Civil-military relations and strategy: Theory and evidence

The cross-disciplinary efforts of civil-military relations have to date shown relatively little empirical evidence on the differences between civilian and military strategy. Yet, a variety of theories of behavior at international and domestic levels rest on assumptions about differences between civilians, the military, and subgroups of each. This research used content analysis to systematically measure and assess differences between specified groups in their communicated strategies, which were gathered from four domains: analysis, organization, operations, and planning of US actors from 1995–2000.; The results are significant for those interested in strategy and civil-military relations. Eight hypotheses about offensiveness, uncertainty outlooks, and use of history were tested. An enduring theoretical notion about civil-military relations is supported by evidence that the military is significantly more offensive than comparable civilians, but the difference was only large in doctrine. Most importantly, offensiveness is critically related to context: “whether-to” deliberations of strategy reveal a more offensive civilian group, while only “how-to” discussions support the “offensive military” paradigm.; Civilians are also greater users of history than the military. The difference was most significant in doctrine and national missile defense, and civilians invoke the current case and most recent war more often than the military-a strong indication that civilians are predisposed towards case-based reasoning. Civilians and military are also assessed as approximately equal in including uncertainty in strategy, but civilians are significantly less uncertain in doctrine, and more uncertain in NMD. An important proposition offered is that groups may include more uncertainty when they feel competence in or responsibility for strategy.; Civil-military scholars are advised in future studies to consider that subgroups may consistently vary in values, beliefs and behavior in their approaches to the formulation of strategy. Among key findings here were the clustering effect of military services into Air Force/Navy and Army/Marine groups, and the intermediary role of defense civilians. Evidence also showed that doctrine is an exemplar of strategy, within which groups clarify their roles and reinforce uniqueness of function. Lastly, compelling explanations are offered for the causal roles of both material resources and social structure in civil-military differences, rather than organizational culture.