CivMilBlog

The American military is routinely assumed to be a strongly conservative population that tends to identify with the Republican Party. Indeed, Peter Feaver (Duke University) and Richard Kohn  (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) demonstrated by use of the Survey on the Military in the Post Cold War Era that such an assumption was true with respect to senior officers. However, as they repeatedly remind their readers, the survey was primarily of military and civilian elites, and did not survey, to any significant extent, junior officers or enlisted personnel.

While it is important to understand the political attitudes of senior officers, as they are the decision-making elite of the American military establishment, to assume that the entire military is but a reflection of them is a grave error in judgment. Enlisted personnel comprise 85 percent of the total military personnel strength and to ignore them is to ignore many years of sociological research and anecdotal observation. Anyone with any experience in the military knows that enlisted personnel are not the same as officers.

This past year the Survey On Enlisted Personnel (SOEP) was completed and the first findings on the contemporary political attitudes of American military enlisted personnel have been released. The purpose of the study was to resolve an apparent conflict between the reported political attitudes of American military personnel and those predicted by demographics. Specifically, we asked the question, “To what extent do the political attitudes and behavior of enlisted personnel differ from or resemble those of the officer corps and the general American population?”

The demographic composition of the American military, especially that of enlisted personnel, is heavily dominated by minority groups that traditionally identify with the Democratic Party…or by groups that at least do not tend to identify with the Republican Party. For example, African-Americans are found in a substantially larger proportion of the military than in the general U.S. population. Despite comprising 12 percent of the age 18-44 population of the United States, African-Americans make up nearly 19 percent of the military and even more in the Army.

An election simulation we conducted based on the 2000 general election surmised that the military actually may have been more likely to have voted for the Democratic candidate than for the Republican candidate. However, there has been no reliable data on how the American military votes and especially on the political attitudes of enlisted personnel. To obtain such data, we created the Survey On Enlisted Personnel (SOEP) and obtained over 2,000 responses.

The findings of that survey tell several stories:

First, the proportion of Republicans in the military is about the same as that found in the general population.

Second, the proportion of Independents in the military is substantially greater than that found in the general population.

Third, the proportion of Democrats in the military is substantially less than that found in the general population.

Fourth, enlisted personnel are less strongly partisan and less strongly ideological than either the civilian population or officers.

The ratio between the Republicans and Democrats, which we call the Partisan Ratio, was perhaps the most interesting finding and most strikingly different from the general population – it is about 1:1 among civilians but nearly 2:1 in favor of the Republicans in the military. Along with that, the ratio between Independents and those with partisan leaning, what we name the Independent Ratio, also showed a marked difference from civilians – the military ratio is about four times that of the civilian.

Table 1: Party Identification

Comparison of Active Enlisted, Veteran Enlisted, Officers (1998), Officers (2008), and Civilians

Table 2: Party Identification (PID) Ratios

Table 3: Political Ideology

Comparison of Active Enlisted, Veteran Enlisted, Officers (1998), Officers (2008), and Civilians

Table 4: Ideology Ratios

These findings may well explain why reports continue of a strongly Republican military. If one runs into two Republicans for every one Democrat, it is easy to come away with the perception that the armed forces are predominately Republican.  Independents apparently escape detection below the radar.

The question that is raised by these findings is why would there be so few Democrats in the military. Self-selection is a likely vector. A comparison of statistics between Texas and California, two states that combine to produce more than a fifth of all military recruits annually, is revealing. Of all active duty personnel from Texas, about 63 percent reported a Republican PID; 20 percent reported being Independent; 17 percent reported a Democratic PID. From California, only 35 percent of active duty personnel reported a Republican PID while over 50 percent were Independent. Only about 5 percent reported a Democratic PID. This pattern holds true for other states. States that traditionally produce Republican majorities tend to produce Republican recruits. States that traditionally produce Democratic majorities tend to produce Independent recruits.

Political Efficacy Among Military Personnel.  Another interesting finding is that of political efficacy. We have observed that military personnel tend to vote at a higher rate than does the general American population, a trend that has been consistent since the mid-1980s. The SOEP asked respondents two political efficacy questions in an attempt to validate the voting reports. While the 2008 National Election Study reported that nearly 70 percent of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed with the statement, “politics and government seem so complicated that a person like me can’t really understand what is going on,” only 28 percent of active duty enlisted personnel agreed with that same statement. Enlisted personnel demonstrate a very high political efficacy.

This study limited analysis to determining the party identification and political ideology of active duty enlisted personnel in an attempt to better understand the relationship of the military to the civilian population. A limited look at political efficacy supported observations of a politically active military population. Remaining unanswered is why those who identify with the Democratic Party participate in the military at a substantially lower rate than do Republicans or Independents. Also unanswered is why Independents are found in the military at a significantly higher rate than is found among civilians.

Several items of conventional wisdom have been challenged with new data that leads to a more detailed analysis of the American armed forces and the relationship of those forces with civilian leaders and democratic society. With the prospect of another decade of fighting in Afghanistan, the American military will remain in the forefront of public attention and will remain the subject of continued public policy debate and scrutiny. A full understanding of the American military, and in particular the enlisted men and women who actually do the fighting, will become more, not less, important in how political decisions will impact American civil-military relations and to enable informed debate on military policy in the United States.

