BA Disertation - U.S. Civil-Military relationship

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Who controls the civil-military
relationship in the United States of
America post-World War II?
Registration number: 100196151
Dissertation Supervisor: Dr. Alasdair Cochrane
This dissertation will focus on the civil-military relationship in the U.S. post World War II. It
will use relevant case studies to break down the component aspects of the civil-military
relationship, and how the actors compete for influence and power within the areas of conflict
and peacetime. This dissertation will test the logical assumptions that during conflict, the
military has primacy, and during peacetime the civilians and their representatives have
primacy in the relationship. This dissertation will also analyse the long-term legacies and
impacts of conflict within the civil-military relationship, especially those occurring in
warfare. This article will argue that division of powers is shifting, and that we may be
entering a new period of civil-military politics with the end of the War on Terror, may signal
the largest change in the civil-military relationship since the end of the Cold War.
Word count: 11,067

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Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Chapter 1: The literature and arguments on the civil-military relationship...............................5
Chapter 2: MacArthur and Truman, Westmoreland and Johnson, and the balance and effects
of civil-military equilibrium during conflict..............................................................................8
“There is no substitute for victory” MacArthur and Truman: Civil-military conflict defined
................................................................................................................................................8
The shadow of MacArthur: Westmoreland and LBJ ...........................................................16
Conclusion – conflict ...........................................................................................................19
Chapter 3: The peacetime civil-military relationship: Social, economic, and pre-war conflict
planning....................................................................................................................................21
Social: Gays in the military and military tribunals: Where the military wins......................21
The economic aspect to the civil-military relationship: Where the commander-in-chief wins
..............................................................................................................................................23
Conflict planning and the decision to initiate war................................................................26
Conclusion – Peacetime .......................................................................................................28
Conclusion ...............................................................................................................................29
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................32

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Who controls the civil-military relationship in the United States of America post-World
War II?
Introduction
The purpose of this dissertation is to discover who, based on historical examples, wields the
most influence in the civil-military relationship and equilibrium in the United States of
America since the end of the Second World War. This has been a widely debated topic by
many military and political scholars, with its most famous contribution being in the form of
Samuel P. Huntington’s 1957 book The Soldier and the State: The Theory of Politics and
Civil Military Relations. There have been many examples of a shift in focus in the civil-
military relationship, with one side then the other enjoying the majority of control.
This dissertation will work on the basis of assumptions made on the fluctuations of the civil-
military relationship in the U.S. since the end of the Second World War. These are twofold:
firstly that it is natural to assume that during a time of conflict and war, the military will
enjoy a greater degree of power and influence in the civil-military relationship, much as it
had done during the Second World War; and secondly that during peacetime the civil-
military relationship shifts back in its influence towards the civilian side, in terms of social
policy, economics, and pre-war and conflict planning. These assumptions will be tested by
analysing case studies in each relevant section, ranging from the Truman-MacArthur conflict
during the Korean War, the attempts by President Bill Clinton to repeal the ban on
homosexuals serving in the military in 1993, General Colin Powell’s opposition to U.S.
military involvement in the former Yugoslavia, and Westmoreland’s attempts to persuade
President Johnson to adopt his ‘alternative strategy’ for the Vietnam War in 1967. The
reasons for the focus on the United States are: it is the only continual world power from the
end of the Second World War; it has been frequently involved in conflicts around the world,
of varying size and involvement, during the post-war period; it has an established civil-
military relationship; and finally, due to all these factors, the wealth of material available for
study is plentiful, and therefore makes the United States ideal for a dissertation on this topic.

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The argument being put forward in this dissertation is that the civil-military relationship is
complicated, and because of this, the side possessing the greatest influence constantly
changes. While the military enjoy a greater say in their social composition, their deployment
and their tactics of war, this does not mean that they control the civil-military relationship. At
the same time, the civilians always retain the ultimate authority, which can be exercised at
any time, and is sometimes used to ensure there is no disagreement or doubt about policy, be
it economic relating to military expenditure, or the overall strategy and end goal of a war
itself.
This dissertation will be comprised of two main chapters; civil-military relationship during
conflict, and civil-military relationship during peacetime. The first chapter will focus on the
MacArthur-Truman conflict of the Korean War, their disagreements, and the reasons for his
dismissal. The legacy of the MacArthur-Truman conflict will then be analysed in regards to
its effects on the outcome of the Vietnam War and the relationship between Westmoreland
and Johnson. The second chapter will turn toward the peacetime aspects of the civil-military
relationship, and will be broken up into three main areas; economic, social, and pre-war and
conflict planning. The economic case study will focus on the conflict between President
Eisenhower and General Ridgway, and the attempts by the Army to alter the civil-military
relationship in their favour in the aftermath of the announcement of Eisenhower’s ‘New
Look’ military and the policy of massive retaliation. The main social case study will focus on
the attempts by President Bill Clinton to remove the Pentagon ban on gays serving in the
military after his inauguration in 1993. A smaller case study will analyse the attempts by
President George W. Bush to institute military tribunals after 9/11 for suspected terrorists.
For the section on pre-war and conflict planning the main focus will centre on General Colin
Powell and his opposition to U.S. military intervention in Yugoslavia and his reasons for
doing so.

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Chapter 1: The literature and arguments on the civil-military relationship
A great deal of literature has been written by scholars in regards to the field of civil-military
relations. The Genesis of this wing of politics was begun by Samuel Huntington in his 1957
book ‘The Soldier and the State: The Theory of Politics and Civil Military Relations’. This
book was focused on military professionalism, the officer corps, and political neutrality. His
work has been expanded upon by a number of scholars, such as Peter Feaver, who wrote in
his 1996 article The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of
Civilian Control that Huntington’s identification of the blurring of civilian and military roles
“has only continued and intensified since he wrote” (Feaver – 1996 p.163). Other scholars
have also signed up to this belief, with Deborah Avant launching a detailed investigation into
the extent of the civil-military ‘crisis’ in her article Conflicting Indicators of "Crisis" in
American Civil-Military Relations.
Moving to the specific focus of this essay, with the interest being on Korea, Vietnam, and
other post World War II military actions and decisions, certain books and articles have been
of great assistance in writing this dissertation, and have helped shaped the argument
presented here. Robert Buzzanco, both in his own book ‘Vietnam and the Transformation of
American Life’, and as an editor and contributor for ‘Blackwell Companions to American
History: A Companion to the Vietnam War’ presented a thorough and unbiased overview of
the civil-military relationship between Johnson and Westmoreland, and the damage caused to
the United States’ chances of ending the war in their favour by the fragile state of the civil-
military relationship at the time, as in Westmoreland’s fear of crossing Johnson, a point
supported by Danner and Brower. Their arguments emphasized the link between
Westmoreland’s fear of crossing Johnson, Johnson’s fear of Westmoreland, and of the effect
of Truman’s dismissal of MacArthur on both of them. The lasting impact of the Truman-
MacArthur conflict and its impact on the civil-military relationship in the decades following
it, whether it be Westmoreland and Johnson, or General Colin Powell and President Clinton,
is one of the central aspects of this dissertation, and it is important to show the durability of
damage to the civil-military relationship.

