de Roos - MRP 2015 US Civil-Military Relations

U.S. CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS:
STRATEGIC ASSESSMENT THEORY AND THE INVASION OF IRAQ
by
Eric de Roos
Graduate Program in Political Science
A Master Research Paper submitted in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts – Political Science
The School of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies
The University of Western Ontario
London, Ontario, Canada
© Eric de Roos 2015

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Abstract
Civil-military relations is an interdisciplinary subject that examines the how the
institutions of a state’s armed forces interact with its political leadership. Although a relatively
modern discipline of political science, the literature on civil-military relations has proliferated to
encompass many different sub-sets. One specific theory – Risa Brooks’ theory of strategic
assessment – argues that the quality of a state’s civil-military relations directly affects the quality
of strategy produced during inter-state conflict.
By applying this theory to the case of the Iraq War, the goal is to find out how U.S. civil-
military relations affected the major decisions made in prosecuting the war. Examining the first
year of the war, as well as the year directly preceding it, reveals significant defects in strategic
assessment. The focus centres on how Donald Rumsfeld and the Office of the Secretary of
Defense interacted with the U.S. military in producing the strategy that was ultimately used to
invade and occupy Iraq. Particular attention is given to an aspect of strategic assessment
excluded from Brooks’ analysis: structural competence. Ultimately, the empirical evidence
demonstrates there were severe defects in strategic assessment, stemming from problems in both
the military and civilian institutions.
Keywords:
Civil-Military Relations, Iraq War, Operation Iraqi Freedom, Invasion of Iraq, U.S. military,
U.S. Army, Strategic Assessment Theory, Theoretical Civil-Military Relations, Risa Brooks,
Structural Competence, Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Franks, Ricardo Sanchez, David McKiernan,
Paul Bremer, Doug Feith, George W. Bush, David Petraeus, Revolution in Military Affairs,
Counterinsurgency.

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Dedication
Dedicated to the memory of
Second Lieutenant Mark Daily, U.S. Army, 2nd
Battalion, 7th
Cavalry Regiment
Whom I never knew, but still miss.
Your cause of sorrow
Must not be measured by his worth, for then
It hath no end.
-William Shakespeare, Macbeth, V.viii.44-46.

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Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I would like to thank my supervisor, Professor Peter Ferguson, for all the
support and encouragement he showed me throughout this project. Our working relationship, which
spanned three years, both inside and outside of this paper has always flourished. Along with this
paper, our work in building the Leadership and Democracy Lab from its inception have been my
proudest achievements of my time at Western. He has been indispensable to me as a teacher, mentor,
and friend. Despite his poor choice in football teams, his advice and judgment have always been
incalculably useful and greatly appreciated.
A quality graduate education is dependent on both quality professors and students. I was
privileged to have been in the company of both throughout this program. To my professors: Dr.
Abelson, Dr. Anderson, Dr. de Clercy, Dr. Harmes, and Dr. Mansur, thank you for taking the utmost
professionalism to your classes. As educators, you were all incredibly helpful in and out of the
classroom. I would not have developed the passion I have for political science without all of you.
Moreover, I would like to thank my cohorts in the MA program. I learned a lot from all of you, the
effort, intellect, and insight you all brought to this program motivated me to push myself as a student.
I would like to acknowledge my best friend Jeremy Roberts. His help – both formally in editing
and informally in our many chats – proved immensely helpful. To him, I owe an intellectual debt that
I fear I will never be able to repay. Also, I would like to specifically thank Chantel MacLeod, Craig
Moorhead, Richard Schuett, and Matt Smith, for their help in editing this paper.
Finally, to my Mom and Dad, I would like to thank you for your unwavering support
throughout my research. You have never doubted my ability to succeed at anything I have put my
mind to. That is a gift I could never put a price on; I could not have done it without you.

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Table of Contents
Abstract........................................................................................................................................... ii
Dedication......................................................................................................................................iii
Acknowledgements........................................................................................................................ iv
List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature...................................................................................... vii
Introduction..................................................................................................................................... 1
Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Civil-Military Relations..................................................... 6
Chapter One: Classical Theories of Civil-Military Relations................................................... 7
Samuel Huntington: Institutional Theory................................................................................ 7
Ideal Military Professionalism and Objective Control............................................................ 8
Civilian Ideology and the Cold War...................................................................................... 13
Morris Janowitz: Convergence, Pragmatism, & the Constabulary Force ............................. 15
Pragmatism as Professionalism and Moving Towards Convergence.................................... 16
Military Professionalism and the Constabulary Force .......................................................... 18
Chapter Two: Criticisms of Classical Approaches & Post-Cold War Theory........................ 21
Responses to Huntington and Janowitz................................................................................. 21
Schiff and Concordance Theory............................................................................................ 25
Desch and Structural-Threat Theory ..................................................................................... 26
Feaver and Agency Theory.................................................................................................... 29
Chapter Three: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & The Vietnam War ...................................... 31
Krepinevich and Vietnam: Unwelcomed Criticism............................................................... 32
Petraeus and Vietnam: the Problem with Drawing Lessons from History............................ 33
McMaster: Dereliction of Duty and the Ensuing Debate ...................................................... 36
Chapter Four: Strategic Assessment Theory .......................................................................... 43
Part II: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & Operation Iraqi Freedom....................................... 50
Chapter Five: Civil-Military Relations pre-9/11: Rumsfeld & Transformation ..................... 53
The Revolution in Military Affairs: Transformation and Bush’s Candidacy........................ 54
Pre-9/11 Civil-Military Relations under Rumsfeld ............................................................... 56
9/11 and the Rumsfeld Doctrine............................................................................................ 65
Chapter Six: Planning the Invasion of Iraq and Phase IV....................................................... 68
Existing Contingency Plans to Invade Iraq ........................................................................... 69

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The Debate over Troop Numbers .......................................................................................... 71
Phase IV Planning: A Lack Thereof...................................................................................... 76
Chapter Seven: Assessing the Results of OIF in 2003............................................................ 84
The Invasion of Iraq .............................................................................................................. 84
Cutting Off Forces................................................................................................................. 89
Institutional Problems with Phase IV .................................................................................... 92
De-Baathification and Disbanding the Iraqi Army................................................................ 95
The U.S. Military’s Occupation of Iraq................................................................................. 99
Chapter Eight: Revisiting Strategic Assessment Theory...................................................... 103
Brooks’ Conclusions and the Need to Revisit Structural Competence ............................... 103
Structural Competence of the U.S. Military........................................................................ 107
Concluding Remarks ........................................................................................................... 114
Bibliography............................................................................................................................ 119

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List of Abbreviations and Nomenclature
AO: Area of Operations.
ARVN: Army of the Republic of Vietnam. The ground forces of the South Vietnamese military.
ASD: Assistant Secretary of Defense. Fourth highest ranking position in the OSD.
Brigade: A military formation of roughly 3,000 soldiers. Usually commanded by a colonel.
C4ISR: Stands for command, control, communications, computer, intelligence, surveillance, and
reconnaissance. A synonym for transformation.
CENTCOM: United States Central Command. A unified area command that includes the
Middle East.
CFLCC: Coalition Forces Land Component Command (sif-lick). The command structure
responsible for ground forces within CENTCOM.
CIA: Central Intelligence Agency.
CJCS: Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff.
CJTF-7: Combined Joint Task Force-7.
COIN: Counterinsurgency.
CPA: Coalition Provisional Authority.
DoD: United Sates Department of Defense.
DSD: Deputy Secretary of Defense. The second highest position in the OSD.
General: A four-star general officer. It is the highest rank in the U.S. Army, Marine Corps, and
Air Force (Navy equivalent is admiral). The rank is required to hold to hold a position on the
JCS or as a combatant commander.
ISAF: International Security Assistance Force. The name given to the NATO-led command
structure in Afghanistan from 2001-2014.
JCS: The Joint Chiefs of Staff. The principle decision-making body of the U.S. military,
including: Chairman, Vice-Chairman (after 1987), Chief of Staff of the Army, Chief of Naval
Operations, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, and Commandant of the Marine Corps.
ID: Infantry division. A formation of roughly 18,000 soldiers. Usually commanded by a major
general (two star). Can be designated as “light” or “mechanized” based on the number of heavy
equipment assigned to it.
Lieutenant General: A three-star general officer. It is the highest rank in the U.S. Army, Marine
Corps, and Air Force (Navy equivalent is vice-admiral). Usually held by corps commanders,
deputy commanders to four-star commands, or high-ranking officials on the Joint Staff.

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MACV: Military Assistance Command, Vietnam. The name of the U.S. military command
during the Vietnam War.
MNF-I: Multi-National Forces-Iraq.
MOOTW: Military Operations Other Than War (moot-wa).
OIF: Operation Iraqi Freedom. The American military name for the Iraq war.
OPLAN: Operation Plan.
OSD: The Office of the Secretary of Defense. Referring to the civilian staff in the Department of
Defense.
The Pentagon: The building that houses DoD headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Used
metonymically to refer to the DoD.
ORHA: Office of Reconstruction and Humanitarian Affairs. The institutional predecessor to the
CPA.
Phase I-IV Operations: Phase I: build up; Phase II: air strikes/special operations; Phase III:
combat operations; Phase IV: post-combat operations.
RMA: Revolution in Military Affairs. A military strategy that places its emphasis in
technological warfare. Coined by Andy Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment
(1973-2015).
TPFDL: Time-Phased Force and Deployment List (tip-fiddle).
USD: Under Secretary of Defense. The third-highest rank in the OSD.