At the heart of civil-military relations is the problem of how a civilian government can control and remain safe from the military institution it created for its own protection. A military force that is strong enough to do what is asked of it must not also pose a danger to the controlling government. This poses the paradox that “because we fear others we create an institution of violence to protect us, but then we fear the very institution we created for protection”.¹

The solution to this problem throughout most of American history was to keep its standing army small. While armed forces were built up during wartime, the pattern after every war up to and including World War II was to demobilize quickly and return to something approaching pre-war force levels. However, with the advent of the Cold War in the 1950s, the need to create and maintain a sizable peacetime military force engendered new concerns of militarism and about how such a large force would affect civil-military relations in the United States. For the first time in American history, the problem of civil-military relations would have to be managed during peacetime.²

The men who wrote the Constitution of the United States were fearful of large standing armies, legislatures that had too much power, and perhaps most of all, a powerful executive who might be able to wage war on his own authority. All were objects of concern because of the dangers each posed to liberal democracy and a free citizenry. While it is often impossible to “gauge accurately the intent of the Framers”³, it is nevertheless important to understand the motivations and concerns of the writers with respect to the appropriate relationship between civil and military authority. The Federalist Papers provide a helpful view of how they understood the relationship between civil authority, as represented by the executive branch and the legislature, and military authority.

In Federalist No. 8, Alexander Hamilton worried that maintaining a large standing army would be a dangerous and expensive undertaking. In his principal argument for the ratification of the proposed constitution, he argued that only by maintaining a strong union could the new country avoid such a pitfall. Using the European experience as a negative example and the British experience as a positive one, he presented the idea of a strong nation protected by a navy with no need of a standing army. The implication was that control of a large military force is, at best, difficult and expensive, and at worst invites war and division. He foresaw the necessity of creating a civilian government that kept the military at a distance.

James Madison, another writer of several of the Federalist Papers⁴, expressed his concern about a standing military in comments before the Constitutional Convention in June 1787:

In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.⁵

The United States Constitution placed considerable limitations on the legislature. Coming from a tradition of legislative superiority in government, many were concerned that the proposed Constitution would place so many limitations on the legislature that it would become impossible for such a body to prevent an executive from starting a war. Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 26 that it would be equally as bad for a legislature to be unfettered by any other agency and that restraints would actually be more likely to preserve liberty. James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, continued Hamilton’s argument that distributing powers among the various branches of government would prevent any one group from gaining so much power as to become unassailable. In Federalist No. 48, however, Madison warned that while the separation of powers is important, the departments must not be so far separated as to have no ability to control the others.

Finally, in Federalist No. 51, Madison argued that to create a government that relied primarily on the good nature of the incumbent to ensure proper government was folly. Institutions must be in place to check incompetent or malevolent leaders. Most importantly, no single branch of government ought to have control over any single aspect of governing. Thus, all three branches of government must have some control over the military, and the system of checks and balances maintained among the other branches would serve to help control the military.

Hamilton and Madison thus had two major concerns: (1) the detrimental effect on liberty and democracy of a large standing army and (2) the ability of an unchecked legislature or executive to take the country to war precipitously. These concerns drove American military policy for the first century and a half of the country’s existence. Until the 1950s, the maintenance of a large military force by the United States was an exceptional circumstance and was restricted to times of war. Following every war up to and including World War II, the military was quickly demobilized and reduced to near pre-war levels.

1. Peter D. Feaver. 1996. “The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz and the Question of Civilian Control.” Armed Forces & Society. 23(2): 149-178.
2. Donald S. Inbody. 2009. Grand Army of the Republic or Grand Army of the Republicans? Political Party and Ideological Preferences of American Enlisted Personnel. Faculty Publications-Political Science. Paper 51.
3. Jack N. Rackove. 1990. Interpreting the Constitution: The Debate Over Original Intent. Boston: Northeastern.
4. Gottfried Dietze. 1960. The Federalist: A Classic on Federalism and Free Government. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press.
5. Max Farrand. 1911. Records of the Federal Convention of 1787. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1:465. James Madison. 1966. Notes of Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison.  Athens: Ohio University Press, 214-215.

Newly obtained data tells us that the American military enlisted person is less conservative and less Republican than members of the military officer corps.  Despite anecdotal reports of a highly conservative and staunchly Republican military bastion, we see a diverse community containing about the same spread of political opinions as that found in the general American population.

The American National Election Study, which just released its data for the 2008 election season, reported that about 43 percent of the American population identified with the Democratic Party while about 41 percent identified with the Republican Party.  The data obtained by the Survey On Enlisted Personnel (SOEP) reports that about 41 percent of American enlisted personnel identify as Republicans and about 25 percent identify as Democrats.  Some 35 percent identify as independents as compared to only 12 percent of the American population.  About 52 percent of the officer corps identifies as Republican.  Thus, our 1.1 million enlisted personnel report being no more Republican than the general population and more independent.