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The importance of declassified documents has clearly been invaluable to many scholars, as
the very nature of the civil-military relationship denotes that the soonest scholars can expect
detailed first-hand accounts of important decisions is years if not decades after the events
have occurred. Their usefulness however cannot be overestimated. Thomas J. Christensen’s
piece ‘Threats, Assurances, and the Last Chance for Peace: The Lessons of Mao's Korean
War Telegrams’ is an incredibly useful tool when analysing the effect of the civil-military
relationship. An example of this can be seen in Peter Farrar’s piece ‘Britain’s Proposal for a
Buffer Zone South of the Yalu in November 1950: Was It a Neglected Opportunity to End the
Fighting in Korea?’, where a plan for a buffer zone in North Korea and before the Yalu River
was proposed by the British. The plan had a fatal flaw in that no one could guess the Chinese
intentions “the British plan depended on the intentions of the Chinese which at present it was
impossible to discover” (Farrar – 1983 p.336). Thanks now to Christensen’s work, we now
know that Mao’s decision to intervene was taken after the crossing of the 38th parallel, but
that more importantly:
“Mao did not intend to allow American troops to remain permanently behind a buffer
in North Korea, regardless of the buffer’s width; and once Chinese troops were
dispatched to Korea, Mao’s primary goal was the destruction or expulsion of all
foreign forces on the Korean peninsula” (Christensen – 1992 p.128).
Mao’s Korean War telegrams also allow us to fully understand the reasons why Mao sent the
PRC’s soldiers into Korea. While it was the crossing of the 38th parallel which finally forced
his hand, Mao had been suspicious for a long time of American intentions towards mainland
China, the United States had not done enough to convince Mao that neither U.S. nor U.N.
forces would violate “Chinese interests and territory” (Christensen – 1992 p.113). These
telegrams, coupled with the knowledge of MacArthur’s statements to the Veterans of Foreign
Wars, his visit to Chiang Kai-shek in Formosa, and by physically threatening China by
“disregarding Washington’s September directives to keep non-Korean troops away from the
Manchurian border” (Christensen – 1992 p.133), and Truman’s failed attempts to reassure the
Communist Chinese, all show that the failure of the civil-military relationship in the build-up
and beginning of the Korean War, through both communication and policy, had resulted in
the intervention of hundreds of thousands of Communist Chinese soldiers into the war, and
turned what could have been a military victory facilitating Korean reunification, into a bloody
stalemate, the fallout from which has still not ended to this day. The combination of
Christensen’s translated telegraphs, and the conflict between MacArthur and Truman,

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covered in detail by Danner, Pearlman, Lowe and Farrar is an incredibly useful tool when
understanding the effects of conflict in the civil-military relationship and the potential
repercussions it can have in a time of war.
The abundance of scholarly material covering economic performance and military spending,
covered by Baker, Ward and Davis, and Hartley and Russett, gives the analysis of
Eisenhower’s decision to slash military spending after the Korean War more than a purely
political edge in the civil-military relationship, and a fear of becoming a ‘garrison state’.
The vast majority of literature does not stand alone in discussing the civil-military
relationship, and it enables a fully rounded picture of the civil-military relationship since the
end of the Second World War.

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Chapter 2: MacArthur and Truman, Westmoreland and Johnson, and the balance and
effects of civil-military equilibrium during conflict
This chapter will briefly address the Truman – MacArthur conflict and its’ effect on the civil-
military equilibrium; MacArthur’s desire for a complete victory by taking the Korean War
into Manchuria and attacking Communist China, his conflicts with Truman, and his eventual
dismissal. Then the focus will shift to an analysis on the long-term effect of the Truman –
MacArthur conflict in regards to the Vietnam War, and the failure of Westmoreland to
persuade President Johnson to adopt his 1967 ‘alternative strategy’ to end the war favourably
instead of relying on attrition. Finally this chapter will show that the dismissal of MacArthur
had a direct effect on the civil-military equilibrium during the Vietnam War, and poses a
question as to the composition of civil-military relations during conflict today.
“There is no substitute for victory” MacArthur and Truman: Civil-military conflict
defined
Without a doubt the most high profile civil-military conflict between a commander-in-chief
and the commander in the field was the conflict between General Douglas MacArthur and
President Harry S. Truman during the Korean War. The majority of scholarly writing has
presented this conflict as one over national security strategy; “In the Korean War a major
civil-military conflict between President Truman and General MacArthur developed over the
national security strategy” (Danner – 1993 p.1), “Truman and MacArthur had differences of
opinion and policy” (Pearlman – 2006 p.3), “A superficial observer might have inferred that a
great crisis in civil-military affairs was generated by the recall of MacArthur and five
volumes of congressional hearings on the recall do indeed suggest that there was some kind
of crisis” (Fox – 1983 pp.46-47). Thomas Christensen even goes so far as to call this affair
“an epic confrontation between the Truman administration and General Douglas MacArthur”
(Christensen – 1992 p.122). What however were the disagreements between Truman and
MacArthur, what actions followed them, and how did they affect the civil-military
relationship in subsequent conflicts?

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The first point of disagreement and the beginnings of what Pearlman dubbed The Winding
Road to Dismissal began in regards to the Republic of China government of Chiang Kai-shek
on Formosa. This disagreement and its constituent factors would have dire consequences in
the near future for the UN effort in Korea. From the beginning, while sending US forces to
fight under the UN banner in Korea, Truman sought to neutralize the Nationalist Chinese on
Formosa, even after an offer of 33,000 troops for the war, knowing fully that MacArthur
would disagree with him “Chiang Kai-shek offered ground forces to MacArthur, an offer
MacArthur was forced to refuse by Washington” (Brown – 2008 p.9). “The President
understood that while MacArthur disagreed with his policy of neutralizing Chiang Kai-shek
on Formosa he would accept it as a dutiful subordinate” (Danner – 1993 p.3). His reasons for
this were clear and succinct; he wished to keep Communist China under Mao out of any war
on the Korean Peninsula. There were two important reasons for this; first Truman wished to
avoid any provocative action which would lead to a possible Third World War
“Truman…was concerned that any use of Chiang’s troops would lead to war with mainland
China and possibly to a third world war” (Danner – 1999 p.3), “President Truman was
motivated by an over-riding desire. That was to prevent the Korean War escalating into a
third world war” (DeWeerd – 1968 p.12), and secondly by appearing neutral to Mao, he
hoped to drive a wedge between Mao and the Kremlin “Truman sought to create a hostile
environment between Communist China and the Soviet Union by appearing non-belligerent
to Mao Zedong” (Pearlman – 2006 p.3). Truman’s worry, as history tells us, was well
informed. America’s ally Britain had also noted the potential of Mao’s involvement, as Field
Marshall William Slim had observed;
“If the Chinese intended to expel United Nations forces from Korea, it would be
difficult to stop them…it should be made clear once again to the Chinese Communists
that we had no intention of violating Manchurian territory and that ultimately we
intend to withdraw United Nations forces from Korea” (Lowe – 2006 p.634).
Once the North Korean invasion had begun, Truman sought to build up a coalition, both
within the United States and abroad in Europe an NATO, in regards to policy involving
Formosa. The result was a shambles of policy and military direction, due to the make-up of
the coalition which comprised “the Robert Taft wing Republicans, who loved Chiang on one
hand, and the European socialists in NATO and the UN, who despised Chiang, on the other.
The result was a policy of utter confusion in which America would defend Formosa, but not

