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The sources of military dissent: Why and how the US military contests civilian decisions about the use of force

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 November 2021

Risa Brooks Open the ORCID record for Risa Brooks [Opens in a new window]  and
Peter M. Erickson
Risa Brooks*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Marquette University, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States
Peter M. Erickson
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States
*
*Corresponding author. Email: risa.brooks@marquette.edu
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Abstract

How do militaries push back when they oppose civilian initiatives? This article analyses the sources and character of military dissent, focusing on the United States. It details the sources of military preferences over policy and strategy outcomes, emphasising the interplay of role conceptions with other material and ideational factors. It then presents a repertoire of means – tactics of dissent – through which military leaders can exert pressure, constraining and shaping civilians’ decision-making calculus and the implementation of policy and strategy choices. Empirically, it traces military dissent in the 1990s-era humanitarian interventions; the US's ‘War on Drugs’ beginning in the 1980s; and the Afghanistan surge debate in 2009. In so doing, the article contributes to a broader research programme on military dissent across regime types. It also expands scholars’ understandings of preference formation within militaries and illuminates the various pathways through which military dissent operates and potentially undermines civilian control.

Keywords

Civil-Military RelationsMilitary Role ConceptionsCivilian ControlMilitary DissentUnited States: War on DrugsAfghan SurgeHumanitarian Intervention
Type
Special Issue Article
Information
European Journal of International Security , Volume 7 , Special Issue 1: Military Organizations in a Changing World: How New Operational Experiences Shape Civil-Military Relations , February 2022 , pp. 38 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the British International Studies Association

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References

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3 See also Brian Taylor, Politics and the Russian Army: Civil-Military Relations, 1689–2000 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Samuel J. Fitch, The Armed Forces and Democracy in Latin America (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins Press, 1998).

4 In other words, scholars too often commit the ‘fallacy of coupism’. Croissant, Aurel, Kuehn, David, Chambers, Paul, and Wolf, Siegfried O., ‘Beyond the fallacy of coup-ism: Conceptualizing civilian control of the military in emerging democracies’, Democratization, 17:5 (2010), pp. 950–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

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7 Nina Wilén and Lisa Strömbom, ‘A versatile organisation: Mapping the military's core roles in a changing security environment’, European Journal of International Security, this Special Issue.

8 See David Pion-Berlin and Andrew Ivey, ‘Military dissent in the United States: Are there lessons from Latin America?’, Defense and Security Analysis, 37:2 (April 2021); Hundman, Eric, ‘The diversity of disobedience in military organizations’, Journal of Global Security Studies, 6:4 (2021)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Hundman also provides an innovative theory for why and when individuals will engage in acts of insubordination based on their relations with superiors and tolerance for risk.

9 Brooks, ‘Integrating the civil-military relations subfield’.

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11 On these three alternative approaches to discerning actors’ preferences, see Jeffry Frieden, ‘Actors and preferences in International Relations’, in David Lake and Robert Powell (eds), Strategic Choice and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1999).

12 Mara Karlin, ‘Civilian oversight in the Pentagon: Who does it and how?’, in Lionel Beehner, Risa Brooks, and Dan Maurer (eds), Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations: The Military, Society, Politics, and Modern War (Oxford, UK: Oxford University, 2020); Risa Brooks, Jim Golby, and Heidi Urben, ‘Crisis of command: America's broken civil-military relationship imperils national security’, Foreign Affairs (May/June 2021).

13 Brooks, Risa, ‘Paradoxes of professionalism: Rethinking civil-military relations in the United States’, International Security, 44:4 (2020)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Feaver, Armed Servants.

14 For discussion of some these concerns in the US, see Brooks, Golby, and Urben, ‘Crisis of command’.

15 Note that whether or not dissent is seen as justified or normatively appropriate is a second-order question that often rests on two considerations: a person's agreement with the military leadership's position on an issue (that is, one person's act of military defiance might be seen as another's justified act of persuasion); and a person's definition of civilian control and ‘healthy’ civil-military relations, which can affect, for example, whether or not military leaders’ participation in domestic debate is seen negatively.

16 Brooks, ‘Militaries and political activity in democracies’; Risa Brooks and Michael Robinson, ‘Let the generals speak: Retired officer dissent and the George Floyd protests’, War on the Rocks (9 October 2020); Lindsay P. Cohn, Max Z. Margulies, and Michael Robinson, ‘Dissents and sensibility: Conflicting loyalties, democracy and civil-military relations’, in Beehner, Brooks, and Maurer (eds), Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations.

