Political partisanship and the military ethic in America

Armed Forces and Society

Volumn 27, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 501-523

  Betros, Lance ^a  

^a UNITED STATES MILITARY ACADEMY   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0035645495     PISSN: 0095327X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0095327X0102700401     Document Type: Article

References (66)

1. Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, "Digest of Findings and Studies: Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society," Triangle Institute for Security Studies, 28-29 October 1999, 2.
2. See, for example, Charles Lane, "TRB from Washington: Green Line," The New Republic 221, 20 (15 November 1999): 6.
3. Thomas E. Ricks, "The Widening Gap between the Military and Society," The Atlantic Monthly 281, 7 (July 1997): 66-78, and Ole R. Holsti, "A Widening Gap between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976-1996," International Security 23, 3 (Winter 1998/99): 5-42.
4. Thomas E. Ricks, "The Widening Gap between the Military and Society," The Atlantic Monthly 281, 7 (July 1997): 66-78, and Ole R. Holsti, "A Widening Gap between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976-1996," International Security 23, 3 (Winter 1998/99): 5-42.
5. Ole R. Holsti, "A Widening Gap between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Further Evidence, 1998-1999." Prepared for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies "Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society," Cantigny Estate, Wheaton, Illinois, 27-29 October, 1999, Table 8.
6. Feaver and Kohn, "Digest of Findings," 2.
7. Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1957), 232.
8. Department of Defense Directive 1344.10, "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty," 15 June 1990.
9. A close correlation between voting patterns of the officer corps and enlisted personnel is assumed. The assumption is based on the findings of various surveys and anecdotal evidence showing that the enlisted ranks are just as conservative, if not more so, than the officer corps. Ricks, "The Widening Gap," 66-78.
10. Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act, 42 USC 1973.
11. Federal Voting Assistance Program, http://www.fvap.gov.
12. Barton Gellman, "Pentagon Intensifies Effort to Muster Military Voters," The Washington Post, 17 September 1992.
13. As of this writing, the Federal Voting Assistance Office had not yet compiled the voter-participation rates from the election of 2000.
14. Holsti, "A Widening Gap, 1976-1996," 11.
15. Statistics provided by the Federal Election Commission and the Federal Voting Assistance Program.
16. Gellman, "Pentagon Intensifies Effort."
17. The losers unsuccessfully brought suit to challenge the right of service members to vote in absentia in local elections. Casarez v. Val Verde County, 957 F. Supp. 847 (W.D. Tex. 1997).
18. According to officials at the Federal Voting Assistance Office, a complete accounting of military voting patterns across the nation will not be published until late in 2001.
19. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 2-3.
20. Paul Seabury, "Realism and Idealism," in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, ed. Alexander deConde, Vol. III (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978), 856-66, and Richard N. Haass, "Paradigm Lost," Foreign Affairs 74 (January-February 1995): 43-58.
21. Paul Seabury, "Realism and Idealism," in Encyclopedia of American Foreign Policy, ed. Alexander deConde, Vol. III (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1978), 856-66, and Richard N. Haass, "Paradigm Lost," Foreign Affairs 74 (January-February 1995): 43-58.
22. Feaver and Kohn, "Digest of Findings," 3.
23. Allen J. Matusow, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (New York: Harper and Row, 1984), 313.
24. Cited in Robert A. Divine, T. H. Bren, George Frederickson, and R. Hal Williams, America: Past and Present, 5th ed. (New York: Longman, 1999), 959.
25. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: Dell Publishing Co., 1984), 282-309.
26. Andrew Jackson, "Bank Veto Message," in Great Issues in American History: From the Revolution to the Civil War, 1765-1865, vol. 2, ed. Richard Hofstadter (New York: Vintage Books, 1958), 294.
27. Ronald Radosh, Divided They Fell: The Demise of the Democratic Party, 1964-1996 (New York: The Free Press, 1996), xi.
28. Ibid., 181.
29. William E. Leuchtenburg, A Troubled Feast: American Society Since 1945 (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1983), 275.
30. One could argue that Reagan's support for tax cuts reflected self-centered, not group-centered, values. The purpose of the cuts, however, was to put more money into the hands of families, the most basic social institution and a principal focus of group-centered values.
31. An analysis of the 1994 congressional elections is Philip A. Klinkner, ed., Midterm: The Elections of 1994 in Context (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996).
32. Dan Balz, "Bush Favors Internationalism," The Washington Post, 20 November 1999.
33. Ibid.
34. George W. Bush and Karen Hughes, A Charge to Keep (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1999), 55.
35. Many scholars assert that Powell was the principal author of the restrictive conditions for the use of force. As a result, they often use the term "Powell Doctrine" instead of "Weinberger Doctrine." See, for example, Michael C. Desch, Civilian Control of the Military: The Changing Security Environment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 30.
36. For a discussion of the Weinberger Doctrine as it applied to the crises of the post-Cold War era, see David E. Johnson, Modem U.S. Civil-Military Relations: Wielding the Terrible Swift Sword (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, McNair Paper 57, 1997), 81-94.