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Introduction
On March 19th
, 2003 President George W. Bush ordered Secretary of Defense1
Donald
Rumsfeld to commence Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF), beginning what would become a nearly
nine year-long conflict.2
There is little question that the Iraq War has dwarfed all other events of
the younger Bush’s presidency, becoming its defining feature, and thus the focal point of much
political analysis. The War’s lasting legacy still remains clouded by temporal proximity to its
conclusion. Presently, the debate still continues over whether or not the United States was best
served by Bush’s fateful decision. However, this debate ostensibly remains one of historical
hypotheticals or predictions of the road not traveled. Moreover, the decision to invade Iraq
remains a politically and emotionally charged issue for many, especially those with a personal
connection to the conflict. With these difficulties in mind, analysis of the conflict as a whole – its
legacy, its broader impact on American society, and even its impact on political science – is
nearly impossible to carry out effectively. However, when parsed effectively, study of the Iraq
War can benefit political science; there exists certain aspects of the Iraq war that presently merit
further academic examination.
Even among the most stalwart proponents and defenders of Bush’s decision to invade
Iraq there is a tacit, if not explicit, acknowledgement that the Iraq War was marred by a host of
ineptitudes and transgressions in its prosecution.3
This acknowledgement creates a paradox that
1
For the remainder of this paper the word “defence” will herein follow the American spelling with an “s” as
opposed to the British spelling with a “c”. The frequent references to proper nouns that include the American
spelling (ex. Department of Defense, Secretary of Defense, etc.) make for the adoption of the American spelling of
defense, however undesirable, a more consistent application of spelling.
2
George W. Bush. Decision Points (New York, NY: Broadway Paperbacks, 2010), 223.
3
See: Max Boot, “No Need to Repent for Support of Iraq War,” Commentary, March 18, 2013; David Frum, “The
Speechwriter: Inside the Bush Administration During the Iraq War,” Newsweek, March 19, 2013; Joshua
Muravchik, “The FP Memo: Operation Comeback,” Foreign Policy, October 16, 2009.

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surely enters the mind of even the most casual observer of America’s 21st
century foray into
Mesopotamia. As a nation at the apex of its international hegemony following the dissolution of
the Soviet Union, the early years of the Iraq War showed perhaps the nadir of America’s ability
to transfer this tangible hard power into favourable political results.
The failure to achieve its stated goals through the use of force appears inexplicable
considering its colossal advantage in crucial areas of economic wealth and military capabilities.
Many are content to attribute any and all failures of the U.S. in Iraq to Bush’s original decision to
invade – this viewpoint recently resurfaced in the wake of the ten year anniversary of the war in
2013.4
To adopt this view, however, would be as unfair as it is simplistic. Assuming that the
events of the war were inevitable from the moment the initial decision was made, discounts a
host of important decisions made by various actors and institutions thereafter; much can be
gained from analyzing these decisions. In order to address the apparent paradox listed above, one
must move past the reiteration of the merits of Bush’s decision. Scholars wishing to answer this
question must focus on broad aspects of power, use of force, and theoretical approaches to
international relations. To best answer the question at hand, however – why America failed to
achieve its political goals in the Iraq War – a more narrow academic focus is needed. One
possible explanation for the above-stated paradox is an examination of U.S. civil-military
relations.
Civil-military relations is an interdisciplinary area of study that concerns itself with the
relationship between the military and civilians within a state. It is not difficult to see how civil-
4
See: Hans Blix, “Iraq War was a Terrible Mistake and Violation of U.N. Charter,” CNN, March 19, 2013;
Dillingham, “Stop Defending the Iraq War,” Salon, March 27, 2014; Thompson, “Iraq: The Biggest Mistake in
American Military History,” Forbes, December 15, 2011; Walt, “Top 10 Lessons of the Iraq War,” Foreign Policy,
March 20, 2012.

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military relations can span into different disciplines of study. For example, sociologists have
often sought to examine how the military affects society at large, or vice versa; political
scientists tend to focus on the institutional relationship between the military and the government.
Unsurprisingly, like other academic topics, theory plays a large role in civil-military relations.
The different theoretical approaches provide the rationale for the assumptions upon which key
conclusions can be drawn. Assumptions vary widely from theory-to-theory, which can result in
different conclusions. Of wider variance than assumptions, is the inherent focus of different
theories. While traditional civil-military relations is focused on questions of maintaining civilian
control over the military and guarding against potential coups, this does not realistically apply to
the American case. As Peter Feaver points out, a large portion of civil-military relations
scholarship looks at the U.S. in terms of “no coup, no problem.”5
There are, however, theoretical
approaches that are applicable to the proposed question.
This paper will be divided into two main parts. The first part will deal with theoretical
approaches to civil-military relations. An extensive literature review will be conducted regarding
some of the main theories of civil-military relations. First, Samuel Huntington (1957) and Morris
Janowitz (1960), whose inaugural contributions to civil-military relations theory cannot be over-
stated (and, consequently, never are) will be presented. Next, the resurgence of theory following
the end of the Cold War will be discussed. Many of these theories sought to mend the apparent
contradictions that emerged when Huntington and Janowitz’s theories failed to explain the
changes that took place following the Cold War. While this is an enormous body of literature,
three distinctive theories will be discussed (Schiff, 1995; Desch, 1998; Feaver, 2003). Before
5
Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2003), 11.

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turning to Iraq, it is useful to revisit how civil-military relations scholarship is applied to a
singular case. Probing into some of the key discourses on civil-military relations during the
Vietnam War (Krepinevich, 1986; Petraeus, 1987; McMaster, 1997) serves a few useful
purposes as to how scholars have observed civil-military relations in the context of a solitary
case study. Finally, Risa Brooks’ theory of strategic assessment (2008) – which argues that civil-
military relations, “shape the institutional processes in which leaders evaluate their strategy in
interstate conflicts”6
– will be discussed in detail. Compared with previous theories explained, it
will be shown why Brooks’ theory will be adopted going forward and why it is the most
beneficial to answering the question at hand.
Part two will deal the empirical side of the analysis regarding U.S. civil military relations
during the initial year of the Iraq War using strategic assessment theory. First, an extensive
empirical analysis will be given regarding civil-military relations prior to 9/11; civil-military
relations during the planning process for the Iraq War; and of how the U.S. military’s strategy
fared during the invasion and the initial months of the invasion. Next, Brooks’ examination of
civil-military relations and postwar planning of the Iraq War will be discussed. While Brooks’
analysis is, for the most part, correct, I argue that Brooks overstates the quality of U.S. civil-
military relations by not giving proper attention to one of her four key attributes – structural
competence. Finally, some brief policy recommendations will be offered that seek to improve
civil-military relations and strategic assessment going forward. The main finding of this paper is
that scholars should remain cautious when using the Iraq War as evidence in arguing for more or
less civilian control of the U.S. military. Ultimately, the lead-up to the invasion of the Iraq was a
6
Risa A. Brooks, Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2008), 2.

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complex process, aspects of which still remain somewhat opaque. What becomes clear through
an extensive analysis of the current literature is that there were clear problems with both military
and civilian institutions and leaders which plagued the quality of strategic assessment. The result
is that a simple prescription of more or less civilian control would not have had a significantly
positive impact on civil-military relations at the time.
Frank Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow at the National Defense University, wrote,
“War is an audit of national will and capacity, but it is also a test of institutions and leaders.”7
While the U.S. may have had fulfilled the requirements to meet the former, the Iraq War remains
a tragic failure regarding the latter. If nothing else, a comprehensive study of the Iraq war shows
the need for the continued study of civil-military relations. This can often lead to difficult
discussions regarding a society’s relationship with their military and the military’s relationship
with the civilian government. However, as the military historian Thomas Ricks argues, “If you
are comfortable with your strategy, you may not be making very good strategy.”8
This maxim
holds true for civil-military relations as well. If states shy away from the uncomfortable
questions of civil-military relations, they do so at their own peril.
7
Frank G. Hoffman, "Dereliction of Duty Redux?: Post-Iraq American Civil-Military Relations," Orbis, 52, no. 2
(2008), 235.
8
Ricks, Thomas E. Ricks, “If you are comfortable with your strategy, you may not be making very good strategy.”
Foreign Policy, January 24, 2014.

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Part I: Theoretical Approaches to Civil-Military
Relations

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Chapter One: Classical Theories of Civil-Military Relations
Samuel Huntington: Institutional Theory
Seldom does academic literature on civil-military relations exclude a section devoted to
reiterating and analyzing Samuel Huntington’s seminal work The Soldier and the State (1957). It
would be difficult to argue that any other piece of work has had a larger impact on the discipline.
Frequently, Huntington is lauded by his contemporaries with the informal title as the “dean of
civil-military relations.”9
However, The Soldier and the State has certainly not been immune to
substantial criticisms from both Huntington’s contemporaries and modern scholars, yet it
remains crucial to any discussion of theoretical civil-military relations. As Peter Feaver points
out, “Each time, the Huntingtonian civil-military distinction has survived, only to be ‘slain’ a
few years later, often in nearly identical language and rarely with any reference to the earlier
Huntington-slayers.”10
Therefore it is important to examine Huntington’s theory and why, as
Feaver acknowledges, it remains pervasive to the study of civil-military relations despite vast
criticism.
Huntington’s work on civil-military relations must be viewed within the context of the
Cold War. The chief concern of The Soldier and the State is how the United States will survive
the long-term external threat of the Soviet Union while maintaining adequate civilian control
over the military,11
a situation Huntington notes is alien to the American experience, which has
9
Michael C. Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures: The End of the Cold War and Weakening U.S. Civilian
Control,” Armed Forces & Society, 24, No. 3 (1998), 390; Peter D. Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique:
Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control,” Armed Forces & Society, 23, No. 2 (1996), 166.
10
Feaver, Armed Servants, 8.
11
Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 150.

