Essay on Civil-Military Relations: A Political Science Survey and Taxonomy

Civil-military relations is a political science subfield that deals with the relationships between civilian society and the military, focusing on control of the military by powerful civilian authorities (Feaver, 2017). The political scientists have been seeking solutions to the issue of "who will guard the guardians." The essay presented in this paper entails the survey of political science and the knowledge of civil-military relations. Further, the discussion presents a rough taxonomy of theoretical developments and research avenues for future advancements. The main area of focus in the essay is the relationship between the civilians and the military spheres, political philosophers, and the civil-military problematics.

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The most disturbing aspect of civil-military relations is coups. Coups symbolize the military exploitation of their coercive power to overthrow the civilian rulers. In examining coups, there are two primary considerations, namely, the frequency of organizing coups and the success of the coups. Coups indicate both the strengths and weaknesses of a military. On the one hand, compared to the other nations, the military superiority of a country may suppress the other actors. Also, the inability of the military to access the desired armaments through the political processes is a sign of weakness. Coups have not entirely disappeared, but they are less evident in most parts of the world. Besides, the probabilities of coup success have dropped, making the coups less frequent (Cassell, Booth & Seligson, 2018). Typically, coups require much capital and adequate support from both a fraction of the government and military, and thus, it is challenging to conduct it successfully. Therefore, the use of coups to predict the nature of civil-military relation has lacked the fundamental changes that have occurred over time; consequently, it is practically invalid.

America has conducted a series of CIA-supported coups during the second half of the 20th Century. Some of the documented coups include Iran's coup 1951, Brazil 1964, Chile 1973, and Congo 1960 (Cassell et al. 2018). In 1953, Mohammed Mossadegh, the Iranian prime minister, was forcefully removed from office and arrested when he tried to challenge the authority of Shah. Notably, it was at the height of the cold war, and the United States being the superpower, wanted to manifest its military prowess, and therefore, it executed the Iranian coup under the code: TPAJAX. In 1964, the US-backed up a military coup that was led by Humberto Branco Castello to remove in power the Brazilian president Joao Goulart. The American CIA provided support and encouraged street rallies for those who supported the removal of the then-president. In 1970, the United States was opposed to the elected president of Chile Salvador Allende, and therefore the CIA worked with President Richard Nixon to arrange for a coup against Allende. The CIA further provided weapons, but later on, the plan failed because the CIA agency lost confidence. Therefore the United States has a long record of coups which they have supported in different countries in the world.

The second aspect of importance in civil-military relations is the military influence dichotomy. Military influence suggests that the military institution of a given nation may appear politically powerful, while the state does not require a forceful takeover to seize direct power. The military exercises its influence through four distinct ways, which include political bargaining, force, official prerogative, and expert advice (Rukavishnikov & Pugh 2018). However, Colton's approach of measuring military influence does not identify the civilian abdication and the concealed influence. In the United States, the division of labor in the "civilian matters" and "military matters" has engineered most of the conflicts in the civil-military (Feaver 2017). The main issue affecting the civil-military relations is fusionism, the political and philosophical fusion of combination of social conservatism and traditionalist with economic and political right libertarianism. In this kind of situation, it is tough to distinguish between political leadership and the military. Fusionism, as discussed by many political scientists, erupted as a result of the Second World War, where many large and powerful armies were established.

The American military influence is built on power and alliance through the Soviet Union. In American military history, there has been a tradition of strength and cooperation in hundreds of years. Rather than building a dominant United States military, the U.S leaders focused on creating global institutions that governed security and trade, resulting in a robust chain of cooperation. America has a superior navy, globe troops, and an arsenal of powerful missiles compared to many other nations. However, maintaining the armaments is very costly in other countries, thus residing in making partnerships with the United States' shared security. However, having such advanced weapons poses a higher risk to the government, and especially if the control of the arms is in the hands of the military. Most of the coups that are carried out in most of the states are as a result of the power vested on the civil-military, either legally or illegally.

