Dating back to the writings of Sun Tzu and Carl von Clausewitz, civil-military relations have long been the discourse of nation states.  After nearly 15 years at war, the so called “civil-military divide” has become popularized in regards to our nation’s military, highlighting the less than one percent currently serving in uniform, and the citizenry they serve. Kori Schake and James Mattis’ “Warriors & Citizens – American Views of our Military” take on this quandary through painstaking research and analysis.  Not since the Triangle Institute for Security Studies (TISS) project of 1998 has anyone so thoroughly researched this topic.  Building upon that report, exhaustive surveys, and analysis across the spectrum of leading academics and practitioners, both liberal and conservative, Schake and Mattis draw striking conclusions vital to the future of the American nation state.  RealClearDefense (RCD) interviewed Kori Schake and James Mattis to get their take on this seminal work.

RCD: Warriors and Citizens is a very timely topic, particularly in relation to the upcoming elections, can you explain why you chose this topic in light of the compendium of literature already written?

Kori: So much of the conversation about civil-military issues is people extrapolating from their own personal experiences.

Jim: The plural of anecdote isn’t data.  We wanted a more informed understanding of the differences between the military and civilian society after fifteen years at war.

RCD: Your book is probably the most comprehensive research on this topic since “Soldiers and Civilians - The Civil-Military Gap and American National Security,” which in some ways fell short.  How did this, and other studies influence your research model and your choice of contributors?

Kori: We’re real fans of the of that book, and of Peter Feaver (who has a chapter with Jim Golby and Lindsay Cohn in our book assessing what has changed since).  We realized there hadn’t been a broad, systematic study of public attitudes about civil-military issues since Soldiers and Civilians and there wasn’t time series data on the interesting questions they’d posed.  A big part of what we were doing was trying to build on their effort.

Jim: But the data collection is expensive, especially trying to define elites in a rigorous way. Our objectives for this project were to collect and make freely available data on public attitudes about civil-military issues, and then recruit a team of scholars and policy practitioners to look at the sections of their expertise and reflect on what they saw in the data.  We want to encourage scholarship on the subject, because like the authors of Soldiers and Citizens, we’re worried about too little conversation about civil-military gaps.

RCD: One of your findings, known at the onset, was that the creation of an all-volunteer force was foundational in the civil-military divide, can you elaborate on this and any potential policy recommendations?

Jim: That’s right. There are three factors that affect the distance between our military and civilian society: the transition from conscription to an all-volunteer force now more than 40 years ago, professionalization of military service that sees the Services wanting to keep people in longer because of the complexity of training and operations, and the small size of our military relative to our population.  The American public used to have greater familiarity with military service because many more Americans were directly affected than are now.  To many in the military, we seem to be not a country at war, but a military at war. The all-volunteer force wasn’t designed to fight a fifteen-year war, but it’s come through impressively.

Kori: Most analyses of civil-military issues put responsibility on the military not to become too different from American society.  We think that exonerates civilians from their share of responsibility for ensuring a healthy civil-military relationship.  Our policy recommendations are mostly aimed at helping civilians bridge the gaps of unfamiliarity and help policy makers understand where they are mistakenly treating public attitudes as immutable.

RCD: Founding fathers such as Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and Thomas Jefferson all had fears of a standing army, and the professionalization of the military is often perceived as an extension of those fears. Can you explain what you found in your research regarding the expanse of today’s professionalized military on civil-military relations?

Jim: America’s founding fathers had great concern about military heroes subverting civilian power; yet they accepted that an effective fighting force would require separate rules governing the military’s conduct and order.  They wrote into the Constitution a completely separate military justice system, autonomous from civilian oversight.

Kori: It comes through clearly in the data that public confidence in political leaders has plummeted, while respect for the military has increased.  And that affects the weight the military brings to policy discussions, and civilian concerns about politicized military advice.  The American public is comfortable with our military having much greater influence on policies than our military is itself.  But the only real check on that is the military policing itself, its own professionalism.

Jim: The military and intelligence services are the only parts of the U.S. government able to compete globally.  The training and education we invest in them makes them the only parts of the government that really think strategically, and that can be intimidating for civilians.

RCD: Another main factor in the civil-military divide your research unveiled was the lack of familiarity with the military, largely due to the less than one percent currently serving.  What does this lack of familiarity have upon our military, and the relationship with the nation they serve?

Jim: The question that animates this study is whether a free society can maintain a strong military with quaint or old-fashioned values necessary for defending that free society.  We believe that it can, but only if the broader society understands and accepts why its military is organized differently and rewards behavior at odds with the very society it protects.

RCD: You identify a class of “Elites” that disproportionately contribute to the civil-military divide, and to that end, you offer recommendations to help mend that gap.  Could you explain this “Elite” influence and recommendations that could help bridge the gap?

Kori: Tod Lindberg was the author who identified in the data that the 5% of self-described “very liberal” respondents were activist about changes to social and legal standards in the military that are different than civilian society.  They may be small in number, but they disproportionately shape the broader culture.  There are many ways to bridge that gap; the two we most favor are political leaders and scholars better educating the public about ways and reasons the military remains different from civilian society, and people familiar with the military competing in that broader cultural space.  And I think we see that with movies like American Sniper and the real renaissance we’re seeing now in literature by veterans.

Jim: One of the most heartening things that comes through in the data is how sound the judgment of the American people really is.  There are huge gaps in knowledge, but judgment is different from knowledge, and their judgment is sound. 

RCD: Lastly, what recommendations would you have, based on your research, for the next President of the United States that would build better civil-military relations?

Jim: First, demand unflinching military advice from your military leaders.  Understand you have a responsibility to hear them, but not to take their advice.  Second, model the kind of relationship with the military that’s healthy for our society to have, neither treating them as icons or victims, but as citizens.

Kori: Third, don’t hide behind the military or behind public opposition to policies you believe are important for the nation’s security.  The American public is persuadable when the President expends the political capital to engage them.  Fourth, understand that public support needs to be cultivated and invested in, especially for policies that require sustained effort over long periods of time.

Jim: Fifth, make no changes to military policy unless they increase the battlefield effectiveness of our forces.  We are genuinely concerned at the amount of risk political leaders are incurring in our forces — in many cases for laudable social reasons — because we have lost the perspective of American POWs in Korea or the Bataan Death March.