help mitigate this dynamic by intervening to prompt commanders to scrutinise operational- and tactical-level connections to higher-order strategic effects and political goals. To be sure, ideally, high-level commanders are already inclined to do so; cultivating the capacity and inclination for strategic thinking and prioritisation among senior leaders and commanders is of paramount importance to ensuring strategic effectiveness in war. But practically, military commanders often become absorbed in the operational and tactical levels of war, as these can take on an immediacy and momentum of their own in the midst of armed conflict that may be prioritised over probing more expansive, strategic effects. As Alice Hunt Friend puts it:
Operational and tactical-level contexts can have incentive structures that are separate from national purposes, and political leaders can lose control of military campaigns if they aren’t proactively evaluating the first-order diplomatic and political purposes of applying force.[47]
In part for this reason, civilians play a vital role in ensuring that connections between and among levels of military activity and political goals are robust.
In the absence of that civilian–military interface in strategic assessment, there is a tendency for countries to succumb to what I term ‘strategic backfilling’.[48] This occurs when operational and tactical developments cumulatively become a substitute for strategy. In other words, campaigns or battles are assumed to have strategic effects, whether or not they do.
Finally, one last set of obligations that civilian leaders have relates to the information they owe the public to which they are accountable. Political leaders need to speak to the public about how they see the country’s threat environment and the strategic challenges it faces and to explain the decisions they are making about the military in light of those security challenges. They need to decide the military’s jurisdiction, including how much and when it will be used in domestic roles related to civil functions (such as natural disasters or policing) and outline the trade-offs therein.
Elected leaders also need to speak openly about challenges facing the military, including when there is evidence of organisational deficiencies or breakdowns in the profession and its performance. They should, in turn, support military leaders speaking to the public (when appropriate) about such matters and how they are working to address them and otherwise holding themselves or their subordinates accountable. While there can be considerable disincentives for politicians to engage in this kind of forthright dialogue with the public, failing to provide it leaves the country’s citizens less prepared to fulfil their own obligations.
The Military’s Obligations
Finally, the military has various roles to play in promoting healthy civil–military relations. Paramount among these are its obligations to civilian oversight processes and in strategy and policy formulation. Most importantly, within advisory roles, military leaders owe civilians their forthright and candid advice. Even when it is uncomfortable, such as when political leaders are disinclined to hear views contrary to their preferences, military leaders must relay their assessments of the costs of risks of different policies and actions.
Here they must avoid what Carrie Lee calls the ‘indirect politicisation’ of military advice.[49] That phenomenon involves military leaders anticipating the preferences of political leaders and conforming their advice accordingly, even when doing so compromises their own true views and assessments. At the same time, military leaders must avoid the opposite tendency, which is to insist that their views prevail or contort their advice in ways that support their preferred outcomes.
A second set of obligations relates to the military’s role in ensuring its members maintain a healthy relationship with the society they serve. While, as described above, society can become detached from the military and develop distorted perceptions of it, the same can happen for military members and how they regard civilian society. Preventing that from happening is a core obligation, especially for military leaders, who must role-model and promote positive attitudes among their service members.
Ensuring that military members maintain a healthy relationship with society is complicated by the inherent differences between civilian and military life. Scholars have long debated questions related to how much the military, in both values and demographic composition, should mirror society.[50] Regardless of how those questions are resolved, however, the civilian and military worlds differ in significant ways. Serving in the military requires meeting physical fitness and other standards and sacrificing privileges and rights enjoyed by those in civilian society. Military culture demands conformity and it values hierarchy and regimentation in ways starkly at odds with civilian society, especially that found in liberal democracies.
Moreover, as Sir John Hackett articulated in his seminal work The Profession of Arms, the military maintains a contract of ‘unlimited liability’ with society.[51] Naomi Shephard captures its significance in the Australian context:
When committing to service within the Australian Army, individuals will experience personal sacrifice at all levels. They will be exposed to additional laws, surrender basic human rights and freedom and, at times, assume dangerous or deadly roles. They must be willing to apply lethal force against the enemy and be prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice of their own life.[52]
While some occupations in civilian life also entail significant risk and sacrifice, the ‘unlimited liability’ contract is a stark reminder of the commitments that define military service and distinguish it from civilian society.