17 Paul Shemella, ‘The spectrum of roles and missions of the armed forces’, in Thomas Bruneau and Scott D. Tollefson (eds), Who Guards the Guardians and How Democratic Civil-Military Relations (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2008), pp. 125–8.

18 Brooks, ‘Militaries and political activity in democracies’.

19 Patricia M. Shields, ‘Introduction to Symposium: Roundtable on the ethics of senior officer resignation in the United States’, Armed Forces & Society, 43:1 (January 2017), pp. 3–4.

20 Peter D. Feaver, ‘The right to be right: Civil-military relations and the Iraq surge decision’, International Security, 35:4 (spring 2011), pp. 87–125.

21 See Clinton's introduction to Congress of McCaffrey in full uniform in this footage, available at: {https://www.c-span.org/video/?69496-1/1996-state-union-address}.

22 David M. Rayside, ‘The perils of congressional politics’, in Craig R. Rimmerman (ed.), Gay Rights, Military Wrongs: Political Perspectives of Lesbians and Gays in the Military (New York, NY: Garland, 1996).

23 Feaver, Armed Servants.

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27 Feaver, Armed Servants.

28 Doyle Hodges, ‘Let Slip the Laws of War! Legalism, Legitimacy, and Civil-Military Relations’ (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 2018).

29 Scholars also focus on beliefs related to involvement in politics. See, for example, Finer, Samuel Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 1962/2002 [orig. pub. 1962]) and Fitch, The Armed Forces and Democracy in Latin America.

30 Theo Farrell, ‘World culture and military power’, Security Studies, 14:3 (2005), p. 455.

31 Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, ‘The sources of military change’, in Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (eds), The Sources of Military Change: Culture, Politics, and Technology (Boulder, CO: Lynn Rienner, 2002), pp. 3–20.

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33 Brian Loveman, Por La Patria: Politics and the Armed Forces in Latin America (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999); Alfred Stepan, The New Professionalism of Internal Warfare and Military Role Expansion (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973).

34 Gustavo Flores-Macías, ‘Latin American generals, back in the political labyrinth’, The Washington Post (14 November 2019); Christoph Harig, ‘Brazil: Will officers’ role in government taint the military institution’, AULABlog (6 March 2019), available at: {https://aulablog.net/2019/03/06/brazil-will-officers-role-in-government-taint-the-military-institution/}; Adam Scharpf, ‘Dangerous alliances: Populists and the military’, GIGA Focus, 1:1 (February 2020).

35 Vincenzo Bove, Mauricio Rivera, and Chiara Ruffa, ‘Beyond coups: Terrorism and military involvement in politics’, European Journal of International Relations (2019).

36 Vennesson, Pascal, Breuer, Fabian, de Franco, Chiara, and Schroeder, Ursala C., ‘Is there a European way of war?’, Armed Forces and Society, 35:4 (2009), pp. 628–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 Shemella, ‘The spectrum of roles and missions of the armed forces’.

38 Michael Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999).

39 Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine.

40 That they perceived them this way is also a reflection in part of their dominant role conceptions though, as not all militaries would perceive such a task as contrary to their cohesion or societal reputations.

41 Kier, Imagining War; Legro, Jeffrey W., ‘Which norms matter? Revisiting the “failure” of internationalism’, International Organization, 51:1 (1997), pp. 31–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Jeffrey Long, ‘The Evolution of U.S. Army Doctrine: From Active Defense to Airland Battle and Beyond’ (Master's thesis, US Army Command and General Staff College, 1991).

42 Chiara Ruffa, Military Cultures in Peace and Stability, Afghanistan and Lebanon (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).

43 Ronald Krebs, ‘How dominant narratives rise and fall: Military conflict, politics, and the Cold War consensus’, International Organization, 69:4 (autumn 2015), p. 813.

44 Jeff Donnithorne, Culture Wars: Air Force Culture and Civil-Military Relations, The War College Series (2015).

45 Avant, Deborah, ‘Are the reluctant warriors out of control? Why U.S. military leaders have been averse to respond to post-Cold War low level threats’, Security Studies, 6:2 (1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stefano Recchia, Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors: U.S. Civil-Military Relations and Multilateral Intervention (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2015).

46 The mission was initially to provide an armed intervention to help restore President Aristide to power. After a diplomatic solution was reached to the crisis, the mission turned into more of an occupation and domestic policing force designed to maintain order.