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been largely free of external threats.12
Huntington’s goal is to solve the classic civil-military
problematique – “how to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask them
to with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do”13
– within
the new Cold War paradigm.14
While not the first scholar to attempt do so,15
Huntington makes a
radical departure from previous works on civil-military relations by arguing for an ideal division
of institutions using deductive logic from democratic theory.16
Ideal Military Professionalism and Objective Control
For Huntington, civil-military relations is the competition between two institutions – the
military (representing the armed forces) and the civilians (representing the government, who in a
democracy represent the polity) – for power, which he defines as, “the capacity to control the
behavior of other people.”17
In attempting to explain the ideal relationship between the two
institutions, Huntington first outlines the ideal type of each institution. It is here that Huntington
spends the majority of his time. In short, the main factors affecting each institution –
professionalism for the military and ideology for the civilians – become the independent
variables. The dependent variable is the resulting level of civilian control.18
To find the ideal
type of civilian control then, the logic follows, Huntington must define his ideal type of military
professionalism and civilian ideology, which he devotes ample space to.
12
Ibid, 54.
13
Feaver, “The Civil-Military Problematique,” 149.
14
Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 457.
15
See: Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism: A Romance and Realities of Profession (1937); Louis Smith,
American Democracy and Military Power (1951).
16
17
Ibid, 80, 84.
18

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Military professionalism is at the core of Huntington’s argument. A large portion of The
Soldier and the State seeks to define the aspects of a profession, apply it to the military, in order
to evaluate its level of military professionalism. By professional, Huntington is not referring
simply to the dichotomy of paid versus amateur. Rather, he defines professionalism as the
embodiment of three characteristics that are necessary to perform the task: expertise,
responsibility, and corporateness.19
Expertise requires both education and experiences in order to fill the requirement to be
considered a profession. Said expertise, Huntington states, must be reasonably applicable
irrespective of time and place. In order for one to achieve expertise worthy of a profession both a
general education (i.e. liberal arts) and a technical education are necessary.20
It is the requirement
of expertise which excludes the enlisted man from Huntington’s analysis.21
Further, the enlisted
man performs mechanical crafts, rendering the needlessness of the aforementioned education.22
Borrowing from Harold Lasswell, Huntington uses the definition, “the management of violence,”
to describe the peculiar skill of the military officer.23
Responsibility is the notion that society is a direct stakeholder of the profession. This
notion is perhaps best defined as offering expertise to a sole client and concerned with one
segment of activities, “to the exclusion of all other ends.”24
In the same way a defense lawyer is
responsible to do his utmost to achieve the favourable verdict for the indicted and the doctor
must aid the infirm above all else, the military must procure security for its client – the state.25
19
20
Ibid, 9.
21
Ibid, 11.
22
Ibid, 13.
23
Ibid, 11.
24
Ibid, 15.
25
Ibid.

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To ensure such standards, professions necessitate a monopoly by the state governing its practice
in order to protect society.26
Corporateness requires, “that members of a profession share a sense of organic unity and
consciousness of themselves as a group apart from laymen.”27
Or more formally, “where a legal
right to practice the profession is limited to members of a carefully defined body.”28
Applying
these three characteristics, Huntington concludes that the military officer, like the doctor and
lawyer, is a profession.29
Moreover, he concludes that the military maximizes its effectiveness
the closer it approaches the professional ideal.30
Confirming this conclusion with an exhaustive
analysis of military professionalism in Britain, Prussia, and France through the 19th
& early 20th
centuries, Huntington moves to explain the political ramifications of military professionalism.31
Here, Huntington seeks to move from the more abstract characteristics that define
professionalism toward the practical functions of military professionalism.32
While this would
appear extremely difficult, Huntington maintains, “People who act the same way over a long
period of time tend to develop distinctive and persistent habits of thought… The continuing
objective performance of the professional function gives rise a continuing weltanschauung or
professional mind.”33
In an effort to simplify this rather abstract theoretical concept, Huntington
defines it as an ethic, explaining, “Obviously, no one individual or group will adhere to all the
26
Ibid.
27
Ibid, 10.
28
Ibid, 16.
29
Ibid, 11.
30
Ibid.
31
Ibid, 19-58.
32
Ibid, 59.
33
Ibid, 61.

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constituent elements of the military ethic… any given officer corps will adhere to the extent that
it is professional.”34
The aim of defining this “professional military ethic” is to predict the actions of a
military that exhibits the three characteristic of professionalism. Specifically, elaborating on this
professional military ethic concerning relations of the military to: “basic values and perspectives,
national military policy, and the relation of the military to the state.”35
Of chief concern here is
the third relationship. Drawing from conclusions of his historical analysis, Huntington argues the
professionalism that first appeared in the 19th
century rejected the established unity of military
science and politics, replacing it with a new dichotomous relationship, with militaries seeking to
separate themselves from politics.36
This new found separation of the military and the state is the
linchpin of professionalism, as Huntington elaborates: “the participation of military officers in
politics undermines their professionalism, curtailing their professional competence, dividing the
profession against itself, and substituting extraneous values for professional values.”37
Essentially, involvement in the political sphere is antithetical to military professionalism,
therefore professionalism precipitates the strict dichotomy of the two institutions – the soldier
and the state.
Huntington’s application of professionalism to civilian control makes up the final crux of
his theory. Having devoted a substantial space detailing the ideal military type, Huntington turns
to the question of, “how military power can be minimized.”38
First, the distinction is made
between two different types of civilian control: subjective and objective. Subjective civilian
34
Ibid.
35
Ibid, 62.
36
Ibid.
37
Ibid, 71.
38
Ibid, 80.

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control simply refers to maximizing civilian power, which would logically minimize military
power.39
Until recently, it is noted, subjective control was the only type of civilian control that
could exist because “it is the only form of civilian control possible in the absence of a
professional officer corps.”40
In the presence of a professional officer corps, however, there exists the possibility of
objective control. Subjective control, indeed, creates problems if one accepts Huntington’s
premises. Intrusion by the state into military affairs to expand civilian power has the opposite
effect in establishing civilian control.41
Any attempt to civilianize the military undermines
professionalism, creating a military more susceptible to intervening in the affairs of the state.42
Objective control, then, seeks to achieve the opposite of subjective civilian control; rather than
maximize civilian power, objective control looks to maximize military professionalism.43
Arguing that objective control is the favourable form of civilian control leads to a rather
paradoxical conclusion, but logically follows Huntington’s theoretical premises. If
professionalism requires institutional autonomy from the state, and participation in politics is
adverse to professionalism, then the best way for the state to ensure civilian control is to
maximize professionalism.44
Huntington argues that subjective control presupposes military
involvement in politics by denying institutional autonomy, thus undermining professionalism
and actually weakening civilian control. Herein lies the first major conclusion of institutional
theory. When the state seeks to apply civilian control by violating the institutional division, it has
39
Ibid.
40
Ibid, 81.
41
Ibid, 83.
42
Ibid.
43
Ibid.
44
Ibid.

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the opposite effect, creating a military more likely to intervene in the political affairs of the
state.45
Civilian Ideology and the Cold War
The second major theoretical conclusion concerns the second independent variable
Huntington argues affects civilian control: ideology. Concerning ideology, Huntington narrows
his focus to the United States. Acknowledging that the military can never be completely
autonomous from the society it protects, Huntington states that militaries must balance functional
imperatives (national security) with societal imperatives (the prevailing ideology of the state). In
the case of ideologies that are inherently hostile to the professional military ethic, the military
must make concessions in professionalism in order to gain power.46
In the context of the Cold
War, Huntington is concerned that such concessions could prove disastrous.47
Referring to ideology in the broadest analytical sense, Huntington is primarily concerned
with liberalism and conservatism48
and their respective effects on American civil-military
relations. Liberalism is inherently opposed to many of the tenets of the professional military
ethic, which more closely resembles conservatism.49
The United States is heavily rooted in a
tradition of liberalism, more so than the European powers, which is why Huntington argues that
the former lagged behind the latter in development of professional militaries.50
Enjoying the
security brought about by its geographical location, the U.S. never faced the level of external
45
Ibid, 85.
46
Ibid, 94.
47
Ibid, 455.
48
Here, Huntington defines liberalism as, “referring to the philosophy of John Locke… rooted in individualism.
Emphasizing reason and moral dignity.” Conservatism is defined as, “referring to the philosophy of Edmund
Burke,” concerning the preservation of society and the state, not laissez-faire capitalism. (Huntington 90-91, 93)
49
Ibid, 94.
50
Ibid, 143.

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threats that European powers faced through the 19th
century.51
Huntington notes that liberal
societies can mobilize to meet large threats on behalf of universal principles for limited periods
of time, as occurred during the Civil War and WWII, but he believes the Cold War creates a
situation far different.52
Noting that the Cold War is likely to be a permanent fixture of the post-WWII
international system, the U.S. will face a prolonged external threat for the first time in its history,
something Huntington believed the present-day civil-military relations were unfit to meet. The
stress a permanent threat places on American society could “be relieved only by the weakening
of the security threat or the weakening in liberalism.”53
With the weakening of the former being
unlikely, Huntington’s conclusion is that “the requisite for military security is a shift in basic
American values from liberalism to conservatism.”54
The danger of America continuing on the
same path of its past, is that liberalism will not permit the conditions for an adequate level
military professionalism, “without which society cannot endure.”55
In the final section of the Soldier and the State, Huntington illustrates the distinctions in
ideological values between the military and American society, contrasting the daily life of the
United States Military Academy at West Point with the nearby village of Highland Falls in
upstate New York.56
This portrait attempts to convey that the shift in values Huntington calls for
is perhaps not as radical as it appears:
West Point embodies the military ideal as its best: Highland Falls the
American spirit at its most commonplace. West Point is a gray island in a many
colored sea, a bit of Sparta in the midst of Babylon. Yet is it possible to deny that
51
Ibid, 150.
52
Ibid.
53
Ibid, 456.
54
Ibid, 464.
55
Ibid.
56
Ibid, 464-465.

