The G.I. Bill and the veteran gap in CMR studies

A few weeks ago I wrote a post disdainful of a new reality show that I felt was taking advantage of America's current love affair with its veterans. That same week, friend-of-the-blog Andrew Exum wrote his weekly column at World Politics Review on the unhealthy and dysfunctional relationship  between the American people and its military. The crux of the problem, as Exum sees it, is that too many Americans engage in hero-worship with regard to its military instead of dispassionately examining the society's transactional responsibilities to an all-volunteer force. This is an important issue that should be addressed, but I think the answer should be different than the one Exum comes to.

Exum compares the war zone risks and compensation of soldiers to diplomats, aid workers, and civilian contractors (his conclusion is that all of these have the same risks, but the military enjoys much better compensation) before posing the following option on the nature of the military: is it a public service or is it a profession? The former would limit military compensation to that of similar public services such as police officers. The latter would limit compensation to a contractual situation more similar to the private sector, which by my interpretation means that benefits afforded the military but do not have a private sector equivalent are probably in excess of what the contract should entail. Obviously, the U.S. has come to a hybrid solution to this problem since the advent of the all-volunteer force. The question then is how to compensate the military under this solution. This is where I think there are some flaws in Exum's analysis of civil-military relations.

Fundamentally, military service is not like other public services in one significant way. Yes, other forms of public service entail risk to individuals' lives, limbs, and eyesight. However, the functional imperative of military service is to inflict violence upon our enemies and this is unique to the military (the functional utility of the military, i.e., SFA, HA/DR, etc, is not the same as its functional imperative). This is true of military service whether you're a cook or an infantryman - the latter may use force much more often but the cook is trained and expected to at times as well (in other words, I don't buy this load of nonsense on two societies within the military). Police forces may be authorized to use force in the execution of their functional imperative (maintain law and order), but it is not their primary or most desired tool. USAID workers are exposed to the same (or at least similar) risks and traumas as soldiers and Marines in Afghanistan, but society not only does not expect them to inflict risks and traumas upon others, society forbids them from doing so by law.  This is not an insignificant difference in service as anyone who has had his enemy in his weapon's sights can tell you. So how do we compensate for this?

Before we begin to answer that question, we need to examine two more aspects of military service and civil-military relations. The first is the issue of professionalism and the two societies that do indeed bifurcate the military: officers and enlisted. For this, Samuel Huntington, in "The Solider and the State", a work that Exum himself called the canonical text on civil-military relations (and he's right), uses the term "professional" in a sociological sense (not in the "I do this well for a paycheck" sense): a vocation that requires expertise, responsibility, and corporateness. In Huntington's construct officers are professionals and enlisted are not according to the definitions he provides (which are much more involved than standard dictionary definitions - please read this section of the book before berating me for being an officer snob). Enlisted personnel are more like skilled craftsmen. There is a lot of merit to this argument, particularly around UCMJ authorities and the different education systems for officers and NCOs (although NCOs have made a lot ground in the past couple of decades in this regard). This important distinction is manifest in combat duties: officers are responsible for the management of violence and enlisted personnel are responsible for the acts of violence. Of course officers often pull triggers and enlisted NCOs independently manage violence, but these acts are borne of necessity on the battlefield and not their inherent responsibilities within the organization. The point of this discussion is that while military service is different public service because of the responsibility to commit acts of violence, society only expects enlisted personnel to commit those acts of violence. This must be a factor in calculating compensation for this unique public service.

The final issue we need to examine here is civil-military relations as it relates to veterans. Frankly, there is no "The Veteran and the State" (although I'd love to take a stab at it - hint, hint publishers...) to guide how society interacts with its veterans because of their previous military service. "The Solider and the State" deals almost exclusively with the interactions of the civilian government (and in a couple of places civilian society) and the military's officer corps. It was also written before our modern, all-volunteer force. Yet as it remains the capstone doctrine of civil-military relations, Huntington is our only guide.  We must infer civil-veteran relations based on our understanding of the nature of military service and how the military interacts with society. But that extrapolation can be difficult.

