![Sample our Politics & International Relations journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5947/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Politics-International-Relations.jpg"})
Abstract
A nation's structure and culture of civil-military relations are important and largely overlooked factors in explaining the performance of armed forces involved in complex expeditionary operations. The US model of ‘Huntingtonian’, divided civil-military structures and poor interagency cooperation, makes the US military less suited for complex expeditionary operations. British civil-military relations involve a Defence Ministry that conscientiously integrates military and civilian personnel, as well as extensive interagency cooperation and coordination. This ‘Janowitzean’, integrated form of civil-military relations makes the British military more likely to provide for the planning and implementation of comprehensive campaigns that employ and coordinate all instruments of power available to the state, as well as troops in the field displaying the flexibility and cultural and political understanding that are necessary in complex expeditionary operations.
Acknowledgement
The author wishes to thank Christopher Dandeker, Anthony Forster, Jan Angstrom, Eitan Shamir, and the participants at the 2005 International Studies Association conference in Honolulu, Hawaii, for helpful comments on earlier drafts. The research is partially funded by the Swedish Armed Forces, but do not necessarily reflect the views of the organization.
Notes
1Included in the concept of Complex Expeditionary Operations are different forms of peace operations, counter-insurgency, small wars, low-intensity conflict, and humanitarian interventions. The complexity aspect of the concept refers to the multitude and diversity of tasks and actors involved in these operations, as well as the limited but far-reaching political aims of democracy, stability and economic development.
2Lawrence Freedman, The Transformation of Strategic Affairs, Adelphi Paper No. 379 (London: Routledge for IISS, March 2006), 7.
3Christopher Dandeker and James Gow, ‘Military Culture and Strategic Peacekeeping’, in Erwin A. Schmidl (ed.), Peace Operations Between War and Peace (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2000), 58.
4Stephen Biddle, Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle (Princeton UP 2004); Gil Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars: State, Society, and the Failures of France in Algeria, Israel in Lebanon, and the United States in Vietnam (New York: Cambridge UP 2003); Ivan Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars: A Theory of Asymmetric Conflict (New York : Cambridge UP 2005); Jan Angstrom and Isabelle Duyvesteyn (eds.), Understanding Victory and Defeat in Contemporary War (London: Routledge 2007).
5For a good summary, see: Rupert Smith, The Utility of Force: The Art of War in the Modern World (London: Penguin Books 2005), 240–3.
6Ibid., 242.
7Risa A. Brooks, ‘Making Military Might: Why Do States Fail and Succeed?’, International Security 28/2 (Fall 2003), 151; Biddle, Military Power.
8Brooks, ‘Making Military Might’, 151.
9Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 15.
10Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars, 8–9.
11See, for example, Andrew J.R. Mack, ‘Why Big Nations Lose Small Wars: The Politics of Asymmetric Conflict’, World Politics 27/2 (1975), 175–200, and Richard Betts, ‘Comments on Mueller’, International Studies Quarterly 24/4 (1980), 520–4.
12Merom, How Democracies Lose Small Wars, 11, 14.
13Arreguin-Toft, How the Weak Win Wars, 18.
14Biddle, Military Power, ix.
15Barry Posen, Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1986).
16Anthony Forster, Armed Forces in Europe (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan 2006), 43.
17Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen and Leadership in Wartime (New York: The Free Press 2002); and Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2003).
18Samuel Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1957), 79.
19Ibid., 56.
20Ibid., 83.
21Rebecca Schiff, ‘Civil-Military Relations Reconsidered: A Theory of Concordance’, Armed Forces & Society 22/1 (Fall 1995), 7.
22Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: The Free Press 1960), 420.
23Ibid.
24Douglas L. Bland, ‘Patterns in Liberal Democratic Civil-Military Relations’, Armed Forces & Society 27/4 (Summer 2001), 535–6.
25Deborah Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change: Lessons from Peripheral Wars (London: Cornell UP 1995), 21.
26Douglas Johnson and Steven Metz, ‘American Civil-Military Relations: New Issues, Enduring Problems’, Strategic Studies Institute Report, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, April 1995, available at <www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/research_pubs/amcivil.pdf>, accessed Feb. 2005, 3.
27Martin J. Gorman and Alexander Krongard, ‘A Goldwater-Nichols Act for the U.S. Government: Institutionalizing the Interagency Process’, Joint Forces Quarterly, Issue 39 (4th Quarter 2005), 52.
28Ibid., 53–4.
29Lewis Libby, ‘American Perspectives on Civil-Military Relations and Democracy’, Heritage Lecture #433, Feb. 1993, available at <www.heritage.org/Research/NationalSecurity/HL433.cfm>, accessed Feb. 2005.
30Johnson and Metz, ‘American Civil-Military Relations’, 18.
31Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change, 134–5.
32Russell F. Weigley, ‘The American Civil-Military Cultural Gap: A Historical Perspective, Colonial Times to the Present’, in Peter D. Feaver and Richard H. Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians: The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 2001), 246.