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the military values – loyalty, duty, restraint, dedication – are the ones America
most needs today?57
Understanding that a change in fundamental values of a society is a harsh prescription,
Huntington nonetheless believed it necessary to survive the Cold War. Perhaps this final analogy
serves to articulate that such a shift could be beneficial to society in more ways than one.
Morris Janowitz: Convergence, Pragmatism, & the Constabulary Force
Huntington’s invaluable contribution to civil-military relations in The Soldier and the
State was articulating an overarching theory that served to both predict and prescribe. Morris
Janowitz’s book, The Professional Soldier (1960), published three years after Huntington’s, was
not the first to rebut Huntington’s theory, but it was the first to construct an over-arching
competing theory. The differences between the two theorists in their scope, methods, and
conclusions are palpable, though there are areas of concurrence. Comparing and contrasting
Huntington and Janowitz speaks to the inter-disciplinary nature of civil-military relations. The
former a political scientist by trade, the latter a sociologist, show how competing academic
lenses can be useful to the student of civil-military relations.
The Professional Soldier is inherently less abstract than The Soldier and the State,
drawing from empirical data to address a number of working hypotheses. Unsurprisingly, the
sociological approach is concerned with trends in the composition of the military vis-à-vis
society.58
In terms of civil-military relations, the goal is to unearth both the growing differences
(gaps) and similarities (convergences) between the two institutions, and the possible
ramifications they hold. Janowitz organizes this goal into five hypotheses, concerning: (1) a
57
Ibid, 465.
58
Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: a Social and Political Portrait (New York, NY: Free Press, 1960), 7.

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changing organizational authority; (2) a narrowing skill differential; (3) a shift in officer
recruitment; (4) a significance of unconventional career paths; (5) and trends in political
indoctrination.59
Drawing on both historical biographical records of past military officers, survey
data, and intensive interviews of current ones, Janowitz finds that there is an increasing
convergence between the military and society,60
with the former becoming increasingly similar
to the latter in its organizational tendencies.61
Pragmatism as Professionalism and Moving Towards Convergence
Like Huntington, Janowitz is interested with the notion of military professionalism.
Unlike Huntington, however, Janowitz does not construe professionalism as a fixed ideal.
Rather, in his mind, professionalism is dynamic, changing in response to different sets of
conditions.62
This view of professionalism is not grounded in a series of theoretic steps, it simply
reflects the observation of a changing military structure over the last fifty years. Two integral
examples that represent this changing professionalism are: the supremacy of the “pragmatist”
school of thought over the “absolutist” school of thought within the military, resulting in the
emergence of “constabulary” tendencies of the military.
One of the many ways Janowitz sought to examine the changing nature professionalism
was to examine how the officer corps approached the use of force. One of these approaches was
termed the absolutist school of thought, which Janowitz describes as the belief that: “Warfare,
actual or threatened, is the most fundament basis of international relations. Since the political
objectives of warfare are gained by victory, the more complete the victory, the greater the
59
Ibid, 8-12.
60
Ibid, 423-429.
61
Ibid.
62
Mackubin Thomas Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11: Renegotiating the Civil-Military Bargain (New
York, NY: Continuum, 2011), 24.

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possibility of achieving political goals.”63
Contrary to the absolutist school, lies the pragmatist
school, ascribing to the belief that: “Warfare is but one instrument of international struggle. The
political objectives of warfare are gained by adapting the use of threat of violence to the
objectives to be achieved.”64
Indeed, this dispute over the relationship between military force and political goals was
quite germane to the political climate in which Janowitz was writing. President Eisenhower’s
“New Look” policy was a de facto embracement of the absolutist school, focusing on retaliatory
nuclear capabilities, while cutting conventional forces needed to make limited responses.65
The
pragmatist school found its home in the Democratic Party, resulting in the Kennedy
Administration’s renewed funding of Special Forces and Secretary McNamara’s tit-for-tat
approach to Vietnam, both emphasizing flexible responses as an essential part of defense
policy.66
Janowitz foresaw this impending shift towards the pragmatist school and argued it would
have consequences for the military. The absolutist school’s reliance on nuclear weapons was ill-
suited to meet the demands of U.S. foreign policy. Moving towards a pragmatist school would
affect changes in the concept of professionalism. Observing how the military’s natural resistance
to change often results in obsolete organizational structure, Janowitz argues that the military will
adopt more civilian tendencies towards its management and bureaucracy in order to meet the
demands of pragmatism,67
resulting in the narrowing of the differences between civilian and
63
Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 264.
64
Ibid.
65
Owens, US Civil-Military Relations After 9/11, 98.
66
Charles A. Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians: US Civil-Military Relations under Stress (New York, NY:
Routledge, 2006), 159.
67
Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 22-23.

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military occupation.68
This convergence, brought on by pragmatism, would lead to a military
with a more constabulary outlook.69
Military Professionalism and the Constabulary Force
The term constabulary forces is used by Janowitz to describe the change professionalism
brought about by a pragmatist outlook on force.70
Pragmatism leads to a decrease in what
Janowitz terms “upper end” violence – nuclear weapons or overwhelming force – and an
increase in “lower end” violence like peacekeeping or counterinsurgency.71
Janowitz argues that
an entirely different kind of professional is needed for managing lower end violence as opposed
to higher end.72
The professional military officer of the constabulary force cannot be severed
from the political nature of their task, and therefore must be more attune with civilian values.73
Essentially, the opposite of Huntington’s recommendation for military effectiveness.
Such a change in the military’s self-conception of professionalism would be incredibly
difficult to implement and would occur incrementally.74
There is no question the military view
themselves closer to the Huntingtonian idea of professionalism and are quick to distinguish
themselves from any kind of policing function.75
Janowitz, despite stating that his concept of the
constabulary force does not refer to any kind of policing function, nonetheless predicted the
68
Ibid, 424.
69
Ibid, 418.
70
Ibid.
71
Ibid.
72
Ibid, 419.
73
Ibid, 420.
74
Morris Janowitz, “Toward a Redefinition of Military Strategy in International Relations,” World Politics, 26, No.
4 (1974), 499.
75
Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 419.

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military would be resistant to any change.76
The ultimate policy recommendations that Janowitz
makes reflect this.
Janowitz’s prescriptions are most concerned with how to encourage the convergence of
the military toward society and how to stem growing gaps. One such gap of concern is the
deterioration of the citizen-soldier. Since pragmatism makes lower end engagements more likely,
mass participation would no longer be necessary for war to occur.77
While Huntington would see
little problem with a professional volunteer force isolated from society, Janowitz believes that
the concept of the citizen-soldier is a normative good that serves to strengthen democratic
values.78
This gap, produced by the deterioration of the citizen-soldier ideal, however, could be
offset by a convergence of the officer corps.79
One way to cultivate the fledgling citizen-soldiers ideal is to refocus the education of the
officer corps. The data Janowitz examined showed the process of convergence of the officer with
civilian occupations was already evident in areas of authority, organization, and administrative
functions.80
To further aid this process, Janowitz argued for changes in military education policy,
specifically, for a focus on political-military education in the initial years of an officer’s
education (as opposed to postponement until the middle of a career).81
Moreover, a closer
integration with civilian universities is beneficial, as Janowitz finds the monopoly military
academies enjoy over education troubling to the notion of convergence.82
76
Ibid, 420.
77
James Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” Armed Forces & Society, 29, No. 1 (2002), 11.
78
Ibid, 12.
79
Ibid.
80
Janowitz, The Professional Soldier, 423-424.
81
Ibid, 426.
82
Ibid.

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The rise of a “distinct and visible” type of officer Janowitz terms the “military
intellectual” since WWII is indicative of convergence.83
Future viability of convergence
depends, to an extent, on the further growth of military intellectuals within the officer corps.
Officers who focus their advanced education on the social sciences – particularly international
relations – rather than the traditional focus on engineering, and who do so at civilian universities,
are the ideal future leaders of a constabulary force.84
For convergence to be successful, Janowitz
further asserts that the military needs to place greater value on career paths that are more
amenable to the military intellectual.85
In short, while Huntington saw the ideal military officer
of the Cold War as one who would voluntary exclude himself from the political sphere,
Janowitz’s ideal officer was particularly adept when it came to political-military concerns.
The maintenance of adequate civilian control over the military is reliant upon the
evolution of the constabulary force to ensure professional competency and prevent military
frustration.86
Under a constabulary force, Janowitz argued, military professionalism would
flourish because of a closer relationship with civilian society,87
not, as Huntington would surely
argue, in spite of it. For Janowitz, the constabulary officer submits himself to civilian control
because, “he is integrated into civilian society [and] shares its common values.”88
The
Professional Soldier’s conclusion offers a near opposite prescription to the one put forth in The
Soldier and the State to solve the civil-military problematique.
83
Ibid, 433.
84
Ibid.
85
Ibid, 425.
86
Ibid, 435.
87
Ibid.
88
Ibid, 440.

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Chapter Two: Criticisms of Classical Approaches & Post-Cold War
Theory
Responses to Huntington and Janowitz
Having overviewed the main arguments put forth by Huntington and Janowitz, it is
important to address some of the objections scholars have made regarding their work. To do so,
this section will briefly outline some key modern theorists of civil-military relations (Schiff,
1995; Desch, 1998; Feaver, 2003), united by their attempts to revisit U.S. civil-military relations
following the end of the Cold War – called the Post-Cold War School. Allotting less space for
these theories is not intended to imply their inferiority to Huntington and Janowitz. Rather,
providing more extensive analyses to these two classic theorists serves two purposes. First, many
of these scholars distinguish themselves through specific disagreements or agreements they have
with Huntington and Janowitz. Second, having a conceptual understanding of the classical
theorists before examining more modern theories gives the reader a sense of the chronological
evolution of civil-military relations scholarship.
In introducing The Soldier and the State’s contributions above, there were two references
made which are relevant when discussing criticism of Huntington: the invocation of “radical” to
describe Huntington’s theory, and Feaver’s remark on the consistency with which academics
criticize his work. Radical is indeed an apt description of Huntington’s theory for the time he
was writing. Huntington’s book was initially deemed so controversial that he was denied tenure
at Harvard the year following its release, and subsequently moved to Columbia University with

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his colleague Zbigniew Brzezinski.89
Four years later, with the book moving toward prominence,
Harvard hired Huntington back with full tenure.90
Such controversy erupted because of Huntington’s swift departure from the status quo.
Previously, literature on U.S. civil-military relations had been rooted in the long-standing
American tradition of viewing standing militaries as a threat to civil society,91
best characterized
by Lasswell’s garrison state concept (1941).92
Looking at the increasing militarization of the
world’s major powers, Lasswell argued that the increasing power of the military would probably
lead them to subsume the functions of civilian governments, resulting in a government
dominated by unchecked military power, termed the garrison state.93
While Lasswell was correct
in predicting that as the military grew it would take over civilian functions of government (which
frequently occurred during WWII), he was wrong in predicting the military would not
voluntarily demobilize.94
Huntington viewed Lasswell’s failed pessimistic prediction of the U.S. military as a
prime example of the prevailing liberal hostility towards the military.95
Consequently, he used
this wrong assumption as a basis for his provocative challenge to the state of civil-military
relations theory. Unsurprisingly, critics were quick to pounce on the flaws of Huntington’s
theory, namely, the tautological nature of Huntington’s concept of professionalism. Morris Jones
notes that the concept of professionalism is a “tight-rope,” with, “no real world [figure] who
89
Robert D. Kaplan, “Looking the World in the Eye: Profile of a Harvard Professor,” The Atlantic, December 2001.
90
Ibid.
91
92
Lasswell first articulated the garrison state concept in 1937 in reference to the rise of military power in Japan.
1941, however, was when he applied it to the United States.
93
Harold D. Lasswell, “The Garrison State,” American Journal of Sociology, 46, No. 4 (1941), 456-458.
94
Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 348-350.
95
Ibid, 350.