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the governing regime, and told Chiang he could not launch preemptive strikes on Communist
forces gathering along the coast to invade the island” (Pearlman – 2006 p.3).
Having carefully constructed this coalition amongst many sides, the last thing that Truman
needed was a powerful opposition voice and figure, let alone one who was Supreme
Commander of Allied Powers in Asia. MacArthur voiced his opinion in late summer of 1950,
as the North Korean forces had backed in UN into what became known as the Pusan
Perimeter, during a visit to Formosa. MacArthur said to Chang Kai-shek “he called Chiang
“my old comrade in arms” and said his “indomitable determination to resist Communist
domination arouses my sincere admiration. His determination parallels the common interests
and purpose of Americans that all people in the Pacific area shall be free” (Pearlman – 2006
p.3). While on the plane to Formosa MacArthur sent a message to Washington informing
them that he intended to send three squadrons of F80 fighters to Formosa (Wainstock – 2011
p.31). He was however quickly rebuffed by Washington, as such a transfer of fighters “would
have violated Washington’s policy of not using American forces, other than the Seventh
Fleet, for the defense of Formosa” (Wainstock – 2011 p.31). It already appeared to be the
case then that from the beginning, Washington’s policy would affect and limit MacArthur’s
actions in the Korean War “Even before the hostilities began, U.S. policy in the Far East
limited MacArthur’s ability to respond” (Brown – 2008 p.5).
Truman was furious, there was also no apology from MacArthur for clearly going against
U.S. government policy, which he would of course have been fully aware of “MacArthur
either could not or would not recognize that his statements and actions gave the clear
impression of disagreement with Presidential policies” (Danner – 1993 p.4). Having neither
sanctioned any statement from MacArthur, let alone the visit to Formosa itself, he sent
William Harriman, former US Ambassador to Great Britain and also the Soviet Union, to
Tokyo to confront MacArthur, with the message;
“Tell him to “leave Chiang Kai-shek alone. I do not want to have him get me into a
war with Mainland China.” In return, “find out what he wants, and if it’s at all
possible to do it, I will give it to him,” that is as long as the CINCFE waged war
exclusively against North Korea. Whereupon MacArthur, after telling Harriman the
Communists would not try to conduct the invasion “at the present time,” described his
plan, germinating in his mind for years, to conduct a grand double envelopment, to be
executed in this instance at Inchon” (Pearlman – 2006 p.4).

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The said landings at Inchon were indeed a remarkable success, much to the surprise of Army
Chief of Staff General J. Lawton Collins and Naval Chief of Operations Admiral Forrest
Sherman, both members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff “Sources close to General MacArthur
said both Collins and Sherman opposed the landings at Inchon” (Joint Chiefs of Staff memo –
1950), “Contrary to opinion in Washington, MacArthur orchestrated a brilliant amphibious
assault at Inchon that swiftly led to the recapture of Seoul and the withdrawal of North
Korean forces from South Korea” (Brown – 2008 p.4). The victory at Inchon seemed to do a
great deal to mend, temporarily at least, the strained relationship between MacArthur and his
commander-in-chief, and there then seemed to be a desire to somewhat let MacArthur off his
leash, for on the 27th September 1950, Truman approved a draft directive to be sent to
MacArthur authorizing him to;
“conduct military operations, including amphibious and airborne landings or ground
operations north of the 38th parallel in Korea, provided that at the time of such
operation there has been no entry into North Korea by major Soviet or Chinese
Communist ground forces…no non-Korean ground forces will be used in the
northeast provinces bordering the Soviet Union or in the area along the Manchurian
border. Furthermore, support of your operations north or south of the 38th parallel will
not include air or naval action against Manchuria or against USSR territory” (Truman
– 1950 p.1).
The meaning was made doubly clear by a message sent through Defense Secretary George
Marshall to MacArthur, stressing that he should not feel limited except by what had been
explicitly stated “We want you to feel unhampered tactically and strategically to proceed
north of the 38th parallel” (Weintraub – 2000 pp.157-158).
It was clear therefore that MacArthur had been let off the leash by Truman to reunite the
Korean peninsula. It certainly seemed to be the case to America’s allies that MacArthur was
now in charge of the war in Korea, not the president, as was made clear by Prime Minister
Clement Attlee to Truman himself “During the discussions Attlee raised the position of
MacArthur and candidly stated that anxiety was felt among UN nations contributing to
Korean operations because of the independence shown by MacArthur. ‘There was a feeling in
Europe that General MacArthur was running the show…’” (Lowe – 2006 p.636). If it seemed
to America’s allies that MacArthur was beyond Truman’s control, the same impression was
also given to the Communist Chinese leadership. MacArthur’s well known position on

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Formosa and Communist China, now appeared to be legitimate US foreign policy, at least to
Mao, and therefore they had no option but to fight “Truman’s deference to the theatre
commander, so reported in Beijing, confirmed the proposition of Communist hard-liners that
the Peoples’ Republic of China had no choice but to fight, if only for survival, because the
MacArthur clique, allied with Chiang, embodied American Far East policy” (Pearlman –
2006 p.5). MacArthur’s position on Formosa had frequently run contrary to that of the
Truman administration, and his messages to the press and the public in general such as his
message to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in August 1950 “criticizing Truman’s Formosa
policy” (Bernstein – 1981 p.264), and combined with his repeated examples of refuting
Truman’s orders, “the President resented the General’s unwillingness to bend to the White
House’s inclinations. Twice in the years before the war, Truman had invited MacArthur to
visit Washington, and each time the General had refused” (Bernstein – 1981 p.236).
It was however MacArthur’s attempts to shift the civil-military equilibrium irrevocably in his
favour that mandated Truman’s dismissal of him on 11th April 1951, “In April 1951 he was
dismissed by President Truman from all offices he held for repeatedly challenging
fundamental policy decisions as approved in the White House” (Lowe – 1990 p.624).
MacArthur was not simply a general with only an eye for the battlefield and the enemy;
MacArthur was deeply political, and deeply Republican. He had flirted with running for the
Republican Party nomination in 1944 and allowed his name to be put into the running as a
candidate for the Republican nomination in 1948 (Lowe – 1990 p.625). Since MacArthur was
known to have steadfast political allegiances, to the GOP opposing Truman and his
Democrat, it was therefore inevitable that once disagreements and tensions began mounting
between MacArthur and Truman that MacArthur would seek to add a new front, a political
one, into his battle with Truman. MacArthur attempted to handle Truman and his conflict
with the president as he would a military engagement with the North Koreans at the time of
the Pusan Perimeter; open a new front to give himself the advantage and initiative.
While his attempts to do this before the intervention of the Communist Chinese had been
undoubtedly costly to the extent that they leant more weight to the hawk Chinese lobby, they
had not broken the relationship with Truman completely; indeed their differences had been
objective-based in regards to Korea and Formosa. This changed however when MacArthur
brought their disagreements out into the open publically, and more importantly, politically;