37. Michael C. Desch, "Explaining the Gap: Assessing Alternative Theories of the Divergence of Civilian and Military Cultures," September 1999 draft, prepared for the Triangle Institute for Security Studies "Project on the Gap Between the Military and Civilian Society." Used with author's permission.
38. Desch, "Explaining the Gap," 14-27.
39. Holsti, "A Widening Gap, 1998-1999," Table 9.
40. Holsti, "A Widening Gap, 1976-1996," 13.
41. Allan R. Millett, Military Professionalism and Officership in America (Columbus: The Mershon Center of The Ohio State University, 1977), 1-6, and Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 8-10.
42. Allan R. Millett, Military Professionalism and Officership in America (Columbus: The Mershon Center of The Ohio State University, 1977), 1-6, and Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 8-10.
43. Paraphrased from Peter D. Feaver, "The Civil-Military Problematique: Huntington, Janowitz, and the Question of Civilian Control," Armed Forces & Society 23, 2 (Winter 1996): 149.
44. Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 11.
45. Ibid., 71-72.
46. For a survey of recent civil-military controversies, see Andrew J. Bacevich, "Tradition Abandoned: America's Military in a New Era," The National Interest, 48 (Summer 1997): 16-25.
47. Paul Allen Beck, Party Politics in America 8th ed. (New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1996), 12-13.
48. Ibid., 13.
49. Department of Defense Directive 1344.10, "Political Activities by Members of the Armed Forces on Active Duty, 15 June 1990.
50. Understanding his theoretical framework on officer professionalism, Huntington noted, "requires abstraction; and abstraction requires the simplification and ordering of reality. No theory can explain all the facts, and, at times, the reader of this book may feel that its concepts and distinctions are drawn too sharply and precisely and are too far removed from reality." The Soldier and the State," vii.
51. The ideas in this paragraph benefited from the insights of Dr. David Tretler, National War College.
52. Interview with former Secretary of the Army Louis Caldera, 6 April 2000.
53. Triangle Institute survey results show that "elite civilians," both veteran and nonveteran, have generally high regard for the military. Holsti, "A Widening Gap, 1998-1999," Table 24.
54. Interview with Jack Pollard, Democratic staffer, House Armed Services Committee, 29 February 2000.
55. Interview with Scott Stuckey, Republican staffer. Senate Armed Services Committee, 2 March 2000.
56. Interview with Congresswoman Sue Kelly, (Republican, 19th District, New York), 15 March 2000.
57. Interview with former Secretary of the Army Louis E. Caldera, 6 April 2000.
58. Interview with Burt K. Mizusawa, former Republican staffer, Senate Armed Services Committee, 29 March 2000. All of the persons interviewed for this article generally agreed that the level of officer professionalism remains high. The names of persons interviewed, in addition to those listed above, are: Ian Brzezinski, Republican staffer, Foreign Relations Committee, 1 May 2000; Michael McCord, Democratic staffer, Senate Armed Services Committee, 15 March 2000; Dr. Clark Murdock, former Democratic staffer, House Armed Services Committee, 6 March 2000; Dr. Robert Soofer, former staffer for Senator Slade Gorton (R-WA), 13 April 2000; Dr. Ronald Tammen, former Democratic staffer for Senator William Proxmire and former Republican staffer for Senator Mark Hatfield (R-OR), 24 April 2000; Stephen Thompson, former staffer for Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), 12 April 2000; William Patrick Towell, Senior Writer, Congressional Quarterly, 29 November 1999; Lieutenant General Richard Chilcoat, former President, National Defense University, 27 February 2000; and Lieutenant General John M. Pickler, Director of the Army Staff, 15 March 2000.
59. Leslie McAneny, "Military on Top, HMOs Last in Public Confidence Poll" (Princeton, NJ: The Gallup Organization, 14 July 1999), www.gallup.com/poll/releases/ pr990714.asp
60. The Gallup poll statistics correspond with the data in Holsti, "A Widening Gap, 1998-1999," Table 24.
61. An argument for the military to voluntarily refrain from voting is in Andrew J. Bacevich and Richard H. Kohn, "Grand Army of the Republicans: Has the U.S. Military Become a Partisan Force?" The New Republic 217, 23 (8 December, 1997): 22-25.
62. Civilianizing the military ("subjective control") as a measure to manage civil-military relations is discussed in several passages of Huntington's The Soldier and the State; in particular, see pages 80-83.
63. See Huntington, The Soldier and the State, 83-85, for a discussion of "objective control" - i.e., maximizing civilian control by nurturing officer professionalism, thus rendering the military "politically sterile and neutral."
64. For an example of how flouting the professional ethic could cast voting in a partisan light, see Richard Kohn, "General Elections," The Washington Post, 19 September 2000. In his editorial, Kohn excoriated the proposed endorsement of presidential candidate George Bush by 85 retired flag officers. "Like princes of the church," generals and admirals "embody the core culture and collectively represent the military community as authoritatively as the active-duty leadership. The message to serving officers - who, unlike generations past, now vote in overwhelming numbers - is clear: It's okay to think partisan."
65. Richard H. Kohn, "Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations," The National Interest, 35 (Spring 1994) 3-17, and Johnson, Modern U.S. Civil-Military Relations, 104.
66. Richard H. Kohn, "Out of Control: The Crisis in Civil-Military Relations," The National Interest, 35 (Spring 1994) 3-17, and Johnson, Modern U.S. Civil-Military Relations, 104.