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passes this test.”96
S.E. Finer, perhaps the most vehement contemporary critic of Huntington,
echoes Morris Jones, referring to the concept of professionalism as “essentialist,” explaining: “If
soldiers are observed to act in ways inconsistent with these concepts of professionalism and the
military mind, so much the worse for the soldiers; they are not completely professional, not
purely military.”97
Moreover, Finer’s comparative analysis finds that Huntington’s theory is
simply inconsistent with the histories of multiple states.98
While early critics of Huntington focused their criticism on the logical premises of his
theory, post-Cold War theorists, with the benefit of hindsight, can assess the predictive elements
of his theory. Recall the core prediction of Huntington’s theory that comes with his final
conclusion – if the U.S. fails to adopt a more conservative ideology and objective control then it
will not produce the adequate military effectiveness to survive the Cold War. Peter Feaver sets
out to methodically test whether Huntington’s predictions can hold up to historical analysis.
Since it can be reasonably concluded that the U.S. won the Cold War, either one or both of two
things needed to occur in order for Huntington’s theory to be considered partially correct. The
U.S. either became more conservative ideologically or it exhibited objective civilian control (i.e.
less civilian intrusion in military affairs).99
Feaver’s extensive analysis of both indicators,
however, shows the opposite clearly occurred.100
The myriad of problems with Huntington’s
theory has led to its amending by scholars hoping to create conceptual clarity through similar
assumptions.
96
W. H. Morris Jones, “Armed Forces and the State,” Public Administration, 35, No. 4 (1957), 415.
97
Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (London, UK: Paul Mall, 1962), 22.
98
Ibid, 21.
99
100
Ibid, 38.

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Criticism of Janowitz’s work has been much more muted for a variety of reasons. To
begin, the actual thesis of his theory is much more reserved than Huntington’s. James Burke
points out that Janowitz states problems to which he offers limited to no solutions.101
Furthermore, Feaver argues that the lack of criticism toward Janowitz is unfair, as Janowitz
essentially falls back on the Huntingtonian argument that professionalism will maintain civilian
control (however, he disagrees with Huntington on how to maintain professionalism).102
Indeed,
when Janowitz was criticized by Charles Moskos, who argued convergence theory did not go far
enough in describing the “civilianization” of the military, Janowitz responded, in rather
Huntingtonian fashion, that the military’s uniquely professional nature ensures its distinctiveness
from civilian occupations.103
Moreover, Janowitz’s sociological approach is inherently less
concerned with arguments about civilian control – arguably the most contentious issue facing
civil-military relations – and more concerned with the societal similarities and differences
between the military and civilians.104
Therefore, it is predictable that scholars focusing on
civilian control will, as Feaver pointed out, consistently address Huntington.
The early post-Cold War years in the U.S. sparked a major revisiting of civil-military
relations theory focusing on two issues. First, the problem of how to reconcile the lack of a major
external threat with a large standing army.105
And second, how to deal with the perceived
weakening of civilian control, leading many scholars to term the state of U.S. civil-military
relations as “in crisis.”106
This sentiment was so wide-spread that an army officer published a
101
Burk, “Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations,” 13-14.
102
103
Morris Janowitz, “From Institutional to Occupational: The Need for Conceptual Continuity,” Armed Forces &
Society, 4, No. 1 (1977), 55.
104
105
Peter D. Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” Annual Review of Political Science, 2, No. 1 (1999), 230.
106
Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures,” 389; Feaver, Armed Servants, 185-188; Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian
Control of the Military in the United States Today,” 10; Stevenson, Warriors and Politicians, 194.

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hypothetical essay in the U.S. Army’s journal Parameters outlining how the U.S. military could
institute a coup by 2012.107
While scholars disagree over the indicators of weakening civilian
control,108
they near-uniformly address similar issues that renewed cause for concern over post-
Cold War civilian control: (1) The effects of the Goldwater-Nichols reforms (1987) that
strengthened the position of Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS), resulting in a military
with concentrated influence over policy;109
(2) The election of President Clinton, for whom
Richard Kohn stated military issues were a “third rail;”110
(3) The divergence in opinion on use
of military force between the military and civilians.111
It is under the pretense of these growing
issues that scholars sought to redefine civil-military relations theory.
Schiff and Concordance Theory
Rebecca Schiff was one of the first of many whose theoretical work aimed to provide an
alternative to the perceived prevalence of institutional theory. Deriding both its grounding in a
specifically American historical experience and its exclusion of cultural factors to its analysis,
Schiff lays out an alternative: concordance theory.112
Instead of focusing simply on safeguarding
civilian control through a separation of military and civil institutions, Schiff argues that
agreement on, “separation, integration, or some alternative,” between the “military, political
leadership, and the citizenry,” contingent on the cultural conditions, best preserves civilian
107
Charles J. Dunlap, “The Origins of the American Military Coup of 2012,” Parameters (Winter 1992-93), 2-20.
108
Feaver, Armed Servants, 185-188.
109
Eliot A. Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime (New York, NY: Free
Press, 2002), 189-190.
110
Richard H. Kohn, “The Erosion of Civilian Control of the Military in the United States Today.” Naval War
College Review, 55, No. 3 (2002), 12.
111
Peter D. Feaver and Christopher Gelpi, Choosing Your Battles: American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of
Force (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004), 54-55.
112
Rebecca L. Schiff, “Civil-Military Relations Reconsidered: A Theory of Concordance.” Armed Forces & Society,
22, No. 1 (1995). 11.

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control.113
Unique is its acknowledgement of the citizenry (i.e. the general populace) on equal
terms to the military and civilian elite, with Schiff terming the three as “partners.”114
In essence,
concordance theory allows for different ways of finding agreement between these three partners.
Although Schiff allows for a more flexible prescription for civilian control compared to
institutional theory, nonetheless a theory requires a uniform method to consistently evaluate
varying conditions of civil-military relations. There are four conditions that Schiff uses as
indicators for concordance between the three partners: social composition of the officer corps,
political decision-making process, recruitment method, and military style.115
As evidence, the
comparative case studies of Israel and India are employed to show that institutional theory fails
to explain how two states with immeasurably different approaches to civil-military relations both
enjoy stable civilian control.116
More recently, Schiff has intriguingly argued that the adoption of
a “targeted partnership” between military and civilian decision-makers would have resulted in a
more effective implementation of counterinsurgency strategy in Iraq.117
Critics maintain that
concordance theory’s flexibility obscures its ability to establish between “good” and “bad” levels
of civil-military integration.118
Despite concerns regarding its universal applicability,
concordance theory can be valuable in examining niche topics of civil-military relations; the
formulation of counterinsurgency strategy is a particularly useful example of this strength.
Desch and Structural-Threat Theory
113
Ibid, 12-13.
114
Ibid, 13.
115
Ibid, 14-16.
116
Ibid, 21.
117
Rebecca L. Schiff, “Concordance Theory, Targeted Partnership, and Counterinsurgency Strategy,” Armed Forces
& Society, 38, No. 2 (2012), 30.
118

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Taking a slightly more limited scope, Michael Desch amends the institutional approach to
reflect changes in international threats on civil-military relations – called structural-threat
theory. Similar to Huntington, Desch challenges the intuitive premise put forth by Lasswell’s
garrison state theory. However, not quite the part Huntington challenged. Lasswell argued that
the greater the international threat to a state was, the harder the military would be for civilians to
control.119
Following this logic, the U.S. should enjoy equal, if not greater, harmony in its civil-
military relations following the dissolution of the Soviet Union as a substantial external threat.
Desch posits this is not the case.120
To mend this apparent contradiction, Desch proposes a theory
which encompasses how “variation in international and domestic threats affect the strength of
civilian control as well as the role that military doctrine plays in strengthening or weakening
civilian control.”121
For Desch, the best indicator of the strength of civilian control is rather
straight-forward. Simply put, civilian control, the dependent variable, is best measured by:
“[whoever] prevails when civilian and military preferences diverge. If the military does, there is
a problem; if civilians do, there is not.”122
The two independent variables for Desch’s model are external (international) and internal
(domestic) threats, which vary between high and low intensity; the dependent variable is strength
of civilian control.123
Two independent variables, each with two variations, result in four possible
levels of civilian control. Ranking from strongest to weakest levels of civilian control the
combinations of threats are: (1) high external/low internal, (2) low external/low internal, (3) high
external/high internal, and (4) low external/high internal.124
Internal threats are threats from
119
Desch, “Soldiers, States, and Structures,” 389.
120
Ibid, 390.
121
Ibid.
122
Ibid, 391.
123
Ibid.
124
Ibid, 393.