While these differences between civilian and military life are to be expected, they can morph into something more concerning: service members can at times develop negative views of their counterparts in civilian society because of the standards the service members are held to and the sacrifices they make. In the worst cases, they can sometimes evince a blanket sense of superiority towards those outside the military. Importantly, this sense of superiority is distinct from having pride in service. Indeed, it is essential that individuals derive meaning from and are proud of their role in defending the country; both are needed, not only for service members’ personal wellbeing but to support morale, cohesion, good order and discipline in the military organisation as a whole. Having pride in service, however, is different from assuming that being in the military makes one an inherently better person than those who do not serve.
In a classic article from the 1990s, journalist and author Thomas Ricks documented these attitudes in his experiences interacting with US Marines during their boot camp training. After they returned from leave following their training, many of the Marines shared with Ricks sentiments that spoke of their alienation from their former lives as civilians and the contempt they felt for civilian society. As he puts it:
At various times each of these new Marines seemed to experience a moment of private loathing for public America. They were repulsed by the physical unfitness of civilians, by the uncouth behaviour they witnessed, and by what they saw as pervasive selfishness and consumerism.[53]
More recent surveys of officers support Ricks’s anecdotal findings, showing that a sizable minority views military culture as superior to civilian society—more loyal, honest, hardworking and the like.[54]
Attitudes of superiority of this kind are corrosive to military professionalism. One defining feature of a profession is the ‘responsibility ethic’, or the understanding that the profession exists to serve all of society and answers ultimately to it.[55] Fulfilling that ethic requires more than subordination to civilian decisions made on behalf of the electorate; it entails some degree of humility towards and regard for society, even when it is at its most fractious and difficult. This can be more difficult to sustain when the public itself has a skewed view of the military, such as when it puts the military on a pedestal and also considers it better than society. Even so, the military in a democratic society stands—in some measure—apart from society but not above it. Maintaining a keen awareness of that distinction is a vital obligation for the military professional.
The military has two other obligations related to its professionalism. The first involves its commitment to the cultivation of expertise, which is another defining feature of a profession.[56] There are many dimensions of this expertise, but one that merits particular attention is the requirement, particularly for those assuming high-level leadership and command positions, to develop the capacity for strategic thinking and especially the skill set to think about the intersection of politics, strategy and military activity. Herein lies another danger of Huntington’s implied premise that there can exist a clean differentiation between the realm of politics and the domain of military activity. His model presumes that the latter is exclusively composed of technical and tactical endeavours and that acquiring expertise in those areas is sufficient for the military profession. Military leaders should, in this view, extinguish all considerations of politics from their roles as experts in the profession of arms; in Huntington’s terms, they should strive to be ‘politically sterile’.[57]
The military’s understanding of its relationship to politics can be poorly developed in democracies. Military personnel today are often taught to be ‘apolitical’, but that concept can be interpreted too broadly.[58] Military personnel should remain apolitical in the sense that they avoid engaging in partisan contestation and electoral politics.[59] This ‘nonpartisan ethic’ entails that military members forgo public advocacy of policies they favour and that they refrain from openly affiliating with causes or political leaders in campaigns and elections.[60] But ‘politics’ means myriad other things, and many of these fall within the domain of the military professional. For example, it encompasses the way that the political system or other features of an adversary’s society or institutions affect how it might respond to military actions in armed conflict, including battlefield outcomes; it encompasses how the domestic politics of one’s own country may affect the availability of resources and the public support for the conflicts in which the military is engaged; and, on a smaller scale, it involves understanding the small-p politics of how one’s unit, staff or office operates.[61]
The country’s security ultimately depends on the capacity of military leaders and commanders to develop the ability to think agilely and comprehensively about politics in these ways. Understanding and engaging with them is essential to cultivating the expertise and commitment to learning that are defining features of the profession of arms and fundamental obligations of the military.
