Know Yourself Before the Enemy: Military Professionalism's Civil Foundation

摘要

General Richard Myers, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and principal military advisor to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, received a collection of articles on civil-military relations from a long-time friend and professor to help him prepare for the job. In the 20 years between attending the Army War College and becoming Chairman, he had received no formal education to prepare for managing the civil-military relationship, neither at the CAPSTONE course for general officers nor at the Harvard Kennedy School program for senior executives. General Myers shared this anecdote at a January conference on military professionalism organized by the Institute for National Security Ethics and Leadership at the National Defense University, held at the request of Admiral Mike Mullen, the current Chairman. That conference focused on the profession's connections with civil society. With grave international and budgetary challenges facing our military, however, some officers might not agree that the profession should focus now on civil-military relations. Yet civil-military relations, starting with its constitutional underpinnings, is at once the most fundamental component of American military professionalism and the one most overlooked. And it is the arena in which our military leaders seem to fail most often, or at least most spectacularly. This is not a topic just for generals. Officers of every rank routinely make decisions that affect the military's complex relationship with society. Moreover, an officer is far behind if he only begins developing civil-military sensibilities after donning a star. Military leaders need to earn trust and respect while gaining influence with civilian policy elites -- politicians, political appointees, lawyers, bureaucrats, and the like -- who have been immersed in the domestic political milieu throughout their careers.