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“To this point the disagreement between Truman and MacArthur resolved around the
strategic objective in Korea. However, that changed in early 1951 when MacArthur
introduced an element of political intrigue into the situation” (Danner – 1993 p.6).
This political attempt to tip the balance of the civil-military equilibrium would be attempted
later by General Ridgeway, with the same level of success. But why and how did MacArthur
pursue this political line? As has been stated earlier, MacArthur felt limited by the Truman
administration during the Korean War “The national strategic objective was limited during
the early days of the war, but the purpose of the conflict would change several times during
his tenure. The one part of the conflict that did not change…was the limits placed on his
methods and means by his superiors” (Brown – 2008 p.4). The evidence of this however does
not seem to support MacArthur’s assessment, as his landings at Inchon, while the JCS clearly
had misgivings, as has been stated above, the Truman administration did not intervene and it
maintained a purely militarily led war. The change occurred upon the intervention of major
Communist Chinese forces in Korea, with the added political attachments due to the failure to
keep Communist China out of Korea, the possibility of World War III appeared a great deal
more possible, and as a result limitations from Washington increased, especially in contrast to
the free-reign MacArthur had been given after his initial victories;
“There was great frustration on MacArthur’s part and that of his senior commanders
over the limitations placed on the use of force in the Korean theater. The restrictions
against crossing the Yalu and bombing the Chinese Communist bases in Manchuria
were particularly objectionable. However, they also became ready scapegoats for the
November reversals” (Danner – 1993 p.5).
Brown makes the point that after the victory at Inchon and MacArthur’s notion was that
victory could now lead to a lasting peace “The golden moment to transmute our victory at
Inchon into a political peace had arrived” (MacArthur – 1964 p.357). However, MacArthur
was not allowed to rest on his victory and allow him to consolidate his position, as aside from
the conditions in the field placed upon him by Washington. To begin, the theatre of war had
now opened up by fifty percent “without any significant increase in physical force” (Brown –
2008 p.12), his bases at Inchon and Pusan were inefficient to supply a major military
operation north of the 38th parallel (Brown – 2008 p.12), and finally by pushing the war north
the Truman administration had clearly forgotten their intentions at the start of the war, to
avoid a military confrontation with Communist China “I do not want to have him get me into

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a war with Mainland China” (Pearlman – 2006 p.4). It appears strange then that while a visit
by MacArthur to Formosa or an address to the Veterans of Foreign Wars were deemed to be
very dangerous by Truman in regards to the PRC, the notion of a massive U.N. army, with
hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops, rapidly approaching Manchuria was not thought of as
being dangerous.
The limitations on MacArthur, in particular the refusal to allow him to bomb Chinese bases
north of the Yalu River however began to reach boiling point, and MacArthur made his
annoyance at these limitations public “On 1 December 1950, a weekly magazine asked him if
restrictions against attacks on these targets were a “a handicap to effective military
operations?” He replied “an enormous handicap, without precedent in military history” and
then sent the transcript of the interview to the United Press for instant distribution” (Pearlman
– 2006 p.6). MacArthur’s annoyance must be taken into a degree of historical context: as a
hero of the Second World War, MacArthur was used to the end goal of war being complete
victory, and nothing else, which was usual practice at the time, as Huntington explains
“When the nation went to war, it went wholeheartedly…The national aim of total victory
superseded all else. The military became the executors of the national will, the technicians
called in to implement the basic policy decision” (Huntington – 1957 p.317), and due to the
total war nature of the previous two major world wars, there was a belief held in the West
that the next major war would follow suit “Because both World War I and World War II were
thought of as “total wars”, there was a widely-held belief in the West that the next war would
be another total war” (DeWeerd – 1968 pp.1-2); MacArthur had been isolated from the U.S.
for a long time in Tokyo, essentially carrying out the rebuilding of the war-torn country, and
was not used to challenges to his authority from above or below, as he had surrounded
himself with, as Lowe dubbed them “sycophantic staff” (Lowe – 2006 p.644). This may go
some way as to explaining why MacArthur chose to so openly confront his commander-in-
chief on a political level.
MacArthur however was no longer operating in conflict with Truman, for while MacArthur’s
military goal was the destroy the enemy’s ability to wage war through a process called
‘annihilation’, the new head of the 8th Army, General Matthew B. Ridgeway began to employ
a tactic of ‘attrition’, with the intention of bleeding any enemy dry until they can no longer
fight (Gartner, Myers – 1995 p.382). While this difference in military strategy would not
normally have been an issue, as MacArthur was Ridgeway’s commanding officer, Ridgeway
was relaying the views of the JCS and of the Truman administration “Counter to the wishes

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of his immediate superior, MacArthur, but consonant with the desires of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and the Truman administration, Ridgway began to shift United States policy from
annihilation to attrition” (Gartner, Myers – 1995 pp.382-383). Far from MacArthur being the
one to challenge the civil-military equilibrium, Truman had taken matters into his own hands
by assigning in December 1950 a general who he could control and one who wanted to bring
the enemy to the table and not destroy them; a general who would follow his instructions of a
limited war. MacArthur was therefore being undermined by the appointment of Ridgway and
sought to balance. If Truman had his man in Korea undermining MacArthur, MacArthur
would have a man in Washington undermining Truman, and he found one in early 1951.
MacArthur man in Washington was Joseph Martin, the Republican Representative from
Massachusetts’ 14th District, “At that time he acquired an influential friend in the form of the
Republican Minority Leader in the House of Representatives, Joseph Martin. This was a
dangerous alliance between a field commander and a powerful opposition politician. It
proved to be the final step in the undoing of MacArthur” (Danner – 1993 p.6). The
disagreements with Truman had reached a new breaking point now with MacArthur, for as
the tide of the war turned once again and the U.N. forces began approaching the 38th parallel
and pushed the Chinese back, the change in strategy from annihilation to attrition and the
refusal to sanction a second invasion of North Korea, and the desire to bring the communist
to the negotiating table finally drove MacArthur once again began to openly question his
commander-in-chief;
“As the United States began to regain territory in 1951, having surrendered all hopes
of unifying the peninsula militarily, American leaders planned to offer the
communists negotiations for a truce. On 24 March, MacArthur torpedoed that strategy
and publically criticized the administration for giving up its earlier quest for victory.
He still sought victory, not compromise, and even wanted to extend the war across the
Yalu to Manchuria and China, a strategy that the administration publicly condemned
as reckless” (Bernstein – 1981 p.256).
MacArthur saw this as leading toward a situation before that of the Pusan Perimeter, where
the landings at Inchon were the only alternative to “a “war of indefinite duration, of gradual
attrition, and of doubtful results.” In 1951, he predicted the same outcome if Washington
rejected his plans to take the war beyond the peninsula” (Pearlman – 2006 p.8). MacArthur
saw Truman’s tactic as leading toward potential defeat, and so took action to circumvent the

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president and rally support for his strategy of annihilation in Washington. MacArthur’s
reaction was to send a letter to Joseph Martin on the 20th March “assailing the
administration’s stated policy of limited war in Korea. MacArthur pleased for using
Nationalist Chinese troops and for attacking the PRC” (Bernstein – 1981 p.266). While this
would not have had such catastrophic results for MacArthur had it intended to be kept
private, there is no evidence that it was meant to be. Indeed, when Truman received
notification of Martin’s latest attack upon him and the text used. Martin had essentially
relayed MacArthur’s message directly to the American public, calling for a second front
using Chiang Kai-shek’s 800,000 strong army on mainland China, quoting from MacArthur’s
letter of 20th March, and finishing with there is no substitute for victory “Pearlman – 2006
p.12). This was the final straw for Truman who said “those particular words were the real
“clincher”” (Pearlman – 2006 p.12). Bernstein makes the case that MacArthur may have
believed that he could change the president’s policy toward Korea, due to his self-
righteousness (Bernstein – 1981 p.267). In this he was clearly incorrect, and Truman
promptly dismissed him on 11th April 1951, in a show of force which proved to all who really
ran the war in Korea, and made utterly clear “who was responsible for the formulation of
American policy” (Lowe – 2006 p.648). Truman had wished to dismiss MacArthur before,
but feared that as MacArthur was so involved politically, there would be a tremendous
reaction in the U.S. (Bernstein – 1981 p.264). The involvement of Martin and the Republican
Party was the moment when it was perhaps the easiest to replace him.
The shadow of MacArthur: Westmoreland and LBJ
What then, was the long-term effect of Truman’s dismissal of MacArthur in regards to policy
and strategic decisions in the civil-military equilibrium? The Truman-MacArthur conflict
served to damage the future working relationship of generals and their commander-in-chief in
wartime, to the extent that when Westmoreland had a strategy with a very real possibility of
concluding the Vietnam War in America’s favour, he did not present the case forcefully
enough to President Johnson;
“Westmoreland was cautious when presenting his new strategy to President Johnson.
He did not forcefully present his views, and stopped short of fully justifying American
combat operations in Laos and North Vietnam. Consequently, he missed an