The final core obligation relates to the requirement that the profession commit to self-policing and self-regulation. Professions are delegated autonomy by society to practise their craft; that delegation, however, is contingent on the profession’s maintaining the trust of society. With that grant of autonomy comes the responsibility to establish and enforce ethical and performance-related standards.
To this end, military leaders need to think carefully about their ‘theory of accountability’, or how they understand what is entailed in answering for, evaluating and remedying organisational or performance-related weaknesses and failings.[62] They need to maintain a robust understanding of what accountability involves and how to pursue it.
Accountability means and requires more than one thing. It requires holding individuals to account for failures of judgement, incompetence or poor leadership and applying disciplinary measures as appropriate up and down the chain of command. This, indeed, is a familiar understanding of accountability in the military domain. Even so, militaries—even in well-established liberal democracies—can fall short in how well and thoroughly they assess culpability and address failings.[63] This is especially true at senior levels, in part because discerning a direct cause-and-effect connection between a leader’s decisions or actions and poor organisational outcomes is often complicated. The institution must hold its senior officers accountable to meet its obligations to the public and its civilian overseers, but this alone is not sufficient.
A more complete approach moves beyond an individually oriented theory of accountability. It seeks to address the institutional and cultural forces that incentivise individual action and thereby predispose people towards adverse decisions and actions. Military leaders need to hold the organisation to account for institutional-level causes of poor outcomes and performance, while also disciplining individuals when appropriate. Thinking through and ensuring that a robust theory of accountability is operationalised and practised in the military domain is essential.
It is worth considering one final obligation—this one to society. The military needs to work to ensure that the society it serves has a sense of ownership over and engagement with it. In other words, the military plays a role in helping society develop a more complete and substantial understanding of the organisation and its members. Military leaders should think creatively about how they can engage with the public and play their role in bridging this civil–military gap. This might entail institutional outreach efforts or simply service members or veterans sharing their individual experiences with others in the community, even when it is uncomfortable or unfamiliar to do so.[64] As Brad West and Cate Carter put it, with reference to the Australian experience, bridging the societal–military divide requires overcoming ‘the disinclination of members of the ADF to represent their cultural ethnography’.[65] These efforts will help provide a foundation for the public to meet its own obligations to civil–military relations and, in turn, for politicians to do the same.
Conclusion and Recommendations
The public, the military and civilian leaders all play vital, intersecting and self-reinforcing roles in civil–military relations in democracies. Each maintains mutual obligations—roles and responsibilities—to ensure those relations are as healthy as possible. While no democratic country ever achieves the ideal, working towards it is essential. To this end, civilian officials, military leaders and members of the public can each help in their own way to advance that effort.
In particular, civilian leaders might begin by assessing the state’s architecture for civilian control and ensuring that the incentives and resources within governmental institutions and bureaucratic processes are appropriately aligned and effective. They can also invest in building stronger pipelines of expertise within the bureaucracy, educational institutions and civil society to provide sufficient downstream capacity for civilian oversight and, more broadly, foundational knowledge about the military in the public domain. Politicians can and should be transparent and forthright in speaking to the public about issues relevant to the military and defence, even when it is politically challenging to do so. In so doing, they can help convey to the public that it has a stake in such matters.
As part of these efforts, elected leaders might think carefully about how they are interacting with their military counterparts in advisory and consultative processes on strategic and policy matters. Here they might also invest in reviews of best practice and past shortcomings in this area. As the analysis above suggests, the aim here is to promote robust and rigorous debate and discussion, while avoiding succumbing to the pathologies sometimes observed in civil–military relations in which political leaders variously neglect, marginalise or unduly defer to the military. Rigorous engagement is a sound metric; as argued above, some friction and difference in perspective between the military and civilian sides is healthy and appropriate.