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society towards the military, and likely result in coups, making the two possibilities with high
internal threats the de-facto lowest two levels of civilian control.125
In regard to external threats,
Desch asserts that civilian control is stronger when the external threat is high for a plethora of
reasons. First, high external threats make it more likely a civilian leadership with national
security expertise will be brought to power; Second, it unifies the military towards an outward
threat, away from domestic politics; Third, external threats tend to create high levels of popular
support for the military; Further, civilians will rely more on objective methods of control in the
face of external threats.126
Military doctrine makes up the second part of Desch’s theory and represent a problem
uniquely highlighted by post-Cold War events. When there is a split in variance (ex. High/low or
low/high), Desch states that the structural environment are more determinate than if there is no
split variance (ex. Low/low or high/high).127
When the type of structural threat is indeterminate
a good indicator for civilian control is control over military doctrine.128
A historical analysis
shows that throughout the Cold War military doctrine was firmly dominated by civilian control,
for many of the same reasons listed above.129
Desch concludes that what explains the weakening
in U.S. civilian control is its move from a high external/low internal environment, to a low/low
environment. Moreover, within this newly formed environment of indeterminate threat, the
military has gained substantial influence over the formation of military doctrine, as displayed
through the Powell Doctrine.130
Desch’s theory is an example of how Huntington’s approach can
125
Ibid, 391.
126
Ibid, 392-393.
127
Ibid, 395.
128
Ibid.
129
Ibid, 397.
130
Ibid, 398.

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be altered to fit the changing dynamics of civil-military relations. The next theorist follows this
style, albeit, at a more comprehensive level.
Feaver and Agency Theory
Agency theory is Peter Feaver’s answer to the inability of Huntington’s institutional
theory to explain U.S. civil-military relations throughout the Cold War. Although Feaver devotes
ample time to disproving the theory of his former dissertation supervisor at Harvard, he
nonetheless agrees with its core tenets. Specifically the theoretical starting point that civil-
military relations are best explained through the relationship between two institutions – civil and
military.131
Within agency theory, the former is termed the principal (the boss) and the latter the
agent (the employee). The goal of agency theory is to interpret the strategic interplay between
two rational actors that ensues when the principal attempts to make the agent do something.
What results is the agent choosing to work, “doing something to the principal’s satisfaction,” or
shirk, “not doing something to the principal’s satisfaction.” Feaver borrows this concept from
microeconomics and offers modifications to create compatibility with the distinct nature of civil-
military affairs.132
The key variables that Feaver believes affects whether or not the military chooses to work
or shirk are the ability of the principal to “punish” the agent and the costs associated with
monitoring the agent. Punishments imposed on the military can range from imposing oversight
or slashing budgets all the way to forced retirements or legal action.133
While punishing refers to
when the preferences of principal are not met, monitoring refers more to the preferences of the
131
132
Ibid, 55-63.
133
Ibid, 91-94.

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agent. Monitoring, which can be intrusive or nonintrusive, is subject to a cost imposed on the
principal. The higher the cost of monitoring the less intrusive it is likely to be. Here, Feaver
concludes that two best indicators of whether the military will work or shirk is the cost of
monitoring which in turns affects the likelihood that military will be punished for shirking.134
Similar to Desch, Feaver states that there are four main patterns produced by his framework: “(1)
civilian monitors intrusively, the military works (Huntington’s crisis, subjective control); (2)
civilian monitor intrusively, the military shirks (extreme civil-military friction); (3) civilian does
not monitor intrusively, military works (Huntington’s prescription, objective control); and (4)
civilian does not monitor intrusively, military shirks (Lasswell’s garrison state).”135
Having constructed his theory, Feaver then embarks on the task of determining whether it
will succeed where institutional theory failed, namely in explaining the Cold War. He concludes
that pattern #1 best describes the Cold War. In short, the lowered cost of intrusive monitoring for
civilians brought on by technology and the high threat of punishment – which Feaver argues
derived from Truman’s firing of General Douglas MacArthur in 1951 – allowed civilian control
to remain strong.136
The post-Cold War years, Feaver finds, more closely resemble pattern #2.
Examining military action in the Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Kosovo, Feaver
discovers that although monitoring remained intrusive, there was an evident increase in shirking
because there was a decrease in the expectation of military punishment.137
For Feaver, this most
recent pattern is a troubling one, concluding: “History shows that the military is not as ‘right’ in
civil-military disputes as the military triumphalists might suppose. But even when the military is
right, democratic theory intervenes and insists that it submit to the civilian leadership that the
134
Ibid, 63-65.
135
Ibid, 120. See: table 5.1.
136
Ibid, 129, 151-152, 157.
137
Ibid, 280.

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polity has chosen… The republic would be better served even by foolish working than by
enlightened shirking.”138
Regardless of its more limited scope than the two previous theories
examined, agency theory’s main contribution is addressing the most problematic areas of
Huntington’s theory.
Concordance theory, structural-threat theory, and agency theory show how wide different
approaches to civil-military relations can range. Each theory attempts to address the short-
comings of classical theories, specifically their inability to make sense of the Cold War and post-
Cold War changes. Each theory, however, espouses a different way to do so. Schiff’s focus on
culture and society, Desch’s on threats and doctrine, and Feaver’s institutional interaction, all
have their strengths and weaknesses, and make valuable theoretical contributions. The
importance of including numerous theories is to show how theories of civil-military relations are
tools. In examining specific cases, as is the focus of this paper, there can be more than one tool to
complete the task, but often certain tools work better than others. One of the main challenges
facing civil-military relations involves finding the theory that best explains a particular event as
part of a larger pattern.
Chapter Three: U.S. Civil-Military Relations & The Vietnam War:
Analyzing a Case Study
One of the most formative events in recent history for the U.S. military was their
experience during the Vietnam War, an event that exacted such a heavy toll on the military itself,
and certainly had a lingering effect on civil-military relations. I will therefore briefly examine
some of the academic conclusions that have been drawn regarding U.S. civil-military relations
138
Ibid, 302.

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and the Vietnam War as a prelude to turning to the Iraq War. While the goal of this paper is not
to recount the similarities and differences of the two conflicts, nor to relitigate the shortcomings
of Vietnam, it is nevertheless valuable to re-examine the approaches scholars used to view the
implications of a singular event on civil-military relations. In doing so, there can be important
patterns, decisions, and figures that prove applicable to modern civil-military relations.
The following section will address four academic works on the Vietnam War and U.S.
civil-military relations (Krepinevich, 1986; Petraeus, 1987; McMaster, 1997; Cohen, 2002).
There exists a propensity within the military, like many organizations, to selectively ignore
unsavoury elements of its past. The first three of these authors are rarities because they are all
Army officers who studied Vietnam, while the Army had long-since moved to forget the conflict.
As such, the Vietnam War school of civil-military relations offers a much-needed introspective
analysis. Specifically, H.R. McMaster’s Dereliction of Duty, will be examined in respect to the
continuous academic debate regarding its implications. Showing the importance of history to
civil-military relations, scholars continue to invoke Dereliction of Duty as evidence for their
arguments regarding the Iraq War. However, there exists considerable disagreement over the
proper implications which should be drawn from the Vietnam War and civil-military relations.
Therefore it is important to wade into this debate.
Krepinevich and Vietnam: Unwelcomed Criticism
Upon its publishing in 1986, The Army and Vietnam by Andrew Krepinevich, became a
widely read book. Its impact can be attributed to its counterintuitive thesis. Andrew Krepinevich,
an Army major who had been researching his Ph.D. at Harvard, used access to newly
unclassified documents to assess the Army’s record in prosecuting the Vietnam War. He noted
that on multiple occasions the Army rejected a more nuanced strategy involving

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counterinsurgency and pacification, and unabashedly pursued the only war they knew how to
fight: one with overwhelming firepower and large unit movement.139
These successive strategic
and tactical blunders, Krepinevich argued, were what lost the war, not over-intrusive civilian
control or a lack of domestic support.140
This conclusion was tantamount to an unprecedented
devastating critique of the Army’s record in Vietnam.
Almost immediately the same commanders Krepinevich criticized in his book launched
their own attacks in response to his arguments. One prominent general, writing in Parameters,
maintained Krepinevich’s work, “[lacked] historical breadth and objectivity,” and chastised his
“abrasive tone.”141
The public backlash against Krepinevich by the top Army brass effectively
ended his career. Banished from speaking at West Point and exiled to obscure staff positions,
Krepinevich would leave the Army four years later.142
Nonetheless, many of Krepinevich’s harsh
criticisms remain salient, and have been vindicated by military historians.143
The Army and
Vietnam, and the story of its subsequent fallout, shows a few important broader points. The
military is not generally receptive to pointed forms of intellectual dissent. With this in mind, it is
not hard to see why many in the military are apprehensive about pursuing minority or unpopular
decisions. This lack of self-criticism can have seemingly adverse effects on civil-military
relations.
Petraeus and Vietnam: the Problem with Drawing Lessons from History
139
Andrew F. Krepinevich, The Army and Vietnam (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986),
258-259.
140
Ibid, 270-271.
141
Quoted in, Fred Kaplan, The Insurgents: David Petraeus and the Plot to Change the American Way of War (New
York, NY: Simon & Schuster, 2013), 33.
142
Ibid, 34.
143
Thomas E. Ricks, The Generals: American Military Command from World War II to Today (New York, NY:
Penguin Press, 2012), 260-265.