The main issue identified in civil-military relations is that the civil political leaders use power to gain civilian control through dictatorship, conflicts of transition periods. However, leaders lack the possible abilities to control defense affairs. The military, however, should not be allowed to lead with unmatched political influences that limit the state's ability to establish strong and capable military relations. In most of the recent researches, the gap between civilians and military worlds is inevitable and most likely critical. The superiority in the military has been taken to the extreme, forcing the government to seek means of reducing the gap between the civilians and the military. However, at some point, the gap between the military and society seems to be widening. Notably, the government is experiencing a hard time trying to bridge the gap. At the end of the Cold War and the current state, the civilians have been seeking ways of acknowledging the existence of the civil-military, cultural difference, and the policies to make to reduce the gap to a reasonable level. Therefore, although the civil political leaders are in a position to control the civilians through dictatorship, it has been a challenge for them to take full control of the military.

In the sphere of civilian-military, the concepts of ideological, ethnocultural, and political factors are circumscribed. The inherent shaping forces for civil-military relations are ethnic cleavages and ethnic identity. It is essential to mention the effects arising from transitioning from authoritarian to democratic leadership. In situations where the civilians inherit power through peaceful means, then it translates to mean that there is insufficient power to control the military through political means. On the contrary, a state that embraces a violent transition through armed struggle will have a strong army that can keep an eye on the military. The primary consideration in maintaining civilian-military relationships is through joining some influential military organizations. David and Morten (2008), affirms the need for weaker states to develop civilian control structures as a prerequisite to join prominent organizations such as NATO. However, varied civil-military relations patterns may result in different nuclear control and command, leading to dangerous atomic proliferation. Some relationships in the civil-military may impose a state to war or even adopt some alternative offensive strategies in the course of self-defense.

In the documented political science records, there is no consensus in the definite control measures to the civil-military relationships, but there is an insight in crafting several control techniques. To begin with, in most cases, the civil-military seems to overpower the government and practically take control of the political environment. Therefore, the control mechanisms are based on the ability of the military to subvert power and the disposition of the army in becoming insubordinate. Where the militaries in a state do not respect the legal frameworks of the country, the civilian government can deport the militaries far from sources of political power. According to Cassell et al. (2018), some states use constitutional restraints to bind the military to subversion legally. Additionally, the civilian government can weaken the army by keeping them divided or small in size and then rely on the citizenry defense as it was the case in the United States before the twentieth century.

The most suitable policies to narrow the civil-military culture gap are by encouraging the military to reach out to the civilians. As much as the civilians must be allowed to control the military, the military should look for ways of talking to the civilians and listen to the orders from the government. There is a need for a dialogue between the civilians and the military, where the civilians and the military elites would be expected to attend schools for strategic military reasoning. Through conducting the discussions between the military and civilians, there will be a strong relationship built between the two as they exchange ideas until reaching a shared understanding and conclusion (Caforio & Nuciari 2018). In the instances when the military structures are being removed from the political positions for purposes of state balance, the civilians should be educated on how to deal with defense mechanisms and formulation of policies. Additionally, for the matters pertaining to civilian security, it is crucial to maintain the mentioned military gap. In some cases, civilian's control of the military may impose the challenge of the inability to control military relations, and therefore it is advisable to cover the dangerous trends through the government's military control.

Conclusion

In conclusion, civil-military relations explain the relationship between the military organization and the civil society and the other organizations created to protect the civilians. In an ideal political environment, public military relations explain the relationship between the military authority and the civil authority in a given state. Most of the disturbing aspects of the civil-military relations are coups and military influence. Although military coups have decreased in recent times, military control has taken root, especially in the United States. There is a significant gap between the civilians and military worlds, and the gap can be bridged or minimized by conducting dialogues between the two. Some institutions, such as a United Nations, help in reducing the instances of the superiority of a country over another country in exercising the military prowess.

References

Caforio, G., & Nuciari, M. (2018). Conclusion: Themes and Issues of the Sociology of the Military. In Handbook of the Sociology of the Military (pp. 615-650). Springer, Cham. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-319-71602-2_31

Cassell, K. J., Booth, J. A., & Seligson, M. A. (2018). Support for Coups in the Americas: Mass Norms and Democratization. Latin American Politics and Society, 60(4), 1-25. Retrieved from https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/latin-american-politics-and-society/article/support-for-coups-in-the-americas-mass-norms-and-democratization/4024C034310B9BC7A8DD349F44679A8B

David R. Segal and Morten G. Ender. (2008). "Sociology in Military Officer Education." Armed Forces & Society. Retrieved from https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0095327X08321717

Feaver, P. (2017). Civil-military relations and...