This is not a surprise to political behaviorists  who have noted for some time that the enlisted population is over-represented by minority groups that tend to identify as Democrats.  As of December 2008, whites made up about 69 percent of the enlisted force but constituted 74 percent of the entire U.S. population and about 80 percent of the 18-44 age group from which the enlisted force is recruited. Blacks, who are just under 12 percent of 18-44-year-olds, comprised 19 percent of the military population. Thus, relative to all appropriate comparison groups, whites are under-represented within the enlisted ranks of the American military while blacks are over-represented.

Given this information, it would appear that in the November 2008 Presidential election it is entirely possible that more of our military actually voted Barak Obama than voted for John McCain.

The creation of U. S. Northern Command on 1 October 2002 brought up concerns by civil libertarians and others about the implications of using American military combat forces inside the borders of the United States and raised posse comitatus questions.  The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prevents military forces from taking on law enforcement roles within the borders of the United States.  Some within the Department of Homeland Security are of the opinion that the Act does not rule out the use of any military force and that many concerns are the basis of certain "myths."

At any rate, it is clear that the military is going to be required should some particularly widespread terrorist (or other attack for that matter) occurs within the borders of the United States.  Witness the problems of Hurricane Katrina where the introduction of military force was required to initially gain the confidence of the citizens.  If weapons of mass destruction are used, only the military has the necessary skills to identify, contain, and clean up such an event.  Cooperation with domestic authority will be required and this will certainly bring up civil-military relations issues that will need to be resolved.

 

Pentagon to Detail Troops to Bolster Domestic Security

By Spencer S. Hsu and Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writers
Monday, December 1, 2008; A01

The U.S. military expects to have 20,000 uniformed troops inside the United States by 2011 trained to help state and local officials respond to a nuclear terrorist attack or other domestic catastrophe, according to Pentagon officials.

The long-planned shift in the Defense Department’s role in homeland security was recently backed with funding and troop commitments after years of prodding by Congress and outside experts, defense analysts said.

There are critics of the change, in the military and among civil liberties groups and libertarians who express concern that the new homeland emphasis threatens to strain the military and possibly undermine the Posse Comitatus Act, a 130-year-old federal law restricting the military’s role in domestic law enforcement.

But the Bush administration and some in Congress have pushed for a heightened homeland military role since the middle of this decade, saying the greatest domestic threat is terrorists exploiting the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, dedicating 20,000 troops to domestic response — a nearly sevenfold increase in five years — "would have been extraordinary to the point of unbelievable," Paul McHale, assistant defense secretary for homeland defense, said in remarks last month at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But the realization that civilian authorities may be overwhelmed in a catastrophe prompted "a fundamental change in military culture," he said.

The Pentagon’s plan calls for three rapid-reaction forces to be ready for emergency response by September 2011. The first 4,700-person unit, built around an active-duty combat brigade based at Fort Stewart, Ga., was available as of Oct. 1, said Gen. Victor E. Renuart Jr., commander of the U.S. Northern Command.

If funding continues, two additional teams will join nearly 80 smaller National Guard and reserve units made up of about 6,000 troops in supporting local and state officials nationwide. All would be trained to respond to a domestic chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, or high-yield explosive attack, or CBRNE event, as the military calls it.

Military preparations for a domestic weapon-of-mass-destruction attack have been underway since at least 1996, when the Marine Corps activated a 350-member chemical and biological incident response force and later based it in Indian Head, Md., a Washington suburb. Such efforts accelerated after the Sept. 11 attacks, and at the time Iraq was invaded in 2003, a Pentagon joint task force drew on 3,000 civil support personnel across the United States.

In 2005, a new Pentagon homeland defense strategy emphasized "preparing for multiple, simultaneous mass casualty incidents." National security threats were not limited to adversaries who seek to grind down U.S. combat forces abroad, McHale said, but also include those who "want to inflict such brutality on our society that we give up the fight," such as by detonating a nuclear bomb in a U.S. city.

In late 2007, Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England signed a directive approving more than $556 million over five years to set up the three response teams, known as CBRNE Consequence Management Response Forces. Planners assume an incident could lead to thousands of casualties, more than 1 million evacuees and contamination of as many as 3,000 square miles, about the scope of damage Hurricane Katrina caused in 2005.

Last month, McHale said, authorities agreed to begin a $1.8 million pilot project funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency through which civilian authorities in five states could tap military planners to develop disaster response plans. Hawaii, Massachusetts, South Carolina, Washington and West Virginia will each focus on a particular threat — pandemic flu, a terrorist attack, hurricane, earthquake and catastrophic chemical release, respectively — speeding up federal and state emergency planning begun in 2003.

Last Monday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered defense officials to review whether the military, Guard and reserves can respond adequately to domestic disasters.

Gates gave commanders 25 days to propose changes and cost estimates. He cited the work of a congressionally chartered commission, which concluded in January that the Guard and reserve forces are not ready and that they lack equipment and training.

Bert B. Tussing, director of homeland defense and security issues at the U.S. Army War College’s Center for Strategic Leadership, said the new Pentagon approach "breaks the mold" by assigning an active-duty combat brigade to the Northern Command for the first time. Until now, the military required the command to rely on troops requested from other sources.

