Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zoltan Barany is the Frank C. Erwin, Jr., Centennial Professor of Government at the University of Texas and the author of Democratic Breakdown and the Decline of the Russian Military (Princeton).

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"The Soldier and the Changing State is the single most ambitious and complete analysis on civil-military relations in democratizing states. Barany examines a variety of country case studies, ranging from transition experiences after dictatorships and communist regimes to postwar and postcolonial nations. This is an extremely important contribution to the understanding of the relationship between the role of the military and the government in diverse transition situations."--Narcís Serra, chairman of the Institut Barcelona d'Estudis Internacionals and former Spanish Minister of Defense

"We know that the fate of political regimes ultimately rests with people who bear arms. But why would the military be willing to respect civilian rule? Barany shows that removing politics from the military presents a problem different from extracting the military from politics. The analysis is incisive and subtle, attentive to historical details, and the wealth of historical material has no equal. This is a book for which I have been waiting a long time."--Adam Przeworski, New York University

"A remarkable book--theoretically circumspect and empirically ambitious, and a very important contribution to the field. Barany applies insights from existing theory to an exceptionally diverse range of post-World War II cases. This will be the new standard reference for anyone interested in how military institutions can be coaxed to fit under democratic rule."--Peter Feaver, Duke University

"Destined to become the standard book on civil-military relations and a key work in democratization studies, The Soldier and the Changing State shows what makes democracy work. Barany takes a bold stance by saying that without solving the civil-military problem in new democracies, it is virtually impossible to solve any other issues. This is the most important book written on this subject in forty years."--Thomas Nichols, United States Naval War College

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The Soldier and the Changing State

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS

Contents

Acknowledgments......................................................................................ixIntroduction.........................................................................................1Chapter 1 What Does a Democratic Army Look Like?.....................................................14Chapter 2 After World War II: Germany, Japan, and Hungary............................................47Chapter 3 After Civil War: Bosnia and Herzegovina, El Salvador, and Lebanon..........................78Chapter 4 After Military Rule in Europe: Spain, Portugal, and Greece.................................113Chapter 5 After Military Rule in Latin America: Argentina, Chile, and Guatemala......................143Chapter 6 After Military Rule in Asia: South Korea, Thailand, and Indonesia..........................178Chapter 7 After State-Socialism in Europe: Slovenia, Russia, and Romania.............................212Chapter 8 After Colonial Rule in Asia: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh...............................245Chapter 9 After Colonial Rule in Africa: Ghana, Tanzania, and Botswana...............................275Chapter 10 After (Re)Unification and Apartheid: Germany, South Africa, and Yemen.....................303Conclusion...........................................................................................339Notes................................................................................................359Bibliography.........................................................................................409Index................................................................................................443

Chapter One

* * *

The principal foundations on which the power of all governments is based (whether they be new, long-established or mixed) are good laws and good armies. —Machiavelli, The Prince

There is no organization more important for the survival of the state than its armed forces. For millennia, communities have relied on armies for protection, for conquest, and for less obvious functions, such as conveying their strength and commitment to defend and advance their interests. Yet, many people, even those interested in politics and governance, have little understanding of the military as an institution charged with a country's defense. Where does the army fit in the organizational structure of the state? What are politicians' expectations of the armed forces? What are the military's responsibilities to the state and to society? What does a democratic army look like and how can we tell it from a nondemocratic one?

This chapter invites the reader to think seriously about the armed forces as an institution of the modern state, as a part of society, and about the relationships between them. I begin with a brief inquiry into how major thinkers in times past viewed the army and how key elements of military politics have changed through modern history. In the following part I briefly discuss some of the useful theoretical contributions that inform the study of civil-military relations and democratization in different political environments. In the rest of the book I tell the stories of how different countries went about democratizing military politics, so it is going to be helpful to have a gauge against which their records can be measured. To that end, in the third section I outline the indispensable components of democratic military politics in terms of institutional arrangements and relationships, and present the major aspects of the societal side of civil-military relations. In doing so, I explain the functions and obligations of society, the state, and the armed forces.

Armies, States, Societies: Looking Back

What is the fundamental difference that sets apart sovereign states like Brazil from provinces like British Columbia and cities like Bangkok? All three entities feature political systems complete with separate executive, legislative, and judicial branches, they all tax their residents and, in return, provide services for them. What makes them so different is Brazil's right, indeed obligation, to protect its citizens with a military force whose function is to fight foreign enemies. For Max Weber, "the monopoly of the legitimate use of physical force" (Gewaltmonopol des Staates) is part of the very definition of the modern state. I agree with Adam Przeworski who contends that the state actually possesses only the monopoly to license different bureaucracies—the armed forces, various police agencies, intelligence services, border guards, etc.—to bear arms. This is an important distinction because establishing effective civilian control signifies different challenges depending on the armed organization in question. (In this book, however, we are only concerned with the regular military—including its branch services, the army, navy, and the air force.)