For their part, military leaders can also help improve civil–military relations by encouraging greater study and discussion of civil–military relations in senior service colleges and throughout the force, as well as informally in their staffs and units and within their personal social networks in order to socialise a normative commitment to the issues. More specifically, in advisory processes they should strive to offer advice and insights to civilian leaders candidly and forthrightly. Military leaders can also work to ensure that the military develops a robust theory of accountability internally and that it practises it throughout the organisation. There is no better way to build trust and promote cohesion than for subordinates to see that organisational faults or negative outcomes are being taken seriously and addressed. Senior leaders can also role-model healthy engagement with society, including expressing pride in service, while avoiding themes that (often unwittingly) reinforce attitudes of superiority. Military personnel at all levels can do the same, thereby helping to reinforce healthy norms and conventions of behaviour among their peers and subordinates. They can seek to engage members of the public they interact with in their communities, especially those who might not know much about the military and military life, thereby bridging the civil–military divide.
Finally, members of civil society, including journalists, public intellectuals, university professors and beyond, can seek to foster more curiosity and interest in the country’s military. They can role-model respect and regard, not by mystifying the military and putting it on a pedestal but by conveying its purpose and functions while holding it to a high standard. Reverence for military service and its sacrifices—and public rituals to that end—is vital. Yet activities that allow the public to get to know the military and feel an organic connection to it are also important. Perhaps most importantly, the public should be encouraged to feel a sense of ownership over its military, which will enable the public to take seriously the obligations that come with that role.
Endnotes
[1] For an overview of these distinctions see Jessica Blankshain, ‘A Primer on US Civil–Military Relations for National Security Practitioners’, Wild Blue Yonder, 6 July 2020, at: www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/Wild-Blue-Yonder/Site-Assets/PDFs/WBY%20-%206%20July%202020.pdf.
[2] This article develops themes delivered in my keynote address for the Chief of Army Symposium, 26–27 September 2025.
[3] James Fallows, ‘The Tragedy of the American Military’, The Atlantic 315, no. 1 (2015): 50–68.
[4] Peter D Feaver, Thanks for Your Service: The Causes and Consequences of Public Confidence in the US Military (Oxford University Press, 2023); Kori Schake and James Mattis, Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2016). For a global perspective on trends in confidence in the military, see Pedro Accorsi and Ronald Krebs, ‘The Soldier in the State: Explaining Public Trust in the Armed Forces’, Comparative Political Studies 58, no. 13 (2024): 2795–2830, at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00104140241306956.
[5] Phil Klay, ‘Warrior at the Mall’, New York Times, 14 April 2018, at: www.nytimes.com/2018/04/14/opinion/sunday/the-warrior-at-the-mall.html.
[6] ‘Facts and Figures’, U.S. Army Recruiting Command (website), at: https://recruiting.army.mil/pao/facts_figures.
[7] ‘Survey: Gen Z Unaware of Many Benefits of Service’, AUSA: Association of the United States Army (website), 17 June 2022, at: www.ausa.org/news/survey-gen-z-unaware-many-benefits-service.
[8] Amy Schafer, ‘Generations of War: The Rise of the Warrior Caste and the All-Volunteer Force’, Center for a New American Security (website), 8 May 2017, at: www.cnas.org/publications/reports/generations-of-war.
[9] See the interview with the author in ‘Challenging a Romanticized View of the WWII Era: “The Myth Always Seems to Win Out”’ (video), PBS News Hour, 16 February 2022, at: www.pbs.org/newshour/show/challenging-a-romanticized-view-of-the-wwii-era-the-myth-always-seems-to-win-out.
[10] Brad West and Cate Carter, ‘Introduction’, in Brad West and Cate Carter (eds), The New Australian Military Sociology (Berghahn Books, 2024).
[11] Ibid., p. 6; James Brown, Anzac’s Long Shadow: The Cost of Our National Obsession (Melbourne: Redback, 2014); Cameron Moore and Jo Brick, ‘Australian Civil–Military Relations: Distinct Cultural and Constitutional Foundations’, Australian Journal of Defence and Strategic Studies 4, no. 2 (2022): 217–234, at: www.defence.gov.au/defence-activities/research-innovation/research-publications/australian-journal-defence-and-strategic-studies-volume-4-number-2.