"This is a genuine recognition that this [job] isn’t something that you want to have a pickup team responsible for," said Tussing, who has assessed the military’s homeland security strategies.

The American Civil Liberties Union and the libertarian Cato Institute are troubled by what they consider an expansion of executive authority.

Domestic emergency deployment may be "just the first example of a series of expansions in presidential and military authority," or even an increase in domestic surveillance, said Anna Christensen of the ACLU’s National Security Project. And Cato Vice President Gene Healy warned of "a creeping militarization" of homeland security.

"There’s a notion that whenever there’s an important problem, that the thing to do is to call in the boys in green," Healy said, "and that’s at odds with our long-standing tradition of being wary of the use of standing armies to keep the peace."

McHale stressed that the response units will be subject to the act, that only 8 percent of their personnel will be responsible for security and that their duties will be to protect the force, not other law enforcement. For decades, the military has assigned larger units to respond to civil disturbances, such as during the Los Angeles riot in 1992.

U.S. forces are already under heavy strain, however. The first reaction force is built around the Army’s 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team, which returned in April after 15 months in Iraq. The team includes operations, aviation and medical task forces that are to be ready to deploy at home or overseas within 48 hours, with units specializing in chemical decontamination, bomb disposal, emergency care and logistics.

The one-year domestic mission, however, does not replace the brigade’s next scheduled combat deployment in 2010. The brigade may get additional time in the United States to rest and regroup, compared with other combat units, but it may also face more training and operational requirements depending on its homeland security assignments.

Renuart said the Pentagon is accounting for the strain of fighting two wars, and the need for troops to spend time with their families. "We want to make sure the parameters are right for Iraq and Afghanistan," he said. The 1st Brigade’s soldiers "will have some very aggressive training, but will also be home for much of that."

Although some Pentagon leaders initially expected to build the next two response units around combat teams, they are likely to be drawn mainly from reserves and the National Guard, such as the 218th Maneuver Enhancement Brigade from South Carolina, which returned in May after more than a year in Afghanistan.

Now that Pentagon strategy gives new priority to homeland security and calls for heavier reliance on the Guard and reserves, McHale said, Washington has to figure out how to pay for it.

"It’s one thing to decide upon a course of action, and it’s something else to make it happen," he said. "It’s time to put our money where our mouth is."

Thomas P. M. Barnett, whose writing on the "non-integrating gap" has been gaining interest, has some insightful notes about the recent incidents in Mumbai.  This man is one to watch for inclusion in the new administration and the national security staff.

It couldn’t get much clearer: the terrorists wanted to sever India’s growing globalization ties in general and specifically those with the West. While India is no stranger to such terror (indeed, it can claim to have endured more experience in this regard than any other great power over the last quarter-century, with no other even coming close), these attacks seem to signal a new era for the nation: like a China, India becomes increasingly targeted for its role in embracing and spreading globalization. Thus its need to have a globally conscious and responsible military–meaning an end to the strategic myopia over Jammu & Kashmir.

If the upshot of these attacks is that India makes such a decision to recast its grand strategic vision so as to make it more commensurate with its expanding global economic presence, then this System Perturbation will have served its historic purpose–just not in the way its perpetrators imagined.

In that sense, the cruel realist in me says the timing could not have been better–on many levels.

Originally published at: http://thomaspmbarnett.com/weblog/2008/11/on_the_motives_in_mumbai.html

A recent article by Greg Grant discussing the strategic vision of Frank Hoffman caught my eye.  In it he notes that Hoffman warns against getting too hung up on China as the next “near peer” rival of the United States.  Hoffman argues that the U.S. Navy needs to develop a “tri-modal” capability which would include (1) power projection, i.e., aircraft carriers, (2) an expeditionary capability to offset the decline in overseas basing, and (3) an ability to operate in the littoral environment.  The last capability is brought home most distinctly as we are seeing a rise in piracy off the coast of Africa. 

It seems a good time to reprise an earlier post on this blog, about where we see the United States strategically in another fifteen to twenty years.  Much of what Hoffman calls for we thought a good idea, too.  While we have a slightly different idea about the future of aircraft carriers, we are not far from each other.  Building an armed force that is preparing to fight World War III is not in the best interests of the United States.  It is important to understand what the world will look like in the next few decades to best decide how to develop a military force that will be effective and useful.  We call it the Strategic Environment 2025.  It is reprinted below with some modification from its original form.

The principle issues of the strategic environment which will impact military planning by the year 2025 are (1) decreased forward basing, (2) increased anti-access tactics, (3) increased asymmetric attack, and (4) increased technological development, particularly in information systems. This will drive the American force structure to obtain an ability to assure access to anywhere in the world without the requirement of permanent basing.

Building a force designed to fight a specific number of Major Theater Wars is a mistake. The force should be designed to respond to a realistic assessment of requirements and have certain capabilities built in and based on a realistic estimate of future conflict.  Most of that conflict will occur within the region of the world described by Thomas P. M. Barnett as the “non-integrated gap.”  It is the locations within this “gap” wherein the United States will find itself increasingly fighting and involving itself in humanitarian operations.