We have already established that the functional imperative of military forces is to exact violence on the country's behalf. We have an understanding of how civilian control, military expertise, and transactions between the two parties work in order to optimize military effectiveness for society. But we have no idea who owes what once these skilled craftsmen of violence are no longer in the military. Their very unique individual functional imperative for society no longer exists for them individually and their skills can translate very poorly to civilian society. Should society not be responsible for helping these men and women to essentially reprogram their functional imperative into an function that aids society in new ways? To reintroduce them into society where risks may exist, but the need to commit violent acts is not? Yes, they volunteered for this unique service, but military personnel cannot stay in service indefinitely (up or out!) or even until a natural retirement age in their 60s. Society does owe these men and women something to retrain them to again be useful to society.

The G.I. Bill is the most obvious example of reintroduction benefits for veterans.  Alex Horton of the Department of Veterans affairs wrote an excellent article this week in The Atlantic about the challenges of going to college after being in an Army at war. Horton focuses his article on the differences between war veterans and the "traditional" students who comprise the majority of the university body. But when I read his piece I was struck by how similar these two seemingly disparate groups are. They are starting from different points in life with different challenges, but they are all forging their minds and identities in ways that will define (in part) who they are and what they will do with the rest of their lives. In other words, how they will be useful to society for the remainder of their professional, productive lives. College is a moderately safe environment to acclimate to American society, for both 18 year-old kids and 32 year-old combat veterans. After what we've asked these service men and women to do - to commit acts of violence on our behalf - providing the opportunity to reintegrate into society in this way is a small price to pay to erase their previous utility (which obviously has no place in civilian society - and we should note that erasing utility is not the same as not recognizing their previous service) and create new utility, even if these types of benefits should not be unlimited. I'd rather it happen on the taxpayer's dime in a university setting than on the streets of some city.

And yet the G.I. Bill is a benefit that Exum seems to think should not be given to military veterans because no other public servants have the same benefit. As discussed, different service merits different benefits. Should the G.I. Bill be more limited than it is now? Probably, but not based on whether the veteran is a general's kid or not. Instead it should be freely given to our enlisted veterans - those whose purpose to society was violence - in order to reintegrate them into society. Former officers probably do not need it as their societal function was not committing acts of violence. They also probably do not need the G.I. Bill because they all already have a bachelor's degree, have more tangible civilian skills, and are at a social level that often negates the need for this type of societal reintegration.  The distinction is a bit academic of course, but we have little else from which to base our sense of fairness when determining the terms of compensation transactions.

With looming austerity all military benefits and compensation should be under scrutiny. Some benefits may decrease for future service members and veterans, remembering that our society has a contract with current members and veterans. When the public and our government examine these benefits in this understudied area of civil-military relations, they need to remember that military service is an unique form of public service that has no place in society after soldiers and Marines depart military service. They need to remember that the transactional costs and benefits are not just about fairness to the veteran, but the effects on society as a whole. Alex Horton and those he discusses in his article will most likely benefit personally from a G.I. Bill-funded degree. But society also benefits from paying for that degree because Alex Horton and his cohorts will probably be better integrated into society because of it. This is not about hero worship or praetorian guards. Veterans benefits are about taking care of individuals who fulfill a unique role in society and ensuring that they are able to provide new, useful roles to society.

Ohio and military votes: towards a warrior caste and unbalanced civil-military relations

The Ohio military voting issue that surfaced within the past week has raised some ugly politics and views. While reticent to wade into what is primarily a domestic political concern, this confrontation is pouring light into the dark corners of civil-military relations that we'll discuss shortly. But first a synopsis of the facts as they occurred.