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David Petraeus is more famously recognized today as the commander of MNF-Iraq
during the surge, commander of ISAF during the Afghanistan surge, and Director of the CIA.
Much has been written about his career as he became the most high-profile military officer of the
21st
century.144
Less well known, however, is his academic work on civil-military relations,
completed while pursuing a Ph.D. at Princeton in the mid-80s. Despite the urging of his
supervisor, Petraeus chose not to publish his dissertation, The American Military and Lessons of
Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era, fearing the
same career repercussions that Krepinevich faced the prior year.145
The lack of a publisher
certainly limited the public reach of its findings, however, his work remained far from obscure
today. Petraeus’ dissertation remains frequently quoted in journals and books regarding U.S.
civil-military relations.146
The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam is an analysis of the nature of influence
top military decision-makers have had in respect to the top civilian decision-makers. Particularly,
assessing whether or not the Vietnam War had any impact on the nature of said influence.
Through examining all instances of uses of military force, Petraeus found that the military has
become more cautious and skeptical than their civilian counterparts on questions of using
force.147
This more conservative nature of the officer corps closely resembled Huntington’s ideal
military professional.148
Regardless of a military more hesitant to use force, the U.S. continued
144
See: Robinson, 2008; Ricks, 2009; Cloud and Jaffe, 2009; Broadwell, 2012; Kaplan, 2013.
145
Kaplan, The Insurgents, 34.
146
See bibliographies for: Feaver, 2003; Stevenson, 2006; Owens, 2011.
147
David H. Petraeus, The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of
Force in the Post-Vietnam Era, Ph.D. Dissertation (Princeton University, 1987), 240.
148
Ibid, 263.

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35
frequent uses of force post-Vietnam.149
Petraeus argues that what explains this is a marked
decline in direct military influence – "leverage which flows from formal and explicit military
recommendations” – following Vietnam.150
The military has thus resorted to focusing on indirect
military influence, which uses its control over doctrine and contingency planning to influence the
environment within which decisions are made.151
The main lesson the Army learned from
Vietnam was “recognizing the perishability of public support for military action abroad…
[regarding] time as the principal limit in limited wars."152
Concerned that the Army’s use of
indirect influence to reinforce this lesson would have adverse effects on civil-military relations,
Petraeus offered recommendations for the future of the Army.
What troubled Petraeus about his findings was that lessons from Vietnam would become
so internalized by the top-military decision makers that they would be wrongly applied to other
situations.153
Further, he argued that the distrust of civilian officials by the military that arose out
of Vietnam was severely straining any political-military integration.154
Concluding that the Army
was more likely to fight small wars (i.e. insurgencies) in its future than large state-to-state
conflicts, Petraeus saw closer political-military integration as a prerequisite to success in these
conflicts. Despite running contrary to the lesson the Army internalized from Vietnam, Petraeus
argued that the military needed to prepare for small, protracted, counterinsurgency campaigns.155
To achieve the political-military strategic integration needed for success in small wars, the Army
149
Such uses of force include: The Yom Kippur War Alert (1973), The Mayaguez Incident (1975), The Korean
DMZ Incident (1976), Horn of Africa Crisis (1978), Iranian Hostage Crisis (1979-1980), Lebanon Peacekeeping
Mission (1982-1984), Grenada (1983), Central America Policy (1981-1987), Persian Gulf Deployment (1984),
TWA Flight 847 Hijacking (1985), and Libya (1986). (Ibid, 137-293)
150
Ibid, 244.
151
Ibid, 247.
152
Ibid, 241.
153
Ibid, 298.
154
Ibid, 302-303.
155
Ibid, 303.

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needed to shed the lesson they took from Vietnam, which reinforced their desire for autonomy.156
Petraeus saw that the Army would likely have to fight these type of conflicts whether they
desired to or not. Drawing on experiences of the Army in Central America in 1980s, he wrote:
“[T]he reluctance to get involved in Central America with U.S. troops was translated into
military reluctance to develop plans for such potential operations, based apparently on the theory
that if one has no plans, they cannot be executed.”157
It is this last conclusion that makes
Petraeus’ work especially pertinent to the current debate over civil-military relations. The issue
of control over strategy between civilian and military spheres has become a chief concern facing
civil-military relations.
McMaster: Dereliction of Duty and the Ensuing Debate
By the 1990s, criticism of Vietnam had become less reprehensible within the Army as the
top commanders associated with the war began to retire. This allowed H.R. McMaster, an
armour officer who played an integral role during the decisive Gulf War battle of 73 Easting,158
to publish his confrontationally named book Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert
McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam, parlayed from his
dissertational work at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. The book details how the
decisions regarding the gradual escalation of Vietnam (specifically from 1962-1965) were made.
Focusing on the role, or lack thereof, that the JCS played in the implementation of gradual
escalation, McMaster identifies the key systemic failures within the decision-making process.
Among these failures are: the unwavering loyalty of top military officers to Johnson and
156
Ibid, 305.
157
Ibid, 287 (footnote 35).
158
For an in-depth account of McMaster’s actions at 73 Easting see: Tom Clancy, Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of
an Armored Cavalry Regiment (New York, NY: Putnam, 1994), 256-262.

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37
McNamara (particularly in wake of the Truman-MacArthur affair); strong inter-service rivalry,
ensuring JCS members, “compromised their views on Vietnam in exchange for concessions to
their respective services;” top military commanders lied to both the public and Congress for the
sake of the executive; and the appointment of pliable military commanders by CJCS Maxwell
Taylor (1962-1964).159
What differentiates McMaster from Petraeus and Krepinevich, however,
is that McMaster does not provide any overt remedies or recommendations in terms of civil-
military relations. Dereliction of Duty is first and foremost a historical portrait of the JCS and the
Vietnam War. In light of this, there has been considerable debate over the proper “lesson” one
should deduce from the book, if any.
It should be first noted that upon its release, the book became widely popular within the
military, earning a spot on CJCS Hugh Shelton’s (1997-2001) public reading list.160
The reason
McMaster received the exact opposite reception that Krepinevich received, despite launching
substantial criticism of the military in Vietnam, was the nature of such criticism. While
Krepinevich and Petraeus attacked strategic and tactical incompetence, many within the military
saw McMaster’s book as a call for military officers to stand up against overbearing civilians.
This kind of criticism is much more in line with the predisposition the military has toward its
own autonomy.
In 2007, Foreign Affairs magazine published a series of essays from prominent scholars
debating over how to characterize the previous six years of U.S. civil-military relations. One
such topic that arose within the debate was over the implications drawn from Dereliction of
159
H. R. McMaster, Dereliction of Duty: Lyndon Johnson, Robert McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies
That Led to Vietnam (New York, NY: HarperCollins, 1997), 330-331.
160
Kaplan, The Insurgents, 168; Hugh Shelton, Without Hesitation: The Odyssey of an American Warrior (New
York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2011), 320.

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Duty. The aforementioned Michael Desch penned an article arguing the paltry state of civil-
military relations was caused by the Bush administration’s, “determination to reassert civilian
control,” adding that, “administration officials were even willing to immerse themselves in
operational issues.”161
Approvingly quoting Dereliction of Duty to reinforce his point, Desch
states, “The implicit message of McMaster’s military bestseller is that unqualified allegiance to
the commander in chief needs to be rethought.”162
Later, he continues that the Bush
administration had strayed too far from Huntington’s objective control (More on this debate will
be discussed in Chapter Eight). Instead, adopting a more intrusive policy of civilian control
derived from Eliot Cohen’s book Supreme Command (more on Cohen’s thesis will be addressed
below).163
Others, however, do not see eye-to-eye with Desch on his interpretation of Dereliction
of Duty, and consequently argue it provides a different lesson to apply to civil-military relations.
Prominent civil-military relations scholar Richard Kohn, coauthoring a piece with CJCS
Richard Myers (2001-2005), argued in response Desch, that whatever the faults of Bush-era
civil-military relations, said faults would be significantly exacerbated if Desch’s advice was
taken.164
Further, they argue that Dereliction of Duty asserts that military leaders be candid in
private, and to Congress, and nothing more (it is worth noting that Kohn was McMaster’s Ph.D.
supervisor).165
In a more adept response, Mackubin Thomas Owens argues that Desch is simply
overstating the faults of one-half of the civil-military equation. Essentially, he states that Desch
is in danger of falling in the same trap many did after Vietnam – ignoring the short-comings of
161
Michael C. Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 3 (2007), 105.
162
Ibid, 99.
163
Ibid, 106.
164
Richard H. Kohn and Richard B. Myers, “Salute and Disobey: The Civil-Military Balance, Before Iraq and
After,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 5 (2007), 149.
165
Ibid, 148.

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39
the military by focusing on the faults of civilians, when both matter.166
Notably, the crux of
Desch’s argument – that “civilians [should] give due deference to military professional advice in
the tactical and operational realms”167
– is attacked by Owens, who argues this does not stand up
to the historical record put forth by Cohen in Supreme Command.168
Eliot Cohen’s above-mentioned book Supreme Command essentially makes the case that
political leaders in times of war should intervene in the management of conflict. An academic
with a focus on military history by trade, Cohen argues that Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill, and
Ben-Gurion all achieved great military success because they operated intrusively over their
commanders.169
This flies in direct contrast to what Cohen calls the “normal” theory of civil
military relations – the overriding consensus that there “should be a limited degree of civilian
control over military matters.”170
Indeed, in defending his crusade against the “normal” theory,
Cohen devotes substantial time to drawing his own corresponding conclusions from Dereliction
of Duty. He goes so far as to argue, “the fault in Vietnam was a deadly combination of inept
strategy and excessively weak civilian control.”171
While Kohn and Myers wrote that Desch was
simply extrapolating too far from McMaster’s findings, Cohen argues the direct opposite. To
arrive at a conclusion similar to Cohen’s requires a very selective reading of Dereliction of Duty.
Selective reading is the most apt phrase to describe Cohen’s description of Dereliction of
Duty. Had one not read the book itself, Cohen’s summary and subsequent conclusions, might
appear conceivable. However, the problem with Cohen’s analysis is that he draws on the latter
166
Mackubin Thomas Owens, “Failure’s Many Fathers,” Foreign Affairs, 86, No. 5 (2007), 150-151.
167
Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 98.
168
Owens, “Failure’s Many Fathers,” 150.
169
Cohen, Supreme Command, 5.
170
Ibid, 4.
171
Ibid, 185.

