[HN Gopher] Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations
___________________________________________________________________
Best Practices of Civil-Military Relations
Author : lando2319
Score : 39 points
Date : 2022-09-08 10:10 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (warontherocks.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (warontherocks.com)
| dogman144 wrote:
| War on the rocks can sometimes read as Officers deploying big
| words (they are often the authors).
|
| But, good points in all.
|
| Context on this isn't just DJT, it's a significant rot across all
| of those points since Iraq/Afghanistan started but it dates back
| to Vietnam.
|
| First, The military internally was getting partisan in
| uncomfortable ways when I served. Mike Flynn or Mastriano in PA
| are the craziest example of this, but below the very professional
| wall of senior leadership, quite a lot of f-Obama and go-Trump
| went on in carefully angled speech. The junior officer who knew
| enough to be dangerous but still had a bachelors degree from
| Phoenix U in criminal justice were large offenders, paired with
| junior soldiers and their first line leadership from rural
| wherever.
|
| "Civilian control is exercised within the legislative branch"
| disappeared as a concept a few years into Iraq/Afg.
| Authorizations for use of military force (ie congress votes to go
| to war) were replaced by repeat deployments directed via shady or
| at least very out of date authorizations. This started in
| Vietnam. Congress, and by extent the people, seemed to forget
| there was a war going on after 2006 or so, or take half measures
| that resulted in danger for deployed service members (what
| President Obama was accused of most internally).
|
| Judicial branch - UCMJ exists for a very good reason, and there's
| been more noise and criticism vs substance and nuance about why
| that should change, again resulting in a very confusing set of
| norms to navigate for the Commander.
|
| Yes, all the Miley <> DJT stuff was ugly. Miley should go down in
| our history as a Soldier's Soldier who navigated that all safely.
| When I got concerned over the last couple years, I'd look to
| Miley for a rough temp check on how bad it was getting. The more
| he left total silence and started targeted and veiled pushback
| against DJT, the more concerning it was.
|
| Mutual trust - again, seems like people forgot there was a war (2
| wars) on. Poor urban and poor rural and a handful of idealistic
| middle/upper class went on repeat deployments for years and
| suffered limbs and divorces. Seems like civilians checked out
| right around when the halftime show with a large flag ended.
|
| Law enforcement - cops cosplay soldiers, soldiers join law
| enforcement and think they're still soldiers, military vehicles
| and TA-50 end up on cops patrolling neighborhoods.
|
| Public role - there hasn't been a universally loud "disbarring"
| of Michael Flynn. DJT and "his generals."
|
| Elections - when Jan 6 happened, high speed units that usually
| are in and out of Africa or Middle East had to consult the
| manuals on if what was happening in DC counted as a special
| situation. That it even got this close is very bad.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| After a popular 2008 Obama speech viewed by millions in Europe,
| candidate Obama won the US Elections with enthusiastic,
| emotional support. Both Europe and his own fans in the USA were
| confused and dismayed when the record-breaking USA/NATO
| military budgets went UP AGAIN right after that.. and again,
| and again, then a new war, then up again..
| canjobear wrote:
| There seems to be some background lurking behind this text. Could
| someone explain it?
| dirtyid wrote:
| https://warontherocks.com/2022/09/not-their-plane-to-land-ge...
|
| > Chris, Melanie, and Zack discuss Doyle Hodges' recent article
| scrutinizing Gen. Mark Milley's behavior in the waning months
| of the Trump administration. Journalists have rendered a
| relatively favorable treatment of Milley's insubordination, but
| Hodges questions the long-term implications for civil-military
| relations. Should senior military officers be expected to
| follow lawful orders, even if they are morally objectionable?
| Or is resignation the only proper response when those in
| uniform cannot faithfully execute an order? And is the problem
| of civil-military relations unique to the Trump administration
| or does the Milley case portend a future in which the
| military's standing is filtered through the same partisan
| lenses that inflict our politics across the board?
| Tangurena2 wrote:
| There are at least 2 situations that I'm aware of:
|
| *1* For July 4, 2018, Trump wanted a North Korea style parade
| "in his honor". Some news articles call it a French Bastille-
| day type of parade [0] because his discussions of what kind of
| parade he wanted started after returning from the 2017 Bastille
| Day celebrations (July 17).
