By Christopher Bassford

There has been much talk of late about a “crisis in civil-military relations.” That's understandable—relations between America’s highly professional, politically aware military subculture and our militarily illiterate political class (a descriptor equally applicable to both Right and Left) are inevitably tense. But insofar as the talk refers to strained relations between the uniformed military and the Bush administration, well, one is reminded of Mark Twain’s famous comment, “Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated.” It may in fact be mere wishful thinking by the administration’s critics.

Not that there is any shortage of strains, deeply rooted in the ideological character of the Bush administration. Historically, American conservatives have publicly identified with military heroes but—innately suspicious of strong central government and its inherent tendencies toward foolish adventures abroad—they have furiously resisted paying for the forces those heroes command.

Liberals, in contrast, are less likely to get chummy with the generals but far more likely to support a large military. Dogged by their “draft-dodger” image and hobbled by their genuine ignorance on military matters, they fear looking soft on defense. Combined with their natural tendencies to spend money and to see the military as a great laboratory for social experiments, this makes them, in practice, defenders of the military rice-bowl. Also, to be fair, many liberals understand that their internationalist and interventionist inclinations require a big military stick. In Bosnia, for instance, it was liberals who longed to see American tanks shoot their way into certain foreign capitals, while conservatives and many soldiers occupied the Hell-no-I-won't-go zone.

As a result of these disparate factors, the civil-military “crisis” of the 1990s grew out of a sense that the officer corps was becoming too independent and openly partisan. After the Clinton administration’s disastrous failure at opening the Services to Gays, the military was pretty much left to run its own affairs. The defense budget and Cold War-era force structure remained essentially intact despite the outbreak of peace. Reluctant generals were able to use inflated military estimates to stymie Clinton’s interventionism, at least until the resulting national fecklessness over genocide in the Balkans threatened to undermine NATO. In retrospect, it is not clear that this situation was unhealthy: The post-9/11 American campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq—magnificent military operations, whatever their long-term political outcome—were, after all, waged entirely with forces (and allies) nurtured under Clinton.

The rolling “crisis” took on a different character under Clinton’s successor. Shortly after the Bush administration took over, one of our faculty members returned from a visit to the Pentagon, bearing a message for military colleagues who had been fervent Bush supporters during the election campaign. This administration, it appeared, was going to do wonders for civil-military relations in America. That is, intensely partisan conservatives in uniform were about to find out just how tough it could be to have a Republican in the White House.

These comments proved prophetic. True to conservative form, the Bush administration arrived determined to gut the conventional forces, cut military commitments overseas, and rein in an officer corps allegedly too attached to obsolete and expensive forms of warfare and too inclined to interfere in policy. Money flowed away from the field forces towards the chimera of National Missile Defense. Officers who voiced their professional opinions—even on purely technical military issues—were snubbed. The powerful regional military proconsuls known as CINCs were demoted from “Commanders-in-Chief” to a lesser title no one can remember. Terms like "mil-to-mil engagement” with potential allies, “peace operations,” and “nation-building” were proscribed—leaving soldiers scrambling for euphemisms as they continued to train for and execute these inevitable tasks. By September 10th, 2001, the uniformed services were in an uproar over real and imagined insults from the Bush defense team. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld appeared to be on his way out.

The tragic events of September 11th, however, stopped the accelerating slide. Galvanized by the national emergency, its frictions lubricated by a flood of new money, the Pentagon channeled its internal tensions into positive action. Faced with a real-world problem and reliable job security, the Services found it easier to discover actual meaning in Rumsfeld’s previously mystifying buzzword, “Defense Transformation.” It is easier to redirect resources away from “legacy forces” when soldiers can trust that they will now go towards genuine military needs rather than out the window. Barring an unambiguous strategic failure in Iraq, the administration’s combination of conservative rhetoric with liberal funding will continue to resonate with the military subculture.

Nonetheless, the unfortunate experience of the administration’s first year, along with widespread misgivings about its management of the war against Saddam, have led to a more balanced attitude among the officer corps. The most likely flashpoint for an actual rupture lies in the administration’s determination not to expand the active-duty force in response to mushrooming commitments. Many fear that this mismatch threatens to “break the force”—or at least the Reserves and National Guard. This opposition to creating new force structure is based on “hopes” that requirements will drop to a manageable level before any new units can be fielded—about two years by most estimates. I know no military officer who considers such hopes realistic. “Hope,” as the saying goes, “is not a strategy.”

The other day, I chanced to overhear a retired general doing a short rant against “those Goddamned draft-dodgers.” As I passed, I wondered idly why he was still complaining about the Clintonites. Then he listed the draft-dodgers in question—all members of the current regime.

That’s a healthy sign. Maybe having a conservative in the White House is indeed “doing wonders for civil-military relations in America.”

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Historian Christopher Bassford teaches strategic theory and the history of empires at the National War College, in Washington, DC. The opinions expressed here are his own.