The changing norms of civil and military and civil-military relations theory

Abstract

The dichotomy between civil and military is well-established in international political practice. International law, international order, and war are but some of the institutions that rely upon making a distinction between civil and military. The distinction, arguably, is also central for analyses of conflicts worldwide. Almost daily, we are fed stories of atrocities against civilians in conflict-ridden parts of the world. In academic discourse, similarly, several fields of study including most of the debate centering on interpreting modern war relies upon a distinction between civil and military. Both research and practice, however, tend to treat these categories as fixed and global. In this article, I argue – to the contrary – that what constitutes civil and military are malleable norms. This forms a particular challenge to analyses of civil–military relations and it calls for a different categorization of civil–military relations in Weberian ideal types.

Keywords:

• Afghanistan
• civil–military relations
• civilian domain
• Giap
• ideal-type categorization
• Iraq
• Mazar-e-Sharif
• Vietnam War

Notes

 1. Roberts, ‘The Civilian in Modern War’, 358–361.

 2. Egnell ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, 231–257.

 3. Singer, Corporate Warriors; Avant, The Market for Force; Carafano, Private Sector, Public Wars.

 4. Hildebrandt, Krigare, 337–338.

 5. See e.g. Barany, The Soldier and the Changing State.

 6. See e.g. Huntington, The Soldier and the State; Janowitz, The Professional Soldier; Nielsen and Snider, American Civil-Military Relations; Bebler, Civil-Military Relations in Post-Communist States; Kümmel ‘The Winds of Change’; Strachan, ‘The Civil-Military Gap in Britain’; Vennesson, ‘Civil-Military Relations in France’.

 7. Feaver, Armed Servants.

 8. See e.g. Kaldor, New and Old Wars; Valentino, Final Solutions; Kalyvas, Logic of Violence in Civil Wars; Eck and Hultman, ‘One-Sided Violence against Civilians’; Downes, Targeting Civilians in War; Slim, Killing Civilians; Melander et al., ‘Are “New Wars” More Atrocious?’

 9. See e.g. Egnell, Complex Peace Operations; Stone, Military Strategy; Betts, American Force.

10. See e.g. Born, ‘Democratic Control of Armed Forces’, 151–165; Burk, ‘Theories of Democratic Civil-Military Relations’.

11. Van de Goor et al., ‘Introduction’, 1–6.

12. Katzenstein, ‘Introduction’, 5.

13. Van Creveld, The Culture of War, 158.

14. Lutterbeck, ‘Between Police and Military’; Weiss, ‘The Blurring Border’.

15. Roberts, ‘The Civilian in Modern War’, 358.

16. Larsdotter, ‘New Wars, Old Warfare?’, 139.

17. This is documented in a host of books by embedded journalists. See e.g. Steele, Ghosts of Afghanistan; Junger, War.

18. Roberts ‘The Civilian in Modern War’, 358.

19. Brand, Roman Military Law.

20. Lebow, Tragic Vision of Politics.

21. See e.g. Johnston ‘Does Decapitation Work?’; Price ‘Targeting Top Terrorists’.

22. Smith, The Utility of Force; Angström and Duyesteyn, Modern War.

23. Biddle et al., ‘Testing the Surge’.

24. Roberts, ‘The Civilian in Modern War’.

25. Egnell, ‘Between Reluctance and Necessity’, 231–257; cf. Spear and Williams, Security and Development.

26. Huntington, The Soldier and the State.

27. Cohen, Supreme Command.

28. Margolis, War at the Top of the World, 12.