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opportunity to provide Johnson with the full benefit of his on scene insights and
expertise” (Danner – 1993 p.15).
The extent to which civil-military relations had plummeted since the Korean War is
explained by Robert Buzzanco, when discussing the agreed resignations of all the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in August 1967 in opposition to “the civilian-imposed military policy of the
Vietnam War” (Buzzanco – 2006 p.174). While the resignations were never carried out, it
clearly shows the depths to which the civil-military equilibrium had been disrupted and “the
extent to which politics had come to dominate military affairs regarding Vietnam” (Buzzanco
– 2006 p.174). This is perhaps best signified by the selection of bombing targets by President
Johnson from the White House during the Vietnam War (Feaver – 1996 p.163), which shows
the limitations placed on the military by the civilian government.
During the Vietnam War, the military leaders had finally developed military policy while
bearing politics in mind as well (Buzzanco – 2006 p.174). A cycle had developed during the
war, which reflected the deadlock between the civil and military branches of the U.S. war
effort, where the military would continually press the same demands upon the president to
improve the war effort “essentially more troops for attrition warfare and totally unrestricted
air strikes” (Buzzanco – 2006 p.177) which would then be met by a small increase in troop
numbers, for example “in 1967, the commander requested 200,000 more, a request LBJ met
only partially, with 40,000 reinforcements” (Buzzanco – 1999 pp.80-81) and no permission
for unrestricted air strikes. This however was not unusual, as in the aftermath of the Tet
Offensive and Westmoreland’s request for 200,000 more men and the calling up of some
280,000 reserves, LBJ rejected his request (Buzzanco – 1999 p.87) and it was “consistent
with long-term White House and military patterns of behaviour toward the war” (Buzzanco –
1999 p.88). The goal here was clear on the part of the military, as they were being forced to
fight a limited war, the U.S. military made sure that they would not be blamed for a defeat
“US military leaders would at least force the White House to bear responsibility for the
outcome” (Buzzanco – 2006 p.177), and force Johnson to bear the responsibility for “future
failure” (Buzzanco – 1999 p.88). Johnson’s priority however was his social programs, the
Great Society, and the call up of reservists was something he was not prepared to do
politically “Committed to the primacy of his Great Society programs, LBJ viewed reserve
mobilization as the "threshold" beyond which the nation would understand itself to be on a
"war footing"” (Brower – 1990 p.21).

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By early 1967 the tactic of attrition in Vietnam which had been forced upon the military by
the Johnson administration had begun to be questioned by the U.S. commander in Vietnam,
General Westmoreland, and he had begun to formulate an alternative strategy (Brower – 1990
p.1) to potentially replace attrition. In essence, Westmoreland wished to take the ground war
into Laos and North Vietnam in order to convince the North Vietnamese that they could not
win the war. Westmoreland had a problem however, as politics once again began to come to
the fore and adversely affect military strategy and planning, and the parallels with Korea, and
with MacArthur and Truman began to form, and political issues reared their heads once
again, as Brower makes clear major figures in Johnson’s government had grave reservations
about escalating the war in Vietnam, in lieu of the potential political consequences;
“McNamara and other key members of the administration, including Under Secretary
of State Nicholas Katzenbach, Assistant Secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs
William Bundy and John McNaughton, had come to view the apparently open-ended
American escalation in Vietnam as a dangerous threat to the political, economic and
military foundations of American national security policy” (Brower – 1990 p.26).
Westmoreland also had other worries and issues standing in the way of his alternative
strategy; MacArthur’s legacy. This was made abundantly clear when Westmoreland received
Johnson’s reply to his proposal on the 4th August to only send an additional 55,000 troops to
Vietnam and continue the policy of attrition, he quietened down, for “his advocacy of his
alternate strategy and his pessimism about progress in the war were clearly more muted than
in the spring and summer” (Brower – 1990 p.28). His reasons for quietening down are
various, such as political as the Presidential Election of 1968 was looming, and the logistical
problems facing recruitment at home in the U.S. meant that Westmoreland could not expect a
major policy change unless “something drastic occurred” (Brower – 1990 pp.28-29).
The ‘something drastic’ could have easily occurred however, had Westmoreland not been
handicapped by the legacy of the MacArthur – Johnson conflict. As early as 1966, Johnson
had laid the shadow of MacArthur over Westmoreland, and wished to leave him in no doubt
as to who was in charge;
“During the February 1966 Honolulu conference Johnson apparently feared a
MacArthur type challenge to his authority by General Westmoreland. He cautioned
Westmoreland by saying, "General, I have a lot riding on you. I hope you don't pull a

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MacArthur on me” Westmoreland had no intention of challenging the President and
remained silent” (Danner – 1993 pp.14-15).
Westmoreland never had any intention of proposing any plan, nor conducting an interview
that would possibly affect his relationship with his commander-in-chief in an adverse
manner, as Westmoreland himself stated, quoted by Brower, “Westmoreland later admitted
that he "had no intention of crossing [the President] in any way"” (Brower – 1990 p.28). At
all times Westmoreland was in fear of becoming another MacArthur in the eyes of Johnson,
and as a result it limited him severely “Charles Brower asserts that “Westmoreland’s own
fear of recreating even the perception of a MacArthur-like challenge to presidential authority”
served to inhibit him” (Danner – 1993 p.15).
Conclusion – conflict
It is therefore clear that the legacy of the Truman – MacArthur conflict created a lasting
legacy over the civil-military equilibrium during times of conflict and war. MacArthur had
made a long-lasting detrimental impression upon the offices of president and general.
Through his public questioning of orders and policy, continual attempted political
manipulation, and blatant disrespect for the office of the president and his commander-in-
chief, MacArthur inadvertently handed the any initiative the military may have originally
possessed during times of conflict to the civilian government and the president. While
MacArthur was unable or unwilling to see and accept the political restrictions upon his
command, Westmoreland overestimated them, or at least did not make any concerted effort to
force a fundamental change in direction of policy even if the end result would be closer to a
victory than the inevitable bloody defeat in Vietnam. So much so that when Westmoreland
over ten years later in Vietnam proposed an alternative strategy to bring the war to a
successful conclusion, his fear of crossing Johnson by appearing to be a second MacArthur,
led him to be “cautious when presenting his new strategy to President Johnson” (Danner -
1993 p.15) and as a result it was easier for Johnson to rebuke him. MacArthur’s actions in
attempting to gain support for his plans to end the Korean War in victory, consigned
Westmoreland over a decade later to fighting a war which would inevitably end in defeat and
humiliation for the United States of America. Declassification of documents in the future
relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, by far the U.S.’s largest military commitments

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since the end of the Vietnam War, will indeed be enlightening to see if the shadow of
MacArthur persists, and we see summaries closely resembling the following in history and
politics studies;
“Any similarity to the MacArthur and Truman conflict was avoided and intentionally
so, but very likely at the cost of adopting a potentially winning strategy in the war”
(Danner – 1993 p.15).