47 Avant, ‘Are the reluctant warriors out of control’; Recchia, Reassuring the Reluctant Warriors.

48 Bob Kemper, ‘U.S. not “world's 911” says foreign policy adviser’, Chicago Tribune (2 August 2000), available at: {https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2000-08-02-0008020256-story.html}. Note that Dr Rice's view changed considerably after the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.

49 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: HarperPerennial, 1998); David Petraeus, ‘The American Military and the Lessons of Vietnam: A Study of Military Influence and the Use of Force in the Post-Vietnam Era’ (PhD dissertation, Princeton University, 1987); Harry G. Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (New York, NY: Presidio Press, 1982).

50 Summers, On Strategy.

51 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty; Krebs (‘How dominant narratives rise and fall’) argues, counterintuitively, that dominant narratives are harder to dislodge in the face of failure, which is consistent with the staying power of this interpretation of the Vietnam era into the 1990s.

52 Summers, On Strategy.

53 John L. Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle: The Development of Army Doctrine, 1973–1982 (Fort Monroe, VA: United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. TRADOC Historical Monograph Series, 1984); Spiller, Roger J., ‘In the shadow of the dragon: Doctrine and the US Army after Vietnam’, RUSI Journal: Royal United Services Institute for Defense Studies, 142:6 (1997), pp. 41–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Crane, ‘Avoiding Vietnam’.

54 The first official version of the Army's post-Vietnam doctrine was dubbed ‘Active Defense’. This doctrine was strongly critiqued within the Army. In 1982 the Army instituted its ‘AirLand Battle’ doctrine, the principles of which guided and established the foundation of the Army's operations in Panama in 1989 and Iraq in 1990–1; see also James Kitfield, Prodigal Soldiers: How the Generation of Officers Born of Vietnam Revolutionized the American Style of War (Washington, DC: Brassey's, 1997); Romjue, From Active Defense to AirLand Battle.

55 George Bush, ‘George H. W. Bush Proclaims a Cure for the Vietnam Syndrome’, American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) (1991).

56 Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney, Failing to Win: Perceptions of Victory and Defeat in International Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 205–41.

57 John Darnton, ‘U.N. buildup in Bosnia eyes “Mogadishu Line”’, New York Times (7 June 1995).

58 Lawton Collins, War in Peacetime (New York, NY: Houghton-Mifflin, 1969); McMaster, Dereliction of Duty; Petraeus, ‘The American military and the lessons of Vietnam’.

59 Colin Powell, ‘U.S. forces: Challenges ahead’, Foreign Affairs, 71:5 (1992), p. 38.

60 Powell, ‘U.S. forces’, p. 35.

61 Samantha Power, A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2013).

62 Colin Powell and Joseph Persico, My American Journey (New York, NY: Ballantine, 1995).

63 Madeline Albright, William J. Clinton Presidential History Project Interview, 30 August 2006.

64 Richard C. Holbrooke, To End a War (New York, NY: Modern Library, 1999), pp. 218–23.

65 Holbrooke, To End a War, p. 221.

66 Avant, ‘Are the reluctant warriors out of control’, pp. 66, 76.

67 Avant, ‘Are the reluctant warriors out of control’.

68 Holbrooke, To End a War, p. 219 (brackets added by the authors for clarification)

69 For a transcript, see: {https://www.nixonfoundation.org/2016/06/26404/}.

70 Andrew Glass, ‘Reagan declares “War on Drugs”, October 14, 1982’, Politico (2010).

71 Bruce Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization: Enlisting armed forces in the War on Drugs’, in Peter Smith (ed.), Drug Policy in the Americas (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

72 Peter Zirnite, Reluctant Recruits: The US Military and the War on Drugs (Washington Office on Latin America, 1997).

73 Michael H. Abbott, ‘The army and the drug war: Politics or national security?’, Parameters, 18:1 (1988).

74 Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization’.

75 Zirnite, ‘Reluctant recruits’.

76 Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization’.

77 Caspar Weinberger, ‘Our troops shouldn't be drug cops; don't draft the military to solve a law-enforcement problem’, The Washington Post (22 May 1988).

78 Richard Gross, ‘Weinberger Calls Anti-Drug Bill “Absurd”, UPI archives (15 September 1986), available at: {https://www.upi.com/Archives/1986/09/15/Weinberger-calls-House-anti-drug-bill-absurd/8366527140800/}.