[12] William Rapp, ‘Crisis in the Civil-Military Triangle?’, in Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer (eds), Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics and Modern War (Oxford University Press, 2020), pp. 191–206.
[13] Michael Evans, ‘Fatal Distraction: Unready for War’, Quadrant, 28 October 2024, at: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/defence/fatal-distraction-unready-for-war.
[14] The US experience is illustrative. Civilian oversight, prompted by public pressure and media exposure, has been essential to addressing these problems. See Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military, Hard Truths and the Duty to Change: Recommendations from the Independent Review Commission on Sexual Assault in the Military, 2 July 2021, at: https://media.defense.gov/2021/Jul/02/2002755437/-1/-1/0/IRC-FULL-REPORT-FINAL-1923-7-1-21.PDF/IRC-FULL-REPORT-FINAL-1923-7-1-21.PDF; and ‘Secretary of the Army Announces Missing Soldier Policy, Forms People First Task Force to Implement Fort Hood Independent Review Committee (FHIRC) Recommendations, U.S. Army (website), 8 December 2020, at: www.army.mil/article/241490/secretary_of_the_army_announces_missing_soldier_policy_forms_people_first_task_force_to_implement_fort_hood_independent_review_committee_fhirc_recommendations.
[15] A key change pressed by civilian lawmakers in the face of resistance from the military has been removing prosecutions for sexual assault from the chain of command and placing them in the hands of independent prosecutors. See ‘Sexual Assault Now Tried Outside Military Chain of Command’, Air Force Materiel Command (website), 28 December 2023, at: www.afmc.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3627870/sexual-assault-now-tried-outside-military-chain-of-command; Steve Benyon and Patricia Kime, ‘Military Domestic Violence Convictions Skyrocketed After Commanders Were Removed from Process’, Military.com, 24 June 2025, at: www.military.com/daily-news/investigations-and-features/2025/06/24/military-domestic-violence-convictions-skyrocketed-after-commanders-were-removed-process.html.
[16] On these leadership issues see Robert Mb Flak, ‘Breaking the Cycle: Eradicating Toxic Leadership’, Army University Press: NCO Journal, 8 January 2024, at: www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/NCO-Journal/Archives/2024/January/Breaking-the-Cycle; Lieutenant Colonel Darrell W Aubrey, The Effect of Toxic Leadership, strategy research project, United States Army War College, 2012, at: https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA560645.pdf.
[17] See George E Reed and Richard A Olsen, ‘Toxic Leadership: Part Deux’, Military Review (November–December 2010): 61, at: www.armyupress.army.mil/Portals/7/military-review/Archives/English/MilitaryReview_20101231_art011.pdf; Andrew R Morral, Miriam Matthews, Matthew Cefalu, Terry L Schell and Linda Cottrell, Effects of Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment on Separation from the U.S. Military: Findings from the 2014 RAND Military Workplace Study (Santa Monica CA: RAND Corporation, 2021).
[18] I include elected leaders, civil servants in the defence bureaucracy, and other political appointees broadly under the term civilians, although the relative importance of each varies somewhat across democracies. In Australia, for example, the public service plays a powerful role in defence, as institutionalised in the diarchy. In other countries, such as in the United States, the permanent civil service is important but often more of a background player without a strong culture in the defence domain. There may also exist a layer of political appointees above the civil service, as once again is present in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (in the US this role is akin to that of defence minister and is not a senior public servant as in Australia). These individuals assist the Secretary of Defense in translating administration policy into the military domain and in exercising oversight within the executive branch. On these differences, see comments by Michael Evans in Australian Defence Force, Civil–Military Relations in Australia: Past, Present and Future, Profession of Arms Seminar Series: Proceedings (Canberra: Australian Government, 2021), p. 57, at: www.defence.gov.au/defence-activities/research-innovation/research-publications/civil-military-relations-australia-past-present-future.