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Chapter 3: The peacetime civil-military relationship: Social, economic, and pre-war
conflict planning
This chapter will analyse how influence and power in the civil-military relationship exists
during peacetime. The assumption is that the civilians will hold the power and influence
during peacetime, such as in social and economic policy decisions, while the military begins
to assert more influence during pre-war and conflict planning, but the civilians still retain
overall control. Firstly the social policy of homosexuals in the military will be addressed,
before moving on the economic policy and finally pre-war and conflict planning.
Social: Gays in the military and military tribunals: Where the military wins
While many scholars are concerned about the civil-military relationship in regards to the use
of force, there is interest in the civil-military relationship elsewhere; as Avant demonstrates
“Others are concerned about military influence in other policy areas such as force structure,
budgeting, personal issues (particularly gays in the military)” (Avant – 1998 p.376). It was
precisely this issue of homosexuals serving in the military which heralded in the one of the
most high profile civil-military conflicts since the end of the Cold War, for in 1993 just after
his election, President Bill Clinton as one of his first acts in office, decided “to reverse the
military’s ban on openly gay personnel” (Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007 pp.6-7) and instructed his
Defense Secretary Les Aspin “to review the military’s existing regulation on gay troops”
(Frank – 2004 p.7). Clinton had “promised in his campaign to extend this civil right to gays
and lesbians” (Belkin – 2003 p.108) and now had to attempt to deliver on this electoral
promise. He was immediately opposed in this by the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) (Sulmasy,
Yoo – 2007 p.8); (Belkin – 2003 p.108), and the Senate Armed Services Committee
Chairman Sam Nunn. The military’s reasoning for their opposition was that the lifting of the
ban against gays serving in the military would damage unit cohesion and morale and the
belief that “military performance would decline if known gay and lesbian soldiers were
permitted to serve in uniform” (Belkin – 2003 p.109). Adair and Myers, writing in 1993, put
forward the case made by the JCS:

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“As currently constituted, the integrity and cohesion of the Army as an institution are
intact. It can continue to defend the nation, defending a common way of life that can
tolerate the uncommon” (Adair, Myers – 1993 p.18).
Clearly, the implication being man was that if the ban was lifted, the integrity and cohesion of
the Army would be compromised, and therefore its capacity to carry out its primary role as
defender of the United States and its people. Samuel Huntington’s writings on the social
aspect of the military could also have lent weight to the pro-ban lobby, as he believed that
politicization of the military risks undermining the security of the state, as he is quoted in
Avant “The military hat best reflects social values may not be the military that best fills the
functional mission of defending a country’s interests…The key to military professionalism,
then, lies in having civilians willing to refrain from politicizing officers” (Avant – 1998
pp.377-378). Hearings began in 1993 on gays in the military, and were immediately weighed
against Clinton’s policy by Nunn, who having learned that a retired Army Colonel called
Lucian K. Truscott III would submit a report containing accounts of “open gay soldiers who
had served with distinction, Nunn deleted Truscott from the witness list” (Belkin – 2003
p.117). While Clinton did at first manage to lift the Pentagon’s ban on gay troops by
suspending it after the hearings had been concluded, he stated he would not issue a final
executive order to remove the ban “until interested parties had a chance to review and debate
the merits of the plan” (Frank – 2004 p.7). Once these ‘interested parties’, in all probability
the JCS and main political figures, had been consulted and the hearings finished, Clinton
agreed to a policy which became known as the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, which in
essence meant that “gays would be allowed to serve if they were not open and if they did not
engage in homosexual conduct” (Frank – 2004 p.7).
This is a clear example of a commander-in-chief attempting to carry out an election promise
in a military sector, only to be met by resistance from those who are in essence, his inferiors
in rank. It highlighted tensions present in the civil-military relationship, and brought to light
the ability of the JCS to outright oppose and alter the policies of their commander in chief in
regards to social restructuring of the armed forces, and made it unclear as to who truly
decided civil-military policy; the commander-in-chief or the JCS;
“For instance, with respect to the dispute over gays in the military, William
Weybourne, executive director of the Gay and Lesbian Victory Fund, argues that
“Gays and Lesbians are not the issue, the issues is who is going to run this country

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The Joint Chiefs of Staff, frankly, should be fired for insubordination”” (Avant –
1998 p.380).
The issues of gays in the military is however “only one example of resistance by the military
after the end of the Cold War” (Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007 pp.8-9) on a social and rights level.
Another note of friction in the civil-military relationship was during the administration of
President George W. Bush in regards to the establishment of “special military courts for the
trial of terrorist suspects accused of committing war crimes” (Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007 pp.5-6)
despite opposition from the Judge Advocate General’s (JAG) Corps. Despite being defeated
in Hamdan v Rumsfeld, in which the U.S. Supreme Court decided “that the commissions
violated Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions” (Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007 p.6), Bush
tried again by legislating through Congress to overturn certain aspects of Hamdan v
Rumsfeld. In response the military once again openly opposed the policy of their commander-
in-chief as “the head JAGs for the U.S. Marines and the U.S. Army” (Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007
p.6) spoke out against the administration’s policy and were victorious, as Greenhouse writing
in the New York Times shows “The Supreme Court on Thursday repudiated the Bush
administration's plan to put Guantánamo detainees on trial before military commissions,
ruling broadly that the commissions were unauthorized by federal statute and violated
international law” (Greenhouse – 2006 p.1).
It would therefore seem to be the case that in regards to the civil-military relationship, in
regards to human rights and social issues affecting the military or military affairs, the military
holds the balance of power in the civil-military relationship, and can successfully challenge
and defeat the policy of its commander-in-chief.
The economic aspect to the civil-military relationship: Where the commander-in-chief
wins
Andrew J. Bacevich in his 1997 article The Paradox of Professionalism: Eisenhower,
Ridgway, and the Challenge to Civilian Control, 1953-1955 presents a very clear example of
conflict in the civil-military relationship on the grounds of economics, in particular military
spending cuts. This example, that of General Matthew Bunker Ridgway, the Chief of Staff of
the United States Army opposing President Eisenhower’s plan of massive retaliation using
nuclear weapons, his ‘New Look’ military and massive scaling down of the Army; army size