Election Day in Ohio in 2004 was a disaster in that the state was obviously unprepared for the number of voters who came to vote. Some voting lasted until the early hours of the next morning and provisional ballots were improperly used, causing a significant number of them to be discounted. As a response (in part as well as for other reasons it seems), the State of Ohio opened up an early voting period for any voters in the days prior to Election Day in order to ease the burden on the big day and the potential for screw-ups (i.e., discounting valid votes). This option was used extensively since, particularly in the final three days before Election Day. However, this past year the Ohio House of Representatives passed a law that maintained early in-person voting rights in the final 3 days before Election Day only for Ohioans subject to the Uniformed and Overseas Citizens Absentee Voting Act (UOCAVA) - most of whom are military members and their families. This bill removed the right of all other Ohioans to vote early in person in the final 3 days running up to Election Day, cutting their early voting off on the Friday prior. To sum, every Ohioan had been able to vote early in person in the three days before Election Day until this year when the Ohio legislature changed the law so that only  military personnel and their families could do this. The Obama campaign, and others, have sued the State of Ohio to reinstate early in-person voting for all of Ohio, not just those subject to UOCAVA. Please read this, this, and this for more perspective (thanks to Hayes Brown - @HayesBrown - for providing the Slate link to get this started for me).

The response from Mr. Obama's political opponents can be most kindly described as misrepresenting the Obama campaign's lawsuit. The Romney campaign has billed it as an attempt to suppress military votes - suggesting that the lawsuit was attempting to remove military members' ability to vote early instead of reinstating all Ohioans' ability to vote early. The Romney campaign is supported on this position by a number of influential military-affiliated organizations, including the Association of the U.S. Army. Their argument is petty politics and they're using smoke and mirrors to attack the Obama campaign. Fine. There is a lot of political football in this, but that does negate the fact that the Obama campaign is in no way suing to prevent extra time for military personnel from Ohio to vote. It also has absolutely nothing to do with mail-in absentee ballots from overseas. This is the bottom line and these facts are not (should not be, rather) in contention.

At this point you're probably asking yourself why I'm going on about this on a relatively apolitical security blog. If you move beyond the pandering, obfuscation, and outright lying that passes for political discourse, this issue has given the darkest and most extreme voices of CMR a drum to beat upon. Congressman Allen West issued a statement in which he doesn't propagate the Romney campaign lie of disenfranchising military, but instead avers that what the President is trying to do is offensive:

how dare this President compare the service, sacrifice, and commitment of those who Guard our liberties not as special and seek to compare them to everyone else.

Poor use of the English language aside, a sitting member of the U.S. House of Representatives is saying the law in Ohio should stand as it is because those that serve our nation in arms are better than everyone else and should be given an edge. You can't even compare those in uniform to the rest of society. It seems that Mr. West believes service members deserve more rights, more democracy than those who do not serve. Don't think this is a prevalent viewpoint among many Americans, especially those who have or are serving? Right-leaning blog This Ain't Hell covered the Ohio voting issue along the same lines. This poem, ubiquitous among military/veteran Facebook pages and crappy PX art expos, explicitly states how much more important veterans are than other members of society. Or the old quote, too often mis-attributed to George Orwell:

People sleep peacefully in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

Thank God for those rough men or the rest of you weenies would have a rough go of it. All of those policemen, firemen, engineers, architects, sewage maintenance types, water purifiers and others who contribute to our way of life should, in contrast, apparently keep me up all night. Still think I'm reading too much into this? The Stolen Valor Act was an attempt to criminalize a narrow band of lying to prevent people from pretending to be a decorated service member or veteran and that such lies somehow diminish the acts of valor that really occurred. Read commentary on the Supreme Court's decision to overturn the Act and tell me it doesn't reek of men and women offended that others deign to pretend they are in this elite and protected element of society (and then read the comments sections of those and similar posts). I ask: why was lying about having advanced degrees or sleeping with members of the opposite sex or about your personal wealth not also outlawed? The only conclusion I can come up with is that they aren't special like the military and therefore not worthy of special protection.