[19] Peter D Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil–Military Relations (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 2005).
[20] Comments by Michael Evans in Australian Defence Force, Civil–Military Relations in Australia.
[21] Richard H Kohn, ‘How Democracies Control the Military’, Journal of Democracy 8, no. 4 (1997): 140–53, at: www.journalofdemocracy.org/articles/how-democracies-control-the-military.
[22] Risa Brooks and Elizabeth Stanley (eds), Creating Military Power: The Sources of Military Effectiveness (Stanford University Press, 2007).
[23] Alice Hunt Friend, Mightier Than the Sword: Civilian Control of the Military and the Revitalization of Democracy (Stanford University Press, 2024); David Auerswald, Phillip Lagassé and Stephen Saideman, Overseen or Overlooked? Legislators, Armed Forces, and Democratic Accountability (Stanford University Press, 2025).
[24] Hunt Friend, Mightier than the Sword; Mara Karlin, ‘Civilian Oversight in the Pentagon: Who Does It and How?’, in Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer (eds), Reconsidering American Civil–Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics and Modern War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 85–96.
[25] Auerswald et al., Overseen or Overlooked?.
[26] Hunt Friend, Mightier than the Sword.
[27] Mick Ryan, ‘A Distinctly Australian Approach to Civil–Military Relations’, Lowy Institute (website), 28 April 2025, at: www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/distinctly-australian-approach-civil-military-relations.
[28] West and Carter, ‘Introduction’, p. 4.
[29] Alice Hunt Friend, ‘The Civilian and the State: Politics at the Heart of Civil–Military Relations’, War on the Rocks, 17 October 2022, at: https://warontherocks.com/the-civilian-and-the-state-politics-at-the-heart-of-civil-military-relations.
[30] On such barriers to entry in the US experience, see the entries by Risa Brooks and Sam Brannen in the H-Diplo roundtable review of Alice Hunt Friend’s book Mightier than the Sword: ‘Jervis Forum Roundtable 17-17 on Friend, Mightier than the Sword’, The Jervis Forum, 24 November 2025, at: https://issforum.org/roundtables/roundtable-review-17-17-alice-hunt-friend-mightier-than-the-sword.
[31] Auerswald et al., Overseen or Overlooked?.
[32] Anit Mukherjee, The Absent Dialogue: Politicians, Bureaucrats, and the Military in India (Oxford University Press, 2019).
[33] Ibid.
[34] Allan Millet and Williamson Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, 2nd edition (Cambridge University Press, 2010).
[35] Risa Brooks, Shaping Strategy: The Civil–Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton University Press, 2008); Risa Brooks, ‘What is “Good” Strategic Assessment?’, in Heidi B Demarest and Erica D Borghard (eds), US National Security Reform: Reassessing the National Security Act (New York: Routledge, 2018), pp. 26–45.
[36] Eliot A Cohen, Supreme Command (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002).
[37] On these cases, see Brooks, Shaping Strategy.
[38] See Cohen, Supreme Command. For other examples of good and bad civilian leadership and command in war, see Lawrence Freedman, Command: The Politics of Military Operations from Korea to Ukraine (Oxford University Press, 2022).
[39] Samuel P Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil–Military Relations (Cambridge MA: Belknap Press, 2002 [1957]).
[40] Risa Brooks, ‘Paradoxes of Professionalism: Rethinking Civil–Military Relations in the United States’, International Security 44, no. 4 (2020): 7–44, at: https://direct.mit.edu/isec/article/44/4/7/12253/Paradoxes-of-Professionalism-Rethinking-Civil; Risa Brooks, ‘Beyond Huntington: US Military Professionalism Today’, Parameters 51, no. 1 (2021): 65–77, at: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/parameters/vol51/iss1/8.