The US must be able to discern developing problems in time to do something about them, i.e., information dominance, then move the necessary power, be that combat or humanitarian, to the needed point of crisis. This information dominance must not be restricted to agencies within the Department of Defense.  Other agencies, such as the Department of State, U.S.A.I.D., and Department of Energy, among others, must have the capability of input as well as retrieval of data from this information dominance “system.”  While such a “system” will have a technical component, it is a mistake to believe that it is entirely such, as input from people on the ground within those regions as well as from non-traditional sources like academia, humanitarian agencies, non-governmental organizations, and the United Nations will be critical. 

Once taking full advantage of Information Dominance, the Force of the Future will have three fundamental characteristics: (1) Strategic Agility, (2) Precision Strike, and (3) Integrated Defense. Exploiting information dominance made possible by advances in technology will enhance all of these characteristics.

Strategic Environment.

Decreased Forward Basing. By 2025, Europe will have continued the maturation progress already demonstrated. The need to maintain American forces in Europe will have passed. The Koreas will have reunited and the need to maintain forces in Northeast Asia will have been reduced considerably. Should the European and Korean/Japanese bases become unavailable, which is likely, the United States military must be able to transport itself anywhere in the world in sufficiently short a time to be strategically useful.  This will also entail increased and innovative use of pre-positioned equipment and stockpiles.

Increased Anti-Access Tactics. Potential enemies recognize that they can make military access to their countries more difficult by using various relatively inexpensive anti-access tactics. Cruise missiles, mines (both land and sea), anti-aircraft artillery and missiles, and small surface craft make forced entry into any area problematic. The increasing sophistication of improvised explosive devices (IED) will require continued scientific and tactical innovation to reduce that threat.  The United States military must be able to counter these tactics in order to assure access to strategically critical areas.

Increased asymmetric attack. Most potential enemies will recognize that they cannot meet the United States in conventional military combat. They will increasingly resort to asymmetric tactics. Such attacks will be by conventional terrorism (bombings, shootings, kidnapping), unconventional terrorism (NBC attacks or holding cities or areas hostage to NBC attack), small unit attacks (irregular paramilitary units and raids by specially trained military units), use of IEDs, and information attacks (computer hacking, destructive viruses, stealth-spy viruses, conventional espionage). It will also take the form of piracy, arms trade, drug trafficking, and trafficking in human beings. 

Increased technological development. Technology will continue to develop and faster rates in the next quarter century. Computer and network-related technology in particular will drive the developed world. Use of the technology will enhance an ability to counter anti-access tactics and asymmetric attack.  This will also require an increasingly technologically capable and highly trained force structure.

Force Structure Characteristics. In 2025, the military of the United States will be a smaller, essentially CONUS-based force. It must be able to see the enemy first, decide what to do quickly, get to the scene with sufficient force to be decisive, sustain and protect itself while doing the job, and be able to extract when complete. Central to the entire force and the peg upon which the national defense hat will be hung is Information Dominance. This will entail revitalizing national intelligence gathering and processing, to include collection and exploitation of new communication technologies such as the Internet, computer encryption, and cellular communications. This will include national and joint level sensors that can be used by tactical units for targeting and a system of communications that can allow small combat units to call in fires from remote areas. From the central position of information dominance, the three legs of the National Military Strategy can then be brought to bear.

Strategic Agility. It will be essential that the force be able to deploy quickly to anywhere in the world. This will necessarily involve both air and sea lift capability. The force itself must be easily moved and easily formed into combat-effective units upon arrival. The force must also be agile enough to counter anti-access tactics, preferably by-passing such defenses either by maneuver or fire. Strategic agility also includes the ability to sustain such a force at a distance from the United States.

Precision Strike. Application of fires on the precise targets necessary to bring about the desired effects has always been the goal of military leaders. By use of increased information dominance and technology, US forces will be able to accurately decide which targets are critical and then place the necessary force exactly where needed. This will take the form of conventional precision guided munitions. These munitions, launched from ships and aircraft (both crewed and un-crewed), and land-based launchers, will be guided by an integrated system that combines sensors, launchers, and targeting sources. Better precision weapons will be necessary to isolate the damage to just that required to accomplish the mission and reduce collateral damage to a level less than has been accepted today.  However important this capability will be, we must maintain the ability to put specially trained soldiers and operatives on the ground to accomplish particularly difficult missions.

Integrated Defense. Defending the force from anti-access tactics and asymmetric attack as well as conventional attack will be the new challenge. Information technology will greatly assist by integrating various systems and providing protection and warning. By integrating systems, the resultant flexibility of response and better sharing of information will better enable local commanders to understand the nature of security problems. Integrated defense begins at the national level, combining service-centric systems into national or joint systems providing service to all forces. National intelligence systems will be combined and streamlined to provide better indications, warnings, and recommendations.