33Weigley, ‘The American Civil-Military Cultural Gap’, 227.
34On Kosovo, see, Wesley K. Clark, Waging Modern War: Bosnia, Kosovo and the Future of Combat (New York: Public Affairs 2001); During spring 2006 a number of retired, high-level officers criticized Rumsfeld for his micro-management of the campaign in Iraq and partially blamed his involvement in the planning for the dismal results in Iraq. For an example of this discussion see Thomas E. Ricks, ‘Rumsfeld Rebuked by Retired Generals: Ex-Iraq Commander Calls for Resignation’, Washington Post, 13 April 2006. A good description of Secretary Rumsfeld's continuous input into the operational plans of Operation ‘Iraqi Freedom’ is well described in Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon & Schuster 2004).
35For a useful discussion on this matter see, Eliot A. Cohen, ‘Civil-Military Relations: Are U.S. Forces Overstretched?’, Orbis 42/2 (Spring 1997), 177–86.
36William Hopkinson, The Making of British Defence Policy (Norwich, UK: The Stationery Office 2000) 24.
37Peter Feaver has arguably provided the most important recent contribution to the field of civil-military relations in the application of principal agency theory to the field of civil-military relations. His description of civil-military relations as an ongoing game of strategic interaction between civilian leaders and military agents, in which civilians control the military through monitoring and punishment, and in which the military either ‘works or shirks’ based on its expectations of punishment. Civil-military relations are about bargaining, monitoring, and strategic calculations over whether to work or shirk. See Peter D. Feaver, Armed Servants: Agency, Oversight, and Civil-Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP 2003).
38Hopkinson, Making of British Defence Policy, 25.
39Interviews with Brig. Simon Mayall, MoD (Nov. 2004), Lt. Col. Tim Russell and Ben Palmer both MoD (April 2005).
40‘About the MoD’, MoD website, available at <www.mod.uk/aboutus/modorg/index.html> accessed Feb. 2005.
41Hopkinson, Making of British Defence Policy, 34.
42Ibid., 33.
43Interview with Brig. Simon Mayall, MoD (Nov. 2004).
44Hopkinson, Making of British Defence Policy, 37.
45Interview with Brig. Simon Mayall, MoD (Nov. 2004).
46Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change, 13.
47Rod Thornton, ‘A Welcome “Revolution”? The British Army and the Changes of the Strategic Defence Review’, Defence Studies 3/3 (Autumn 2003), 54–5.
48William Hopkinson, ‘The Making of British Defence Policy’, RUSI Journal 145/5 (Oct. 2000), 22.
49The author acknowledges that speaking in terms of ‘the US military’, implies great generalizations. There is a need to continue this research by breaking down the US armed forces into smaller units of observation starting with the five main armed services.
50Bush cited in Douglas Holt, ‘Army institute to be shut down: Critics hit loss of training center for peacekeeping’, Chicago Tribune, 15 April 2003, available at <www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi0304150249apr15,1,533388.story?ctrack=2&cset=true>, accessed Feb. 2005.
51Condoleezza Rice quoted in Michael Hirsh, ‘Our New Civil War: Freeing a nation is one thing; resurrecting it another’, Newsweek, 12 May 2003 edition, available at <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068556/>, accessed Jan. 2005.
52Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power (New York: Basic Books 2002).
53See, for a useful discussion, Benjamin Schreer, ‘Dead Upon Arrival? The Quadrennial Defence Review Report 2006’, RUSI Journal 151/2 (April 2006), 34–7.
54Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (Bloomington, IN: Indiana UP 1973).
55Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘The American Way of War in the Twenty-first Century’, in Efraim Inbar, (ed.), Democracies and Small Wars (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass 2003), 74–5.
56Mahnken, ‘The American Way of War in the Twenty-First Century’, 78–81.
57Max Boot, ‘The New American Way of War’, Foreign Affairs 82/4 (July/Aug. 2003).
58Huntington, Soldier and the State,226–37.
59Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change, 26–7.
60Ibid. 28.
61Cohen, Armed Servants, 45.
62Ole R. Holsti, ‘Of Chasms and Convergences: Attitudes and Beliefs of Civilian and Military Elites at the Start of a New Millennium’, in Feaver and Kohn, Soldiers and Civilians, 46.
63Anthony H. Cordesman, ‘Iraq: Too Uncertain To Call’, Center for Strategic and International Studies paper, Nov. 2003, available at <www.csis.org/features/031114toouncertain.pdf>, accessed Jan. 2005, 12.
64Antulio Echevarria, ‘Towards an American Way of War’, a Strategic Studies Institute Report, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, March 2004, available at <www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm/hurl/PubID=374>, accessed Jan. 2005.
65John Mackinlay, ‘Casualties of the US-UK Military Alliance’, World Today (Dec. 2004).
66John A. Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam: Learning to Eat Soup with a Knife (Westport, CT: Praeger 2002), 205.
67US Army HQ, FMI 3-07.22 Counterinsurgency Operations (2004), 2–14.