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fell from “1,540,000 to 1,164,000…finally bottoming out at 859,000” (Bacevich – 1997
p.314), is an example of a division amongst the military itself, rather than a unified front in
the tumultuous civil-military relationship. This was indeed not unusual, as Fox writes:
“The military are frequently as divided as the civilian policy-makers so that there may
on a particular issues be no ‘military’ sufficiently homogenous to be treated as a
group actor in a study of the decision process” (Fox – 1983 p.49).
Eisenhower had two primary reasons for wishing to drastically cut back on military spending;
political and economic. The political reasoning was that Eisenhower was worried that a large
peacetime military, something that had never been done before in American history
(Bacevich – 1997 p.308) would cause America to “slide imperceptibly toward becoming a
“garrison state”” (Bacevich – 1997 p.308), and Eisenhower wished to avoid any accusations
of turning the U.S. into a ‘police state’. The economic reasons were by all likelihood the
more pressing concerns on a practical level once Eisenhower assumed office. Eisenhower had
inherited a profligate budget, and wished to eliminate the deficit whilst still abiding by
conventional Republican principles; no raised taxes. This however “would only be possible
only by targeting defense for major cuts. Thus once he had liquidated his Korean problem,
Eisenhower fully expected that large reductions in military spending would be in order”
(Bacevich – 1997 p.308).
This made economic sense in terms of eliminating the budget deficit, as has been shown by
economists military spending adversely affects the economic health of the state, as Baker
shows “Military spending drains resources from the productive economy. For this reason, it
will typically lead to slower economic growth, less investment, higher trade deficits, and
fewer jobs” (Baker – 2007 p.9) and Ward and Davis support “We find strong evidence that
military spending detracts from economic growth” (Ward, Davis – 1992 p.754). Defense
spending therefore had to be cut, and budgetary decisions lie purely in the hands of the
civilian side of the civil-military relationship; “Defense spending reflects a policy matter –
national security – of supreme importance to all citizens, who should therefore decide how
best to achieve it” (Hartley, Russett – 1992 p.905). Ridgway however, elected to fight this
civilian decision head-on and as a result “Between the autumn of 1953 and the summer of
1955, the United States Army took it upon itself to mount an explicit challenge to civilian
control” (Bacevich – 1997 p.307).

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Ridgway’s first target in opposing Eisenhower’s New Look was the Joint Chiefs of Staff
(JCS) themselves, and he attempted to persuade them to his view that by lessening the size of
conventional forces and relying purely on the U.S.’s nuclear arms to secure peace, the U.S.
could soon discover that the USSR had matched the U.S. in terms of nuclear armaments
“while already commanding superior conventional strength” (Bacevich – 1997 p.319), and
therefore the bluff of massive retaliation “must emphatically be rejected” (Bacevich – 1997
p.319). Eisenhower however had prepared for such an eventuality. One of the privileges that
the office of the president bestowed was that he “can often choose which military men he will
allow to advise him. Eisenhower chose chiefs of staff whose professional views were well
known to him” (Fox – 1983 p.50), and Eisenhower had been careful to ensure that one in
office the JCS had been purged of those from the Truman administration, as Eisenhower
“fully intended that they be his chiefs” (Bacevich – 1997 p.309). As a result of this
“Ridgway’s JCS colleagues were unmoved” (Bacevich – 1997 p.319), and Ridgway had to
take his battle to another political field. His next attack was directed against the National
Security Council (NSC), and presented his proposal, which in essence was “an alternative to
massive retaliation, Ridgway advocated a strategy built around a “properly balanced” force
maintained at a high level of readiness” (Bacevich – 1997 p.321). When Ridgway finally
addressed the NSC directly, he made no impact upon them at all, for his presentation’s
“impact on the NSC was nil” (Bacevich – 1997 p.321). As Bacevich states “That Ridgway
was completely out of step with his civilian superiors had never been more evident (Bacevich
– 1997 p.322).
While Ridgway did not give up the fight even after his failure to convince either the JCS or
the NSC to do away with massive retaliation, “Ridgway seized upon opportunities to carry
his message to civilian organizations” (Bacevich – 1997 p.324), the battle was lost. Just like
MacArthur a few years earlier, Ridgway’s obstinate actions in the face of direct instructions
from his commander-in-chief had made his position untenable:
“His resistance to administration policy impelled by a deep sense of professional
responsibility, Ridgway simply could not compromise…Given such circumstances,
Ridgway had to go” (Bacevich – 1997 p.330).
It therefore appears that there are two clear circumstances in which a high ranking military
officer’s opposition to their commander-in-chief will not be tolerated; during a time of war,
and over economic planning. In these instances, the balance of power in the civil-military

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relationship lies firmly in the hands of the civilians. The link between the removal of both
MacArthur and Ridgeway is that they both remained stubborn and unmovable in their
convictions, and they brought issues present in the civil-military relationship into the political
scene, and therefore, into the public eye. MacArthur and Ridgway, who both differed so
greatly in their methods during the Korean War, were identical in the way they both
fashioned their own removal from their respective posts.
Conflict planning and the decision to initiate war
“The military quantifies the risk, the civilian judges it. Regardless of how superior the
military view of a situation may be, the civilian view trumps it. Civilians should get
what they ask for, even if it is not what they really want. In other words, civilian have
a right to be wrong” (Feaver – 1996 p.154).
Feaver’s words appear to make it plain as to who holds the decision to engage in warfare and
conflict in the civil-military relationship. An example which supports this argument is
provided by Buzzanco, when discussing the position of the U.S.’s military leaders in the
involvement and escalation of the Vietnam War, it is made clear that there was little appetite
for the war, “Both Generals Taylor and Westmoreland, the ambassador and commander who
are remembered as hawks on Vietnam, strongly opposed the introduction of combat troops in
the crucial 1964-5 period” (Buzzanco – 1999 pp.73-74). Despite the reservations that were
present however, the military backed the decision to enter into a limited war in Vietnam “Yet
America’s generals also understood that the political will of the Johnson administration to
fight in Vietnam was strong, and accordingly began to pressure civilian leaders to expand the
war” (Buzzanco – 2006 p.177). It appears to be the case that the civilian side of the civil-
military relationship controls the agenda when deciding when to enter or escalate a conflict.
There is however evidence to the contrary, evidence that supports Desch’s statement that “the
record of U.S. post-Cold War executive civilian control of the military has been mixed”
(Desch – 1998 p.397). A prominent example of the failure of the civilians to persuade the
military to intervene, and indeed a success story for the military in the struggle for power in
the civil-military equilibrium, is the opposition of General Colin Powell, the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff from 1989 – 1993, to limited U.S. military intervention in Bosnia and

27 | P a g e
the former Yugoslavia, “The most glaring instance of military influence on decisions to use
force is the purported effort of Colin Powell’s opinion on policy towards Bosnia” (Avant –
1998 p.376).
Why then did General Powell oppose any U.S. military intervention in Bosnia? The reasons
in this case are actually very simple. Powell was a student of the “doctrine of overwhelming
force” (Cohen – 1995 p.108) and did not believe in waging a limited war of any sort “Powell
argued against the use of limited force, “As soon as they tell me it’s limited, it means they do
not care whether you achieve a result or not. As soon as they tell me its ‘surgical’, I head for
the bushes”” (Avant – 1998 p.376). Powell it could be said was of the same thinking as
MacArthur; both generals who saw the objective of war as victory through annihilation, not
attrition and negotiation. Much like MacArthur, Powell was not afraid to speak his mind to
the public about his thoughts on military policy “Powell repeatedly used his expertise to set
an agenda on substantive policy issues that should have been left to civilians” (Avant – 1998
p.376), and made use of what appeared to be a weak political situation to press his own
views:
“General Colin Powell, for example, gave an on-the-record interview in the New York
Times opposing military intervention in Bosnia while serving as chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; meanwhile, civilians in Congress, the first Bush Administration, and
the 1992 presidential campaigns were still debating policy options. General Powell
even published an editorial in his own name opposing any Bosnian intervention.
Military historians suggest that the open opposition of General Powell and the
military delayed U.S. intervention in the Balkans by four years” (Sulmasy, Yoo –
2007 pp.8-9).
In the immediate post-Cold War world, the civilian political leadership was slow to react,
“the political leadership in the United States prefers the seeming comfort of the status quo”
(Markusen – 1992 p.390). It was therefore inevitable that, in terms of the civil-military
relationship, if one side let its leadership and influence wane, the other would step in and fill
the vacuum, and that is exactly what happened with Powell.
Unlike MacArthur however, Powell was never dismissed by the two presidents he served
under. This is largely down to the fact that by the time Clinton had come to power, Powell
had already begun his second two-year term of office “President Clinton simply was unable