|
| > _But the gulf between Trump and the generals was not really
| about money or practicalities, just as their endless policy
| battles were not only about clashing views on whether to
| withdraw from Afghanistan or how to combat the nuclear threat
| posed by North Korea and Iran. The divide was also a matter of
| values, of how they viewed the United States itself. That was
| never clearer than when Trump told his new chief of staff, John
| Kelly--like Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general--about his
| vision for Independence Day. "Look, I don't want any wounded
| guys in the parade," Trump said. "This doesn't look good for
| me." He explained with distaste that at the Bastille Day parade
| there had been several formations of injured veterans,
| including wheelchair-bound soldiers who had lost limbs in
| battle._
|
| > _Kelly could not believe what he was hearing. "Those are the
| heroes," he told Trump. "In our society, there's only one group
| of people who are more heroic than they are--and they are
| buried over in Arlington." Kelly did not mention that his own
| son Robert, a lieutenant killed in action in Afghanistan, was
| among the dead interred there._
|
| > _"I don't want them," Trump repeated. "It doesn't look good
| for me."
|
| > _The subject came up again during an Oval Office briefing
| that included Trump, Kelly, and Paul Selva, an Air Force
| general and the vice-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
| Kelly joked in his deadpan way about the parade. "Well, you
| know, General Selva is going to be in charge of organizing the
| Fourth of July parade," he told the President. Trump did not
| understand that Kelly was being sarcastic. "So, what do you
| think of the parade?" Trump asked Selva. Instead of telling
| Trump what he wanted to hear, Selva was forthright.*
|
| > _"I didn't grow up in the United States, I actually grew up
| in Portugal," Selva said. "Portugal was a dictatorship--and
| parades were about showing the people who had the guns. And in
| this country, we don't do that." He added, "It's not who we
| are."_
|
| > _Even after this impassioned speech, Trump still did not get
| it._
|
| > _It turned out that the generals had rules, standards, and
| expertise, not blind loyalty. The President's loud complaint to
| John Kelly one day was typical: "You fucking generals, why
| can't you be like the German generals?"_
|
| > _"Which generals?" Kelly asked._
|
| > _"The German generals in World War II," Trump responded._
|
| > _"You do know that they tried to kill Hitler three times and
| almost pulled it off?" Kelly said._
|
| > _But, of course, Trump did not know that. "No, no, no, they
| were totally loyal to him," the President replied. In his
| version of history, the generals of the Third Reich had been
| completely subservient to Hitler; this was the model he wanted
| for his military. Kelly told Trump that there were no such
| American generals, but the President was determined to test the
| proposition._
|
| Some of the generals mentioned in the New Yorker article have
| signed the statement.
|
| *2* After Trump's attempted insurrection on Jan 6, 2021, many
| people were convinced that Trump would start a nuclear war
| because he was angry and was going to throw a temper-tantrum:
| Congress did not overturn the 2020 election, and no one hanged
| Pence. So some of the generals agreed that if he decided to
| "push the button" then they were not going to process the
| orders [1].
|
| > _In the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol,
| Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley -- then former
| President Donald Trump 's top military adviser -- took
| precautions to limit Trump's ability to launch a military
| strike or deploy nuclear weapons, according to a new book by
| Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of The Washington Post._
|
| > _In "Peril," Woodward and Costa write that Milley was afraid
| Trump had constructed "his own alternate reality about endless
| election conspiracies" and was worried the former president
| could "go rogue," CNN reported._
|
| > _In an rare move, the outlet reported, Milley called a secret
| meeting of senior military officials at the Pentagon on Jan. 8
| to review the process for military action -- including
| launching nuclear weapons. He instructed those in charge of the
| National Military Command Center, the Pentagon 's war room, not
| to take orders from anyone without his involvement._
|
| > _Milley also reassured Chinese Gen. Li Zuocheng of the
| People's Liberation Army that the U.S. had no intention of
| launching a strike against China, according to the paper. It
| was one of two secret phone calls shared with Li on the issue._
|
| Holy cow! Calling his counterpart in China promising not to
| launch nukes if Trump went off the rails? [2]
|
| [0] - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-
| war...
|
| [1] - https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42065714
|
| [2] -
| https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2021/09/14/gen-...
| karaterobot wrote:
| I assume the context of this is the recent discussion around Gen.
| Mark Milley.
|
| https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/08/15/inside-the-war...