79 Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization'; Schnaubelt, Christopher, ‘Can the military's effectiveness in the Drug War be measured?’, Cato Journal, 14:2 (1994), pp. 243–65Google Scholar.

80 Narcotics Interdiction and the Use of the Military: Issues for Congress, Washington, DC, Seminar held by the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of Lieutenant General Stephen Olmstead, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Drug Policy and Enforcement), p. 13.

81 Role of the Military in Drug Interdiction: Hearings before the Joint Committee on Armed Services, 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of the Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Robert Herres, & Admiral Frank Kelso), p. 309.

82 ‘Role of the Military in Drug Interdiction; 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of the Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, Robert Herres, & Frank Kelso), pp. 293–6.

83 Ibid.

84 Ibid., p. 282.

85 Role of the Military in Drug Interdiction; 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of the Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci, Robert Herres, & Frank Kelso), p. 314.

86 Narcotics Interdiction and the Use of the Military, 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of Lieutenant General Stephen Olmstead), p. 15.

87 Narcotics Interdiction and the Use of the Military: Issues for Congress, Washington, DC: Seminar held by the Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 100th Cong. (1988) (testimony of Lieutenant General Stephen Olmstead), p. 15.

88 See ‘Application of the Mansfield Amendment’ (September 1986), available at: {https://www.justice.gov/file/23866/download}.

89 Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization’; see also Congressional Research Service, Report No. 42659, ‘The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law’ (2018).

90 The Fiscal Year dollar amounts received by the US military to fight drugs are listed below, and were compiled with the help of Bagley, ‘Myths of militarization’; Zirnite, ‘Reluctant recruits’; and Bob Dreyfyss, ‘The Drug War: Where the money goes’, Rolling Stone (11 December 1997). These figures are: FY 1982: 4.9 million; FY 1985: $100 million; FY 1987: $379 million; FY 1989: $300 million; FY 1990: $ 525 million; FY 1991: $1.1 billion; FY 1992: $1.2 billion; FY 1997: $957 million); FY 1998: $809 million.

91 Mark Perry, The Pentagon's Wars: The Military's Undeclared War against America's Presidents (New York, NY: Basic Books, 2017), p. 242; Bob Woodward, Obama's Wars (New York, NY: Simon and Schuster, 2010), p. 178.

92 Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 246; Woodward, Obama's Wars, p. 236.

93 Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 246; Woodward, Obama's Wars, p. 236.

94 As evidence of this, consider that the US Army and US Marine Corps revamped its counterinsurgency field manual, FM 3-24/MCWP 3-33.5 right as the surge to Iraq was unfolding.

95 For an example of a sceptical view, see Gian Gentile, Wrong Turn: America's Deadly Embrace of Counterinsurgency (New York, NY: The New Press, 2013).

96 McMaster, Dereliction of Duty.

97 Alex Ward, ‘An emotional moment in an NSC meeting show why withdrawing from Afghanistan is so hard’, Vox.com (4 March 2021).

98 Robert F. Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War (New York, NY: Knopf, 2014), p. 367; Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 245; Woodward, Obama's Wars, p. 157.

99 Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, p. 368.

100 Peter Feaver, ‘Bob Woodward strikes again! (McChrystal Assessment Edition)’, Foreign Policy (21 September 2009), available at: {https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/09/21/bob-woodward-strikes-again-mcchrystal-assessment-edition/}.

101 John Burns, ‘McChrystal rejects scaling down Afghan military aims’, The New York Times (1 October 2009).

102 Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 246.

103 Woodward, Obama's Wars, p. 173.

104 Gates, Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War, pp. 365, 367–8.

105 Peter Baker, ‘How Obama came to plan for “surge” in Afghanistan’, New York Times (5 December 2009).

106 Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 244.

107 Woodward, Obama's Wars, p. 237.

108 Ibid., p. 236.

109 Perry, The Pentagon's Wars, p. 247

110 For a copy of the 2018 US National Defense Strategy, see: {https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf}.

111 Brooks, Shaping Strategy; Feaver, Armed Servants.

112 Summers, On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War.

113 Long, ‘The Evolution of U.S. Army Doctrine’; Crane, ‘Avoiding Vietnam’.

114 On how civilian disunity creates opportunities for military opposition, see Deborah Avant, Military Institutions and Political Change (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994); see also Kinney, Drew, ‘Sharing saddles: Oligarchs and officers on horseback in Egypt and Tunisia’, International Studies Quarterly, 65 (2021), pp. 512–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.