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to remove or other-wise punish well-known military leaders, such as General Powell”
(Sulmasy, Yoo – 2007 p.18).
Conclusion – Peacetime
While the assumption that during peacetime the civilian side of the civil-military relationship
enjoys a greater degree of influence and power mostly holds true, it is simply not the case in
regards to pre-war and conflict planning. While the attempt by Clinton to have the Pentagon
ban on gays serving in the military was in one way unsuccessful, in another regard it was a
great success. For the first time, the military would no longer be able to say that no gays
served in the U.S. military, and while “don’t ask don’t tell” certainly was not what Clinton
had hope for or promised during his election campaign. On the other hand however, “don’t
ask, don’t tell” has been a failure for the United States armed forces, as Frank explains “The
result is to generate suspicion among all personnel that one or another might be gay, and to
encourage the performance of hyper-heterosexuality to quell such suspicions” (Frank – 2004
pp.44-45). The feared impact on unit cohesion therefore appears to have been proven correct.
Pre-war and conflict planning appears to be dependent upon the doctrine of the time, and the
familiarity of the doctrine. At the beginning for the Korean War, the end goal was victory,
just as it had been at the end of the Second World War. At the beginning of the Vietnam War,
the goal was to bring the enemy to the negotiating table through a policy of attrition, just as it
had been at the end of the Korean War. By the time of Bosnia and the former Yugoslav
republics, the game had changed. As Markusen stated “the political leadership in the United
States prefers the seeming comfort of the status quo” (Markusen – 1992 p.390), and did not
know how to plan for conflict in the new post-Cold War world. It was therefore up to the
military, especially the JCS and their chairman General Powell, to be the driving force behind
any action or inaction regarding intervention.
In the economic spectrum, there is simply no room for resistance to the commander-in-chief.
It can be guessed with a fair degree of validity that Eisenhower would have tried to remove
Ridgway sooner if he could have done. However with the two year terms for JCS Eisenhower
was stuck with his decision. It is a credit however to his abilities as a president and is ability
to carefully ensure the economic civil-military relationship was not damaged by Ridgeway’s
continual attempts to force a reversal in Eisenhower’s ‘New Look’ policy and massive
retaliation.

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Conclusion
The purpose of this dissertation was to use assumptions to test the state of the civil-military
relationship in both war and peace. Predictably, as is often the case in politics, the answer is
not simple. Working with the first assumption, that the United States military enjoys a greater
degree of influence and power in the civil-military relationship during war, in regards to the
examples used of the Korean War and Vietnam War is plainly not the case. While at the
beginning of the Korean War, after the success at Inchon, MacArthur was certainly given a
great deal of freedom to win the war with the unification of the Korean peninsula. This was
until the arrival of major Communist Chinese forces in November 1950, and the war changed
from one of annihilation, to one of attrition. At that point the civil-military relationship was
no longer as clearly defined as the name suggests, for the JCS, Truman, and the commander
of the 8th Army Ridgway were on the same page in regards to attrition ad MacArthur was not.
It was then a case of MacArthur against the civilians, the military in Washington, and the
military in Korea, and his isolation left him desperate. As a result he turned the conflict with
Truman into a political battle, and in doing so as good as fired himself.
Since MacArthur could not support the new doctrine of attrition, he was dismissed, despite
fears of major political fallout upon his return to the United States, Truman therefore had to
wait for MacArthur to make a mistake, and he got it with the November reversals to the
Chinese:
“Not until MacArthur had injured his own reputation through a dramatic failure could
the President risk dismissing or demoting him. And that occurred with the debacle of
the ‘home by Christmas’ offensive, when the Chinese routed the American forces in
Korea. The administration skilfully blamed MacArthur for the debacle and sought to
avoid joint responsibility” (Bernstein – 1981 p.265).
The effect of MacArthur’s dismissal made waves which travelled as far as the Vietnam War
and into the headquarters of General Westmoreland and the White House of President
Johnson. It limited them both in their scope for the war, with Johnson afraid of Westmoreland
becoming another MacArthur and bringing the People’s Republic of China into the war with
his requests of massive reinforcement, and Westmoreland unable, out of his fear of appearing

30 | P a g e
to be another MacArthur and risk dismissal, to persuade Johnson in 1967 that attrition had
failed and that large scale ground operations in Laos and North Korea would bring about a
successful conclusion to the war.
Overall in peacetime, the civilians enjoy more power in the civil-military relationship. The
commander-in-chief can fully utilise the powers of the office to ensure that military budgets
are approved of by the JCS, even if there are loud dissenting voices, such as the case with
Eisenhower and Ridgway. Its ability to push for social change in the military and effect a
change, even if it was not the fully desired change, is still impressive. The ability of the
military however to resist the demands of their commander-in-chief is very impressive,
however it must be remembered that “don’t ask, don’t tell” was a compromise from both
sides, not a defeat for the president.
The strength civil-military relationship, and the distribution of powers between its various
actors, is therefore dependent on a variety of circumstances. The goal of a conflict is a
conflict is ongoing, whether the strategy is attrition or annihilation. Evidence from the
Korean War appears to show that when the official goal of the war is understood to be victory
and annihilation of the enemy, the civil-military relationship is more amicable than when the
policy of attrition is pursued. The policy of attrition appears to lead to at best an inconclusive
and at worst disastrous conclusion, with lingering effects for the next major conflict. The
ability of the civilians and the executive to maintain control of the military during peacetime
is dependent on the overall political climate. During the Cold War, Eisenhower had no
difficulty in controlling his JCS and military. However in the immediate aftermath of the
Cold War, with the global zeitgeist unclear, the military was able to re-assert its authority, as
shown by the success of the Pentagon in blocking the president from completely opening up
the military to homosexuals, and General Colin Powell’s success in keeping the United States
out of a limited war in Bosnia.
The declassification of documents in the next few decades relating to the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan will shed new light on the question of who runs civil-military relationship, and
will provide a more up to date picture. Until then however, political analysts will have to be
content with the simple truth that there are no simple truths in regards to the civil-military
relationship. The dependent variables of agents and wider military and global political
context mean that the influence and power is constantly shifting between the hands of the
military and the civilians. Perhaps, with the ending of the new Cold War, where the enemy

31 | P a g e
was Islamic extremism and terrorism the, War on Terror, and we enter a new established
paradigm, patterns will once again emerge and enhance our understanding of this ever-
changing political concept. Perhaps they already have, with the assassination of Osama Bin
Laden on the orders of President Obama, who personally gave the go-ahead to an
assassination mission;
“At 8:20am on Friday, April 29th in the Diplomatic Room, President Obama met with
National Security Adviser Tom Donilon, White House chief of staff William Daley,
White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan and deputy National Security
Adviser Denis McDonough and gave the order for the operation” (Just – 2011 p.1).
It is reported that Obama had the operation carried out in the utmost secrecy, and that “only a
very small group of people knew about the operation beforehand” (Just – 2011 p.1). While it
will be quite some years before all the facts regarding the assassination of Osama Bin Laden
are released, with the onus on the small group, not the military as a whole knowing what is
going on, perhaps the civil-military relationship has shifted once again. This time to the
civilians.

32 | P a g e
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