|
| This situation was terrifying, in a way that I think the media
| didn't cover well at the time. I'm glad they're starting to,
| because it's terrifying, even existentially so.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Politically, military professionals confront an extremely
| adverse environment characterized by the divisiveness of
| affective polarization that culminated in the first election in
| over a century when the peaceful transfer of political power was
| disrupted and in doubt
|
| This is a lot of words for "Please for god's sake do not put us
| in the position of having to decide which of the two competing
| claimants for President is the legitimate one when one or both is
| ordering us to turn our guns on Americans".
|
| (I remember a Romanian friend of mine explaining the situation
| after the fall of Ceaucescu; because there was no real legitimate
| succession, no democracy, and the leader had just been executed
| by his own security services, there were outbreaks of reports of
| "terrorism" that led to different army units firing on each other
| in the streets. It was an incredibly confused situation.)
| dancemethis wrote:
| The perceived need of a military is the ultimate proof that
| "humanity" is a currently failing experiment.
|
| The only best practice is to let _civils_ do "civilization", and
| _militaries_ deal with their "militias" until they rot.
| ranger207 wrote:
| war is the continuation of politics by other means. until you
| have a way to ensure the political process pleases everyone
| there will be some who disagree, and in some situations will
| even disagree to the point of violence
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| An experiment in civilization that continues to fail is
| preferable to one that successfully ends.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| every mobile animal hunts in some way.. the evolution is FROM
| the hunt TO the civilization.. the "proof" statement is drama,
| not logic here
| hx833001 wrote:
| What makes you think you'd have civilization without a military
| to protect it? Have you ever read a history book?
| tshaddox wrote:
| There are also no civilizations in history that haven't
| struggled with disease outbreaks, yet I'm comfortable
| claiming that a civilization could still thrive if it were
| able to eliminate disease outbreaks.
| hulitu wrote:
| The main job of a military is to loot and plunder other
| countries.
| hypertele-Xii wrote:
| Russian military maybe.
| aa-jv wrote:
| Name an exception to the rule in the modern era. There
| isn't one.
| ben_w wrote:
| A quick search says that's been considered a war crime
| since Nuremberg, so probably most in the modern era are
| exceptions. Not all but most, the test I would apply is:
| do the militaries take accusations of this seriously, or
| flatly deny them?
| jcranmer wrote:
| Do you want me to go alphabetically?
|
| Albania, Andorra, Antigua and Barbuda, Argentina,
| Austria, Bahamas, Barbados, Belgium, Belize, Bhutan.
|
| There's 10 countries, I'm not even out of the B's yet,
| and this is still skipping any country for which I think
| anyone _might_ try to argue for the military 's main
| focus to be to "loot and plunder other countries," not
| whether I agree with that assertion. Hell, I excluded
| armies whose main focus could arguably be to loot and
| plunder _its own country_ rather than other countries
| (hi, Algeria).
|
| And note that there a more countries on my list in this
| alphabet range than not on the list. Truly, there are
| more exceptions than examples to your proposed rule in
| the modern era, a very far cry from "there isn't one"
| indeed.
| clucas wrote:
| To my knowledge, the U.S. military has not been used for
| looting and plundering in the modern era.
|
| If you are going to say "but Iraq 2003!" I would ask you
| to consider the money we spent funding that expedition
| vs. the supposed financial gain. The reasons to invade
| weren't great, but looting and plundering were not among
| them.
| googlryas wrote:
| It's also a shame when I hear smart people say Iraq was
| "about the oil"(a response I'm anticipating for your
| post). If it was about the oil, it doesn't really make
| sense that America "let" Russia, China, and a whole other
| slew of non-US-aligned states get into Iraq to run oil
| operations there. If it were really about the oil,
| wouldn't America have locked down Iraq so only we could
| benefit from it, and not Russia and China?
| hulitu wrote:
| Now the military only paves the road for other companies
| to do the job.
| clucas wrote:
| If you took all the reasons the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003
| and had to assign assign percentages for how much each
| one contributed to the decision to invade, what value
| would you assign to "securing lucrative contracts for
| defense and oil companies"?
| suoduandao2 wrote:
| Well, yes. And the best military is so good at its job that
| it never needs to do it.
|
| I'm sure there's a term for the slight problem that someone
| who's good at a job usually wants to do it - the Praetorian
| Paradox maybe?
| Eddy_Viscosity2 wrote:
| I think the long and full history of people organizing
| themselves to kill and destroy is the point.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-09-08 23:03 UTC)