[41] Frank G Hoffman and G Alexander Crowther, ‘Strategic Assessment and Adaptation: The Surges in Iraq and Afghanistan’, in Richard D Hooker Jr and Joseph J Collins (eds), Lessons Encountered: Learning from the Long War (Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 2015), p. 90, at: https://digitalcommons.ndu.edu/books-and-book-chapters/10.
[42] On the importance of these instruments of statecraft, see Asia-Pacific Development, Diplomacy & Defence Dialogue, What Does It Look Like for Australia to Use All Tools of Statecraft in Practice (Canberra, 2023), at: https://asiapacific4d.com/idea/all-tools-of-statecraft. For a classic work on the challenges of integrating military means with other tools of statecraft, see Barry Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine (Cornell University Press, 1984). Also see Brooks and Stanley (eds), Creating Military Power.
[43] Brooks, ‘Paradoxes of Professionalism’; Dayne Nix, ‘American Civil–Military Relations: Samuel P Huntington and the Political Dimensions of Military Professionalism’, Naval War College Review 65, no. 2 (2012): 88–104, at: https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1431&context=nwc-review.
[44] Hew Strachan, ‘Making Strategy: Civil–Military Relations after Iraq’, Survival 48, no. 3 (2006): 67, at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00396330600905510; Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi? Obama, McChrystal and the Operational Level of War’, Survival 52, no. 5 (2010): 157–182, at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00396338.2010.522104.
[45] Janine Davidson, ‘The Contemporary Presidency: Civil–Military Friction and Presidential Decision Making: Explaining the Broken Dialogue’, Presidential Studies Quarterly 43, no. 1 (2013): 131–136, at: https://doi.org/10.1111/psq.12006; Rosa Brooks, ‘Thought Cloud: The Real Problem with the Civilian–Military Gap’, Foreign Policy, 2 August 2012, at: https://foreignpolicy.com/2012/08/02/thought-cloud; James Golby and Mara Karlin, ‘Why “Best Military Advice” Is Bad for the Military—and Worse for Civilians’, Orbis 62, no. 1 (2018): 143–145, at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.orbis.2017.11.010.
[46] Polina Beliakova, ‘Erosion by Deference: Civilian Control and the Military in Policymaking’, Texas National Security Review 4, no. 3 (2021): 55–75, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/13988; Alice Hunt Friend and Sharon K Weiner, ‘Principals with Agency: Assessing Civilian Deference to the Military’, Texas National Security Review 5, no. 4 (2022): 11–28, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/43941; Risa Brooks, Jim Golby and Heidi Urben, ‘Crisis of Command: America’s Broken Civil–Military Relations Imperils National Security’, Foreign Affairs (May/June 2021): 64–75, at: www.jstor.org/stable/27121279.
[47] Alice Hunt Friend, ‘“Micromanagement” and Military Operational Autonomy’, Center for Strategic and International Studies (website), 22 March 2017, at: www.csis.org/analysis/micromanagement-and-military-operational-autonomy. On the operational-level bias, also see Hew Strachan, ‘Strategy or Alibi?’.
[48] Risa Brooks, ‘Revisiting the Janus-Face: Civil–Military Relations and Strategic Assessment’, in Aurel Croissant, David Kuehn and David Pion-Berlin (eds), Research Handbook on Civil–Military Relations (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2024).
[49] Carrie A Lee, The Politics of Military Operations, PhD thesis, Stanford University, 2015, at: https://carrieannlee.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/lee_thepoliticsofmilitaryoperations.pdf.
[50] Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: The Free Press, 1960); Peter D Feaver and Richard H Kohn (eds), Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil–Military Gap and American National Security (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001); Huntington, The Soldier and the State.
[51] John Hackett, The Profession of Arms (London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1983).
[52] Naomi Shephard, ‘Smart Soldier—Leadership for the Profession of Arms—An Unlimited Liability’, The Cove, 14 July 2021, at: https://cove.army.gov.au/article/smart-soldier-leadership-profession-arms-unlimited-liability.