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40
chapters of McMaster’s book, which focus on the bureaucratic inertia of the JCS, while ignoring
the earlier chapters that meticulously detail the political decisions responsible for creating such
an environment. For example, Cohen argues, “the military system had brought to the top
generals like Maxwell Taylor and Earle Wheeler, who were either politically too close to the
civilian leadership to offer it real alternatives.”172
McMaster’s portrayal of history shows, in fact,
the opposite. Both Generals Taylor and Wheeler, were hand-picked for the role of CJCS contrary
to military convention – which follows that the role of CJCS should rotate between services –
Kennedy and Johnson appointed a second, and then third Army general to the position.173
Taylor
was brought back from retirement – an extremely rare occurrence in the military – to serve in a
newly created military position as an advisor to Kennedy.174
Further, much of the Joint Chiefs
were then in-turn chosen by Taylor, a staunch ally of the administration on Vietnam.
Next, Cohen explains that the top military commander in Vietnam, General William
Westmoreland, had nearly no civilian oversight from Johnson or McNamara.175
This is true, but
it does not mean that Westmoreland did not have any civilian oversight. By the time
Westmoreland was appointed to MACV, the ambassador plenipotentiary in Vietnam was none
other than Maxwell Taylor, perhaps one of Johnson’s closest confidants and allies on Vietnam
policy.176
Tellingly, Westmoreland was chosen by Taylor because of his compliant nature.177
Indeed, Dereliction of Duty provides a particularly damning account of Taylor’s role as the de-
facto intermediary between Johnson and the military.
172
Ibid, 180.
173
McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 22, 108.
174
Ibid, 9-12.
175
Cohen, Supreme Command, 182.
176
McMaster, Dereliction of Duty, 104-106.
177
Ibid.

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Cohen’s contention that the mistake during Vietnam regarding civil-military relations
was weak civilian control is more than a stretch, particularly when his main evidence is a book
that can only be construed as arguing the contrary. That said, Michael Desch probably goes too
far in arguing the opposite of Cohen. Studies like Krepinevich’s shows that the military hardly
had a firm grasp strategically, thus showing that military autonomy would not have been a
solution. Do these historical arguments even matter to civil-military relations regarding the Iraq
War? Indeed, it is frequently brought up that Supreme Command was read by Bush, Rumsfeld,
and other top administration officials (Cohen himself, would join the administration in 2007 as a
counselor to the Secretary of State),178
which some argue led them to repeat the mistakes of
Vietnam.179
The reality is far more complex. There were clear problems with how both civilian
and military leaders viewed the conflict irrespective of their relationship with each other; this
relationship, however, as McMaster tells us, was equally problematic. Nonetheless, Vietnam,
like Iraq, is a complex topic. It is folly to apply a historical analogy as some sort of ‘silver bullet’
solution to the civil-military shortfalls that occurred in respect to Iraq.
The Vietnam War continues to occupy a significant space in how Americans view use of
force. No aspect more so than its strategic futility. Colin Powell writes of a prescient anecdote in
his memoirs regarding his 1963 tour in Vietnam. Assigned to advise an ARVN battalion, his
mission was to protect their outpost. Upon questioning why the outpost was there, Powell was
told by his Vietnamese counterpart that the outpost was there to protect the airfield. The role of
the airfield: to resupply the outpost.180
178
Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 107; James Mann, Rise of the Vulcans: the History of Bush’s War Cabinet (New
York, NY: Viking, 2004) 196-197; Thomas E. Ricks, The Gamble: General David Petraeus and the American
Military Adventure in Iraq, 2006-2008 (New York, NY: The Penguin Press, 2009), 19.
179
Desch, “Bush and the Generals,” 107.
180
Colin L. Powell, My American Journey (New York, NY: Random House, 1995), 81.

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Tempting as it may be to compare Iraq and Vietnam, there are far more differences than
similarities.181
Falling into the trap of historical relativism can often skew conclusions. The four
scholars examined here all provide insight on civil-military relations during the Vietnam War.
With respect to applying this to Iraq, the most valuable conclusions come from Petraeus, who
warned that historical analogies over-generalize and are often employed notwithstanding
context.182
As will be shown in the case of Iraq, one of the problems with civil-military relations
was not that the lessons of Vietnam were ignored, but that civilians and military leaders alike
adhered to certain mentalities born out of Vietnam. The conflicts themselves, however, were
very different. This is precisely what Petraeus warned of in his concluding policy
recommendations.183
What the Vietnam War can conclusively show is that civil-military relations can have a
profound effect on how a war is prosecuted. This is something that all four of the scholars
discussed would surely agree with. Particularly, Dereliction of Duty shows that personal
relationships, personnel changes, and professionalism, are integral to evaluating civil-military
relations directly influence the policy-making process. During times of conflict, the policy-
making process is responsible for linking political goals to the strategy and consequent tactics
employed. McMaster’s work, does not construct a theoretical framework to examine the role
civil-military relations plays in the process of creating strategy. Others, however, have
constructed such a framework. It is here where our attention must turn in order to find the apt
approach to evaluating civil-military relations during the Iraq War.
181
Jeffrey Record and W. Andrew Terrill, “Iraq and Vietnam: Differences, Similarities, and Insights,” Strategic
Studies Institute, May 2, 2004; Dimitri K. Simes, “Don't Compare Iraq to Vietnam,” The National Interest, January
16, 2007.
182
Petraeus, The American Military and Lessons of Vietnam, 295.
183
Ibid, 303-304.

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Chapter Four: Strategic Assessment Theory
Analyzing just part of the vast literature covering theoretical civil-military relations
provides academic utility in a few areas. First, it shows that the goals, in general, of theoretical
civil-military relations are either to be predictive (i.e. what will happen or what should happen),
proscriptive (i.e. what ought to have happened), or both. As the focus here is on analyzing a case
study there is an inherent proclivity toward the proscriptive elements of theory. Second, sifting
through the different theories shows variances in approaches to analysis. As Feaver points out,
there are three main categories which these approaches fall into: “normative,
empirical/descriptive, and theoretical.”184
The theories that have been examined thus far seldom
fall neatly into one of these categories. Rather, they often encompass elements of all three with
an emphasis on one or two. A theoretical approach most conducive to a proscriptive approach of
a case study should involve normative claims (i.e. what kind of civil-military relations are most
advantageous to achieving “x”). Third, one of the main differences found between the numerous
theoretical approaches was in their scope. Often, the primary question that theorists seek to
answer is how to achieve an appropriate level of civilian control over the military in a
democracy. This leads theorists to develop broad indicators, such as professionalism or
international threats. Here, the concern is markedly narrower: how civil-military relations
affected the prosecution of a singular conflict. Therefore, a theoretical approach that can best
explain civil-military relations in the context of the Iraq War should meet these three criteria.
Risa Brooks’ theoretical approach of strategic assessment firmly fulfills all three criteria.
Outlined in her book Shaping Strategy: The Civil-Military Politics of Strategic Assessment,
184
Feaver, “Civil-Military Relations,” 216.

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Brooks puts forth a theory which seeks to explain how “domestic relations between political and
military leaders shape the institutional processes in which leaders evaluate their strategies in
interstate conflicts.”185
In essence, Brooks’ theory shows how civil-military relations can affect
the formulation of military strategy. To understand the effect U.S. civil-military relations had on
the Iraq War, the process that formulated said strategy cannot be ignored. The failure of the Bush
administration and the U.S. Armed Forces to develop a coherent military strategy in prosecuting
the Iraq War points to a grave shortcoming in civil-military relations. Applying strategic
assessment theory allows for the most accurate conclusions to be drawn in determining the role
civil-military relations played during the Iraq War. Before delving into the events and individuals
that shaped the American military undertaking in Iraq, it is important to first explain Brooks’
strategic assessment theory in-depth in order to conceptualize the specific indicators that link
civil-military relations and the formulation of strategy.
Strategic assessment theory shares both similarities and differences with the previous
theories discussed. Borrowing from elements of both institutional theory and agency theory,
Brooks explains that her theory is based on the premise that “because institutions shape
outcomes, conflict over desired outcomes should revert to conflict over the institutions that
support the emergence of one outcome over another.”186
Also like Feaver, Brooks is interested in
the interaction between civilian and military leaders, while assuming these institutions are in the
pursuit of efficiency.187
However, unlike agency theory, strategic assessment theory allows for
fluctuation in the relative power between civilian and military leaders in formulating strategy.188
185
Brooks, Shaping Strategy, 2.
186
Ibid, 16-17.
187
Ibid, 19.
188
Ibid, 21.

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Just like Feaver and Desch, strategic assessment theory amends institutional theory to fit
key variables which in-turn produce patterns or types of civil-military relations. The two
variables for strategic assessment theory are the configuration of power between political and
military leaders and the level of divergence over policy preference between them. Both of these
variables “shape the properties of the policymaking environment that emerges from their
interactions.”189
Regarding the policy making environment, Brooks argues there are three
possible configurations of power between the two actors: political dominance, military
dominance, and shared power. Measured by: “the military establishment’s position in domestic
society and its ties to influential constituencies; its senior officers’ internal unity; and the
expansiveness of the political leader’s own base of civilian support.”190
The second independent
variable, intensity in preference divergence, simply refers to the level disagreement on relevant
policy between political and military actors. Varying intensity is coded as either high or low
divergence. Low divergence is when there is “little evidence of recurring, systematic cleavages
over security goals, military strategy/policy, or corporate issues.”191
High divergence is simply
when evidence exists that there are “deep, enduring cleavages” over the issues listed above.192
Together, these two variables create the institutional environment that affects the quality of
strategic assessment.
The dependent variable is strategic assessment, which Brooks defines as, “the process
through which relations between state’s political goals/strategies and military strategies/activities
are evaluated and decided.”193
Herein lies another key difference of Brooks’ approach to other
189
Ibid, 17.
190
Ibid, 29.
191
Ibid, 25.
192
Ibid.
193
Ibid, 34.

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