68US JCS, JP3.07 Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other Than War (2005), viii.
69Charles C. Krulak, ‘The Strategic Corporal: Leadership in the Three Block War’, Marines Magazine 28/1 (Jan. 1999).
70Thomas R. Mockaitis, ‘Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace Operations: The Case of Kosovo’, a Strategic Studies Institute Report, US Army War College, Carlisle, PA, Oct. 2004, available at <www.carlisle.army.mil/ssi/pubs/display.cfm/hurl/PubID=583>, accessed Jan. 2005, 14.
71Mockaitis, ‘Civil-Military Cooperation in Peace Operations’, 13.
72Nigel Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, Military Review 85/6 (Nov.–Dec. 2005), 14.
73Boot, ‘The New American Way of War’.
74Interview with Lt. Col. Matthew Lowe (May 2004).
75Michael O'Hanlon, ‘Iraq Without a Plan’, Policy Review, No. 128, Dec. 2004, available at <www.policyreview.org/dec04/ohanlon.html>, accessed Jan. 2005.
76O'Hanlon, ‘Iraq Without a Plan’.
77Aylwin-Foster, ‘Changing the Army for Counterinsurgency Operations’, 3.
78Michael Hirsh, ‘Our New Civil War’, Newsweek, 12 May 2003, available at <http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068556/>, accessed April 2005.
79US JCS, JP3.07 Joint Doctrine for Military Operations Other Than War (1995), vii.
80Freedman, ‘The Transformation of Strategic Affairs’, 8.
81Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Gulf Conflict and the British Way in Warfare’, Annual Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives Lecture, Jan. 2003, available at <www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/info/lec93.htm>, accessed Feb. 2005.
82Liddell Hart cited in Freedman, ‘The Gulf Conflict and the British Way in Warfare’.
83Freedman, ‘The Gulf Conflict and the British Way in Warfare’.
84Rod Thornton, ‘Historical Origins of the British Army's Counter-insurgency and Counter-terrorist Techniques’, Geneva Centre for the Democratic Control of the Armed Forces Conference paper, (2004), available at <www.dcaf.ch/news/PfP_7thConf_Bucharest/Baxter.pdf>, accessed Nov. 2004, 1.
85Robert M. Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss: British and American Peacekeeping Doctrine and Practice after the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger 2004), 76.
86Nagl, Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam, 51, 204–5.
87Ibid. 192, 204.
88Rod Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 15/1 (Spring 2004), 86.
89Cited in Thomas R. Mockaitis, British Counterinsurgency, 1919–1960 (New York: St. Martin's Press 1990), 18.
90Thornton, ‘The British Army and the Origins of its Minimum Force Philosophy’, 99.
91Interview with Brig. Simon Mayall (Nov. 2004).
92Charles Guthrie, ‘The New British Way in Warfare’, Annual Liddell Hart Centre for Military archives Lecture, Feb. 2001, available at <www.kcl.ac.uk/lhcma/info/lec01.htm>, accessed Feb. 2005.
93Interview with Brig. Simon Mayall (Nov. 2004).
94Bruce Hoffman, Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq, RAND occasional paper (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2004), available at <www.rand.org/publications/OP/OP127/>, accessed Jan. 2005.
95Hew Strachan, The Politics of the British Army (London: OUP 1997), 171.
96House of Commons Session 1991–92, Third Report, question 1190, 16, quoted in Nagl Counterinsurgency Lessons from Malaya and Vietnam.
97Williamson Murray and Robert H. Scales, The Iraq War: A Military History (London: Belknap Press 2003), 147.
98John Keegan, The Iraq War (London: Hutchinson 2004), 178.
99Murray and Scales, The Iraq War, 149.
100Keegan, The Iraq War, 180–2.
101Murray and Scales, The Iraq War, 152.
102Human Rights Watch, Basra: Crime and Insecurity under British Occupation (2003), available at <www.hrw.org/reports/2003>, accessed April 2006, 8.
103Alice Hills, ‘Basra and the Referent Points of Twofold War’, Small Wars and Insurgencies 14/3 (Autumn 2003), 38–9.
104See ‘Iraq abuse case soldiers jailed’, BBC News, 25 Feb. 2006, available at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4296511.stm>, accessed April 2006.
105Dandeker, Christopher, email correspondence with the author, March 2005.
106The cases of Vietnam and Malaya are well covered by Nagl, Learning to Ear Soup with a Knife, and Avant, Political Institutions and Military Change. Cassidy, Peacekeeping in the Abyss, covers the cases of US operations in Somalia and the British in Bosnia. An example of the rich literature on Northern Ireland is Colin McInnes, Hot War, Cold War: the British Army's Way in Warfare 1945–1995 (Washington DC: Brassey's 1996). A useful study of the British Operation ‘Palliser’ in Sierra Leone (2000) is provided by Gwyn Prins, The Heart of War: On Power, Conflict and Obligation in the 21st Century (London: Routledge 2002).