The Force of the Future. The US military of 2025 will be lighter (better able to be strategically transported and providing less of a footprint when deployed), more mobile (strategically, operationally, and tactically), more lethal (better able to deliver precise fires), and better protected (taking advantage of stealth, integrated defenses, and new countermeasure technologies). The force will not be platform-centric, i.e., based upon the concept that the only effective way to deliver fires is to take them into battle on one’s own platforms. The ground force will be optimized to fight in close, urbanized terrain under confusing conditions. The air force will be optimized to provide air domination and precise fires. The naval force will be optimized for forcible entry, counter anti-access tactics, and provide precise fires. The Special Operations Force will be optimized to execute unconventional warfare, but also include Civil-Military Affairs, countering asymmetric attack.

Transition Plan. In order to achieve the Force of the Future, transition must begin now. The first priority is to establishing the information dominance necessary for the plan to work that will require resources to begin RDT&E.

Army. Pull the Corps out of Europe and maintain only one heavy Corps in Fort Hood. Stop production of M1 tanks and use existing tanks to maintain the heavy Corps in the near to mid-term. The heavy Corps will eventually be phased out. The Army will develop six medium highly mobile Divisions, organized to be easily deployable as separate brigades.

Navy. Stop production of large aircraft carriers. Maintain the current carrier force for the near and mid-term, but as they age and retire, do not replace them. Eventually, they will be phased out. Stop production of the DD21. Continue production of the DDG-51 as the near and mid-term solution. Develop and produce a new Low Observable High Speed (LOHS) amphibious assault ship/craft, that can operate in or near littoral areas, supporting the Marine OMFTS concept. Develop the Streetfighter concept or a follow-on concept that permits low observable craft to operate in a dangerous littoral environment, while able to provide or direct precision fires. Except for a few hulls, decommission the SSBN fleet and convert them to SSGN (strike arsenal ships). These vessels will be used in the near and mid-term, but as they age and are retired, they will be replaced by a submersible, high speed, arsenal ship armed with precision guided munitions. Maintain the SSN force and continue development of smaller more capable submersibles, as these ships are most useful in providing access to contested littoral areas. Maintain development of the F/A-18E/F, stop development of the JSF(Navy), and concentrate on the JSF(STOVL) or next generation beyond that. Combine all sealift under the Military Sealift Command and produce more RORO type ships capable of lifting Army or Marine Corps forces and operating offshore.

Marine Corps. Continue development of the JSF(STOVL) and V-22 or next generation. Stop production of the AAAV, and work with the Navy on a LOHS concept of ship and craft capable to delivering combat power ashore. Concentrate on how to deliver precision munitions to areas with a minimum of personnel and equipment on the ground. The Marine Corps will take over the traditional UDT functions formerly provided by the SEALS. 

Air Force. Stop production of the F-22 and concentrate on the Joint Strike Fighter or a next generation beyond that. Maintain production of the F-15/F-16 as the near and mid-term solution. Decommission B-1 and B-52 bombers. Maintain the current B-2s, but replace with unmanned, high altitude, precision bombers. Build more C-17 aircraft and develop a low cost replacement of the C-130.

Special Operations Forces. Eliminate the SEALS and combine USAF special forces into the Army, operating under the auspices of SOCCOM, in effect creating a separate special forces service. Develop a new “Cyber Force” capable of countering Internet and computer virus attack and able to conduct offensive cyber attack.  The SOF must be able to move quickly and unobtrusively around the world in order to carry out “black” operations either in conjunction with other organizations (CIA), or by themselves.  Regular forces must be trained to be able to provide the necessary support to SOF operations in their vicinity.   Most counter-terrorism work in the future will be carried out by these forces in conjunction with the CIA and similar forces from other countries.

National Missile Defense and Strategic Nuclear Weapons. Cancel NMD and reduce strategic nuclear weapons to a small number (as low as 100 or 200 by the Turner plan). NMD does little to ensure the security of the United States and requires the use of resources better applied into development of Information Dominance. With the reunification of Korea a principle ballistic missile threat will disappear. China has shown no propensity to develop a large number of strategic missiles.

Intelligence Forces. While all services will maintain tactical intelligence forces specializing in supporting operating forces, all military intelligence functions will be combined under the Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. This function will take advantage of the information dominance and provide joint intelligence support to the theater CINCs and better enable cooperation with the CIA.  This, combined with the newly invigorated SOCCOM, will enable better work against terrorist and global criminal/pirate organizations.

Chairman, JCS. The Chairman (or possibly SECDEF) will control programming for all information systems within DOD. By controlling such systems, he can drive the development of the force structure necessary to take full advantage of the new information dominance. The services will have to develop forces that can effectively use the information systems provided by the Chairman. This will take legislation by Congress to effect and should be an early priority of the SECDEF and CJCS.

Summary. The Force of the Future will be able to deploy from CONUS to anywhere in the world quickly and with sufficient combat power available to be decisive. Not all of the combat power will necessarily be with the deployed force, but may be on remote platforms or locations supported by remote sensors and targeting systems. The forward forces will be able to integrate with the combat power and sensors increasing effectiveness.

Heavy forces will be maintained in the near term, but replaced by lighter forces in the long term. Some early force retirements and program elimination will be used to begin the transformation. As information dominance is realized, other legacy forces can be replaces by the newly developed forces and capabilities.