There are a number of reasons why the public treats current and former military members and family as special, including their very real sacrifices over the past 10 years of war and Vietnam guilt. Some of that is warranted. But this pernicious belief that these self-selecting members of society are better, beyond comparison to rest of the country, and thus deserving of greater helpings of democracy than the rest is anti-democratic and antithetical to any reasonable theories of civil-military relations necessary to keep our society safe. There is a reason they are called service members - their volunteering to serve our society does not grant them more rights and privileges. Some remediation is necessary to repair inequities created by their service (such as veterans' healthcare and jobs programs), but their rights as citizens are not impaired.  Embracing acts that go beyond correcting inequalities and that instead promote the creation of a special caste of citizens with more rights is exactly the kind of attitude that could help foment a warrior caste that would in actuality upend the balance of civil-military relations. Huntington weeps and our country hurts for it.

CMR: balance maintained by the divide

CMR is a multifaceted topic with issues at many levels, the major branches of which regard the military’s relationship with the civil population of the state, the military’s function within the state, and the military’s relationship with the civilian government of the state who in turn strives to manage the first two facets in accordance with the values and needs of the state. Often these facets are conflated in debate which in incorrect. Each has issues and solutions that interrelate in various ways but should be considered in turn. As such, I intend here to take a cursory look at the first – the military’s relationship with the civil population. I think we can generalize the second – that the military’s function is to leverage its capabilities to meet state objectives throughout the world – for our purposes here. This is a topic deserving of more depth later as the U.S. military struggles to find its place in the world for the coming decades. The third I’ll discuss at a later date.

CMR Basics

Huntington describes the CMR as the friction between the military’s function and society’s norms:

The military institutions of any society are shaped by two competing forces: a functional imperative stemming from threats to a state’s security and a societal imperative arising from social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society. Military institutions which reflect only social values may be incapable of performing effectively their military function. On the other hand, it may be impossible to contain within society military institutions shaped purely by functional imperatives. The interaction of these two forces is the nub of the problem of civil-military relations.

He establishes this interaction as the conflict of conservative Military Realism with society’s American Liberalism.  Military Realism encompasses a worldview of “permanence, irrationality, weakness, and evil in human nature” and “stresses the supremacy of society over the individual and the importance of order, hierarchy, and division of function.”  American Liberalism is opposed to this Realism and is defined by five tenets (taken from both Huntington and Michael Desch’s chapter in American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era):

1. indifference to international affairs,
2. application of domestic solutions to international affairs,
3. objectivity in international affairs,
4. ambivalence about war, and
5. distrust of military institutions.

These were not meant to describe the differences between political parties (the only difference between the parties may only apply to the fifth tenet). Liberal versus conservative instead denotes the fundamental differences between the American society as a whole (and the philosophical foundations of the American government) and the institutional worldview of the military mind required to effectively wage wars. This is not unlike other dichotomies proposed by others such as George Lakoff, de Tocqueville, or Herbert Spencer. The “interaction of these two forces” is in reality the clash ideals of individuality and democracy against the ideals regimented and hierarchical life.  Huntington asks the million-dollar question (on page 346 of the Belknap/Harvard edition printed in 2003): “how can a liberal society provide for its military security when this requires the maintenance of professional military forces and institutions fundamentally at odds with liberalism?”

Most of Huntington’s work centers on how the government of the state balances its security with its philosophy. Writing in the mid-1950s, he provides three options to the question above:

1. Cut military forces to the bone, isolating military institutions from society, and reducing military influence to negligible proportions. This maintains the purity of an American Liberal society at the expense of national security.
2. Accept increased military authority and influence but to insist that military leaders abandon their professional outlook and that military institutions be reformed along liberal lines.  This is good for society at the expense of military effectiveness.
3. Society adopted a more sympathetic understanding and appreciation of the military viewpoint and military needs.  This is good for the military but drives society to abandon its liberal heart. 

Interestingly, over 50 years after this was written and following both the transformation to an all-volunteer force and over 10 years of war, America has essentially taken the path of all three options in part. A purely professional force is by nature small. It is a force isolated to garrisons located throughout the country in places where (generally) not a lot of civilians live. Military influence in both political life and international affairs has increased. Society has adopted a more sympathetic appreciation of the military need. And yet military influence has not been reduced to negligible proportions, military institutions and philosophy has not liberalized, and society has not adopted a more sympathetic understanding of the military viewpoint.   