[53] Thomas E Ricks, ‘The Widening Gap Between Military and Society’, The Atlantic, July 1997, at: www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1997/07/the-widening-gap-between-military-and-society/306158.
[54] Feaver and Kohn (eds), Soldiers and Civilians; Susan Bryant, Brett Swaney and Heidi Urben, ‘From Citizen Soldier to Secular Saint: The Societal Implications of Military Exceptionalism’, Texas National Security Review 4, no. 2 (2021): 9–24, at: http://dx.doi.org/10.26153/tsw/13199; Risa Brooks and Sharan Grewal, ‘‘‘Twice the Citizen”: How Military Attitudes of Superiority Undermine Civilian Control in the United States’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 66, no. 4–5 (2022): 623–650, at: https://doi.org/10.1177/00220027211065417.
[55] See Matthew Moten, ‘Who Is a Member of the Military Profession?’, Joint Force Quarterly 62, no. 3 (2011): 14–17, at: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Joint-Force-Quarterly/Joint-Force-Quarterly-62. For more on the character and obligations of the military profession, see Donald M Snider, ‘The U.S. Army as Profession’, in Don M Snider and Lloyd J Matthews (eds), The Future of the Army Profession (Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2002), p. 14; and Nathan K Finney and Tyrell O Mayfield (eds), Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics (Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2018).
[56] Jo Brick, ‘The Military Profession: Law, Ethics and the Profession of Arms’, in Finney and Mayfield (eds), Redefining the Modern Military.
[57] Huntington, The Soldier and the State, pp. 86–87.
[58] Carnes Lord, ‘On Military Professionalism and Civilian Control’, Joint Force Quarterly 78 (2015): 70–74, at: https://ndupress.ndu.edu/Joint-Force-Quarterly/Joint-Force-Quarterly-78-2; Mackubin T Owens, ‘Military Officers: Political Without Partisanship’, Strategic Studies Quarterly 9, no. 3 (2015): 92, at: www.airuniversity.af.edu/SSQ/Display/Article/1051634/volume-09-issue-3-fall-2015; Brian Babcock-Lumish, ‘Uninformed, Not Uniformed? The Apolitical Myth’, Military Review (September–October 2013): 48–56, at: www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/2013-Archive; Carsten F Roennfeldt, ‘Wider Officer Competence: The Importance of Politics and Practical Wisdom’, Armed Forces & Society 45, no. 1 (2017): 59–77, at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X17737498.
[59] Marybeth P Ulrich, ‘Civil–Military Relations Norms and Democracy: What Every Citizen Should Know’, in Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks and Daniel Maurer (eds), Reconsidering American Civil–Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics and Modern War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), pp. 41–62.
[60] For an extensive discussion of the nonpartisan ethic in the US context, see Heidi A Urben, Party, Politics, and the Post-9/11 Army (Amherst NY: Cambria Press, 2021).
[61] Brooks, ‘Paradoxes of Professionalism’, p. 12.
[62] See Risa Brooks and Heidi Urben, ‘To Reflect or Deflect: Assessing Internal Accountability in the Military’, paper presented at the biannual meeting of the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society (Reston VA: 25 October 2025).
[63] This has been an important theme among many veterans in the US in their accounts of the Afghanistan War. See, for example, Jason Dempsey’s reflections on accountability during the Afghanistan War: Jason Dempsey, ‘The Accountability-Avoidance Two-Step’, in Andrew Bacevich and Daniel A Sjursen (eds), Paths of Dissent: Soldiers Speak Out Against America’s Misguided Wars (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008). Also see Thomas E Ricks, ‘Can the Military Learn From Its Mistakes?’, Washington Post, 25 October 2013, at: www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/can-the-military-learn-from-its-mistakes/2013/10/25/ce8df7e6-3b31-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html.
[64] Crispin Burke, ‘How Veterans Can Help Bridge the Civil–Military Divide’, The Atlantic, 13 November 2017, at: www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/11/how-veterans-can-help-bridge-the-civilian-military-divide/545669.
[65] West and Carter, ‘Introduction’.