Information Dominance will enable the US to see the problem early, define the problem accurately, and begin action in time to make a difference. The force selected will be able to move quickly to the scene and be effective upon arrival, taking advantage of integrated information systems to precisely place combat power (fires) where it will be most decisive and protect itself while employed.

We will see the enemy earlier than ever before and clearer than ever before. We will deliver combat power more quickly than ever before and with more precision than ever before and the force will be better protected than ever before.   But, above all, we will be smarter in when we apply such force.

The first indications of what the Democratic Party in Congress has in mind for the military are starting to become public.  Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA) announced that he is calling for a 25% cut in the military budget.  He believes that can be accomplished by getting out of Iraq much earlier than anyone is presently talking about and by cutting various weapons programs.  To put this into scale, the Fiscal Year 2008 DOD budget, including supplemental spending bills for the "War on Terror" is $699 billion.  To reduce 25% of that figure means to find $175 billion.  Of course, just stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ("Global War on Terror" extra funding) will reduce spending by some $218 billion, more than achieving the 25% goal desired by Franks.

This flies in the face of already announced plans by Obama to increase military action in Afghanistan, which would likely also mean increasing the personnel end-strength of the Army and Marine Corps.  As any business leader knows, personnel expenses are the single most expensive part of any budget and that certainly holds true with the Department of Defense. Making any real cuts in defense spending necessarily involves cutting personnel. 

However, in a bit of political sleight of hand, just stopping the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would arguably reduce defense spending by 35% thereby permitting the administration and Congress to declare success without reducing anything within the core defense budget.

President Clinton managed to reduce the national deficit by reducing defense spending during his administration.  Given that defense spending is over half the discretionary budget at the federal level, if any administration, whether Democrat or Republican, wants to reduce federal spending, the defense department is going to have to take a major share of that reduction.  Stand by.

Today we read a story datelined in San Francisco about a group of war veterans who are protesting the existence of Junior ROTC in the high schools, arguing that there should be "no more military recruitment in our schools."  At the core of their argument seemingly is an assumption that being in the military is bad for youth.  Or, at least, being in the military right now is bad for youth.  It is apparently okay to recruit for a bank or the local factory, but not for the military.  Such an argument brings up larger questions.

If it is bad for those youth to be in the military, then who should be in the military.  Or, should the United States even have a military in the first place?  If it is bad to recruit high school youth to be in the military (despite plenty of strong statistical evidence that JROTC programs in High Schools do not "recruit" or even increase the likelihood that students will enlist) then is it okay to recruit them anywhere? 

One must wonder if they would have the same feelings if we did not have troops in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It appears that if they believe that the particular war in which the U.S. is involved is not to their liking, then all steps must be taken to prevent anyone from enlisting in the first place.  Vilifying the military seemingly is an easy response to an unpopular war…we have seen it before…but it is the wrong target and is actually asking for something they don’t really want.

Resistance to having ROTC programs at the university level is similarly illogical and actually flies in the face of what liberal Democrats want.  Removing such programs from civilian colleges and universities would result in a more conservative group of officers than already exists.  By creating officers from our civilian institutions the young future officers will be more likely to be exposed to the liberal influences of the professorship than at any of our military service academies. We doubt if our Democratic friends are interested in an even more Republican and conservative officer corps.  Responding to a professor who argued that the University of Texas should eliminate the ROTC program, the Dean of the College of Liberal Arts asked the professor if he really wanted to create a situation whereby others such as he would never have an opportunity to influence those future officers of the American military.  If liberals or Democrats want the military to better reflect their views, then they should not be arguing to remove any chance of influence.

What kind of army do they want?  Do they want an army that will only agree to fight in "good" wars and refuse to fight in "bad" wars.  Then, who gets to decide which war is "good" and which is "bad?"  The senior general or admiral?  The officers?  Or is it the decision of each individual soldier?  Does a sailor get to decide whether or not she needs to go to work that day depending on whether or not she thinks the war is worthy of her attention.  Does an airman get to decide whether or not he is going to repair an airplane that might fly a combat mission later in the day?  Do we want a military that gets to disobey the orders of the elected civilian leadership?

There are plenty of historical examples of armies that refused to obey the orders of the civilian masters.  None of those examples are good and all resulted in even worse situations for their countries and the citizens.  If the United States is going to have a military, then we want one that obeys orders.  The individual members of that military don’t get to decide.  Only the civilian leadership gets to decide and if we don’t like their decisions then we get to vote them out of office.  Spitting in the eye of the individual military person accomplishes nothing and is aimed at the wrong target.

Military personnel see civil society as more dishonest, more self-indulgent, more corrupt, more disloyal, less disciplined, and more materialistic than military culture.  This highlights the sense military people have that the general population does not really understand them and, despite supportive gestures and words, does not understand the sacrifices they make for America. 

When asked whether or not the term "honest" applied to military culture, 81.3 % of military respondents said it did.  Asked the same question about civilian culture, only 42.1% agreed.  72.1% replied that the term "self-indulgent" did not apply to the military.  90.6% believed that it did apply to civilian culture.  Only 19.4% believed that military culture was corrupt while 83.7% reported believing civilian culture was.  With respect to loyalty, 93% held the military as a loyal culture while only 21.4% believed the term applied to civilians.  Only 33.4% reported the military as a materialistic culture while 94.2% believed that term applied to civilians.  Not surprisingly, 93.6% held the military as disciplined while only 8.8% held civilian culture in the same light.