The result of this amalgam solution is a highly professional and effective military that enjoys nearly extensive (if not unlimited) support of that all important element of the Trinity: the people. The military keeps its Realism and society keeps its Liberalism. The political power of military elites is certainly concerning and is no doubt at least partially a result of the support the military enjoys from the population in contraposition to the popularity of civilian government institutions. I think it is important to make the distinction that military elites have not sought out (as a rule) the power and influence they exercise but instead have filled a role they have been asked to fill. (Would retired generals publically support candidates if the political parties did not seek their support for the benefit of the candidate? I do not think so for the most part.) I firmly believe that if military elites are not asked to fill those roles in the future that they will gladly abdicate them to civilians.

What This Means Today

In summation, we are in a situation there is a general balance of the military’s function with society’s norms. In my mind any imbalance is correctable and within an acceptable order of magnitude.  In spite of this and with regard to the people’s relationship with the military, a number of pundits and officials have declared at civil-military challenge or even a crisis, centered upon society’s lack of understanding of the military and their non-participation in military affairs. For example, Admiral Mullen stated in September last year that the “eroding” connection between the military and the people is a “very bad outcome for America […] an outcome that this democracy could not [stand] to have its military essentially detached from its people.”  While not calling for a draft yet, Mullen suggests it may be required in the future to bridge this population-military divide. Similarly, in the past two weeks both Tom Ricks and Stanley McChrystal have made calls for a return to compulsory service and a draft, respectively. Without delving into the particulars and bureaucratic issues of Ricks’ proposal (another topic altogether), both men have argued that compulsory service or a draft would ensure all (or at least more) Americans have “skin in the game” when making decision of war and peace.

However, and it’s a big however, none of these three have explained the consequences of current system to society or the military. What is the effect on society and the military if there is a detachment between the two? What is the result of only having only 1% of the population with “skin in the game”? Most superficially it seems the answer is unfairness.  It is not fair that only a few are waging war for 10 years. It is not fair that, in spite of extensive support, civilians do not understand what the military goes through. But I ask again: what is the consequence of this unfairness?  How does fairness result in a more effective military? How does this perception of fairness interact with American Liberal mores upon which our society is built?

A draft, or compulsory service, may bridge this divide between the military and the people, but that divide may be natural and necessary.  Intermingling these two elements of American society more than they currently do could potentially result in fundamental changes to either element by which they would not benefit. American Liberal philosophy is one of the things that make America great in other endeavors (principally with regard to social and economic constructs). Adding conservative Military Realism has the potential to adversely affect the acceptance of this societal philosophy. A wider-ranging exposure and subsequent understanding of military culture could potentially increase the influence and power of military elites beyond current levels, creating a new (and real) crisis of CMR (See, WWII – which is also an example of the military ceding its influence when it wasn’t need anymore). Conversely, the forced infusion of Liberalism into Military Realism could potentially erode military effectiveness due to the extent that military effectiveness is dependent upon its conservatism (See: draft, Vietnam War).  It is possible that the two conflicting forces could reach equilibrium, but equilibrium in CMR is rarely realized historically and there is no reason to assume that it would in this case, especially considering the potential risks to society and the military.

Leaving aside such issues as what the draftees would do, how their services are paid for, the creating of large bureaucracies to manage the process, a draft or similar course of action threatens civil-military relations more than any existing divides between the people and the military. It would be great if the people understood the military or felt some of the pain the military has felt during the past decade (it would only be fair were it so…). Not only is this understanding or fairness not necessary, it has a greater potential to upend the relative CMR balance we currently enjoy instead of fixing a different “crisis” altogether. The divide that does exist serves a purpose: it maintains the integrity of society and the effectiveness of the military. Simply put, we can have a divide or we can have an imbalance.  I choose a divide because I can get over the “unfairness” of it. Society or the military may take a long time to recover from an imbalance created for ill-advised or unsubstantiated reasons.