In and of itself, this difference of opinion about the characteristics of military and civilian culture is not critical.  It would not be surprising to find that a profession held its own culture in high regard.  Indeed civilians hold many of the same opinions, although not with as extreme a difference as reported by the military sample.

As we have reported earlier, the military is quite critical of civilian leadership,especially the past two administrations (Clinton and Bush).  While the military firmly believes that civilian control of the military is the right way to go and even more firmly believes that a military ought to follow orders, it also is quite sure that civilian leaders ought to listen to and take good military advice.  When the military believes that good military advice was ignored and then led down a bad path, disgruntlement will arise.  That was the mythos that arose from Vietnam; that civilian bungling and meddling in purely military matters led to defeat.  Should things go badly in Iraq or Afghanistan, that mythos will be reinforced and it will take longer than a generation to recover.  Combine that mythos with a sense that the military culture is somehow superior to the civilian culture and we could find ourselves with some severe pathologies in our civil-military relationship.

So, what does all this mean?  It means that whoever is President must find a way to "win" the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  By winning we mean a way to eventually withdraw without looking like we ran and being able to leave a reasonably stable environment.  Even better if we can find a way for the rest of the world to believe that we left under good circumstances turning security in those two countries over to competent authority.  If we leave those countries in a mess and appear to abandon them, the military will be quite sure that they were abused and used for faulty political purpose.  They will take a long time to forgive that.

It is becoming more and more certain that Barak Obama will be elected President of the United States. Along with that, the Democratic Party will control Congress to levels not seen since the 1930s.  They will have a near filibuster proof Senate, if not filibuster proof, and a strong 250 (57%) vote majority.  The question for this forum is, "What difference will that make in American civil-military relations?"

While we are certain that there is trepidation in some quarters, thinking back to the troublesome times of the first years of the Clinton administration, we believe the climate in the civil-military relationship between Obama’s administration and the Pentagon leadership will generally be good.  It is apparent that what most of the generals and admirals (and other officers and enlisted personnel, for that matter) want most is competent senior leadership.  They got a breath of fresh air in Robert Gates, but they will be mostly looking to see if the new White House administration wants to pay any attention to military advice.  The current administration, at least during the first several years, did not.

The major issues that will be confronting the new administration with respect to dealing with the military are, of course, the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, and intelligence gathering methodologies.  What is most interesting from these quarters is that all of those issues would likely be addressed in a similar fashion no matter who is elected president.

Both Obama and McCain have indicated that the U.S. is pulling out of Iraq.  It is only a question of how fast, but in any case it will be measured in months, not years.  As far as Afghanistan is concerned, both have told us that they are going to press a major campaign to restore the balance there and redouble efforts to find Osama bin Laden.  Both have said they would increase the size of the Army and Marine Corps as part of that effort.  Both candidates have expressed negative views toward the use of Guantanamo Bay as a means of holding captured fighters.  With recent Supreme Court decisions regarding their rights under U.S. law, either man will have to deal with the issue. 

With respect to intelligence gathering techniques, particularly the controversial Patriot Act, we expect that changes will occur restoring the control of courts over wiretapping to their pre-9/11 conditions.  Neither candidate will make precipitous moves, though, as both will want to be in office for a while to find out what the real effect of the provisions have been. 

However, should we have a President and Congress both of the same party, whatever course the President decides will be smoother and experience far less Congressional resistance.  With Obama in the White House, efforts to increase the military in size will meet with less resistance than with McCain as President.  Democrats, eager to regain the respect of the military, will go out of their way to show how strong they are on defense.  Recent backing by Colin Powell goes a long way toward restoring trust.  Besides, the Democrats will not want a failure in either Iraq or Afghanistan to happen on their watch.  With success, they will claim that it was their changed policies that made the difference.

Democrats have been accused of having a "tone deaf" ear toward the military. The efforts by the Democratic Party to suppress overseas ballots in Florida (2000) to the comments by John Kerry about poorly educated youth having to enter the military have not helped the party.  However, it is apparent that Obama is making an attempt to regain the trust of the military and, in the face of several years of arguably incompetent civilian leadership of the military, such a move will have a warm reception. 

In the past, both parties had icons in Congress with excellent reputations with respect to supporting the military.  Barry Goldwater, Carl Vinson, and Sam Nunn, to name but a few.  There are no such members of Congress now with that sort of overwhelming credentials.  Perhaps with his defeat in the Presidential race, John McCain will return to the Senate and take up that role as senior military statesman. 

So, we are optimistic about the civil-military relationship in the United States.  Unless the new administration botches either Iraq or Afghanistan, things will go well.  If they do botch the work, the military will feel that it has once again been led down a bad path by incompetent and ill-guided civilian leaders and it will be a long time before they trust them again.  Still, all the signs are good, regardless of which man is elected President.