In the formative period of ancient Greek and Italian city-states and, much later, in the medieval towns of Italy, the early centralization of state administration and the organization of those economically competent to bear arms, equip, and train themselves allowed those states to rise and prosper. Affluence, in turn, enabled ancient and medieval cities to bolster their military force that could be used to defeat the private armies of wealthy enemies and thereby further increase state power. The state's strength—projected through its military force—then might be put to good use not only as a protective device against external enemies but also to expand its territories and influence. Most of the principal dilemmas of civil-military relations were articulated by philosophers and political thinkers as early as in ancient Greece, because the fundamental problem of military politics is as logical as it is eternal: the state needs the armed forces for its own protection, but the same forces, owing to their monopoly of the tools of large-scale violence, also present a potential threat to the state's very existence.

The question "who will guard the guardians?" (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?) was first posed by the 1st–2nd century AD Roman satirist Juvenal—to show the impossibility of imposing a moral code on women when the enforcers themselves are corruptible—and has been frequently invoked to acknowledge an age-old political dilemma. The crucial challenge for politicians is to ensure the unconditional obedience of the military while at the same time allowing it sufficient autonomy to successfully discharge its functions and execute its missions. The army must be strong enough to prevail in war but conduct its own affairs so as not to destroy the society it is intended to protect. Moreover, the military should use society's resources only to the extent justified by the threat confronting the state and must not extract state assets merely to increase its own strength.

The armed forces may be considered the quintessential Weberian rational organization that is bound by rules that unambiguously lay out standard operating procedures, rewards for compliance, and punishment for disobedience. As Samuel Huntington pointed out, the military as a state institution is shaped by two forces: a functional imperative stemming from the threats to society's security, and a societal imperative arising from the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within society. The army is an inherently political institution: there is no such thing as an apolitical military. The state or, more broadly, the constitutional order of the state, needs the implicit support of the armed forces. This leads us back to my definition of the "democratic army," that is, a force supporting not one political party or another but the principle of democratic governance. Put differently, civil-military relations in mature liberal democracies are based on the submission of officers to civilian authority not because the officers necessarily agree with or respect politicians but because they value, above all else, a democratic order that cannot exist without the civilians' control of the armed forces.

The political role of the military as a controversial issue already surfaced in ancient Greece. Many of the leading political figures in Athens, like Pericles, Nicias, and Alcibiades, were generals whose political power was based both on their leadership of the army and on their ability to persuade the Athenian assembly to support their proposals. An excellent example of this is Thucydides' description of how Pericles, aided by his celebrated oratorical skills, in effect "sold" the Peloponnesian War to the Athenian assembly. Military intervention in politics emerged as an important issue in imperial Rome. Indeed, the terms "praetorianism" and "praetorian rule" originate from the Roman praetorian guards—originally a detachment of bodyguards used by emperors—who began to play an increasingly bloody and ambitious political role in the first century AD. They removed Emperor Gaius (Caligula) in AD 41, were key participants in the Pisonian Conspiracy in AD 65, killed Emperor Galba in AD 69 (within the context of a civil war), and may have been involved in the murder of Emperor Domitian in AD 96. No wonder that Roman politicians occasionally thought it prudent to bribe the army camps around the capitol in order to make sure that the soldiers' attention stayed firmly on professional concerns.

In The Republic, Plato considered the necessary attributes of soldiers toward citizens and enemies. In the well-known "just city" speech the relationship between soldiers ("guardians") and the citizenry is treated extensively as Socrates explains that guardians "must be gentle to their own people, but hard for the enemy to deal with. Else they will not wait for others to destroy the city but will destroy it themselves first." Another important point is the clear recognition that officership and soldiering require sophisticated skills and, therefore, professional education. In order for "matters of war to be well performed," Socrates contended, the guardian "should have the most freedom from all other pursuits, for he requires technical knowledge and the greatest diligence." The need for professionalism was appreciated even earlier in China and is a major theme in the writings of Sun Tzu (6th–5th century BC). Indeed, the very concept of the "General Staff" originated in China's Warring States period (475 BC–221 BC). Early strategic thinkers, like Sun Tzu II, thought soldiers should be "organized by homeland for the sake of the inner cohesion of a unit." As in Athens, fairness, integrity, and benevolence were considered important attributes of fine generals in ancient China.

There are, to be sure, numerous significant differences between ancient and modern democracies. In Athens, as I alluded to above, the most important military decisions were made by a public vote of citizens to whom generals could (and did) speak directly. There and in other Greek city-states the distinction between the army and the rest of the citizenry was blurrier than today because at one point nearly all free citizens had to perform military service. In Republican Rome, too, all citizens were made eligible for entry into the army in 107 BC with the removal of property requirements for military service.

The goodness of government was considered of paramount importance from the perspective of martial determination. In ancient China, for instance, the morality of the imperial government, specifically of the sovereign, was considered so significant that it was believed to be one of the five fundamental factors of war. If "Tao," or moral influence, was the guiding principle of governance, then, Sun Tzu explained, soldiers would accompany their leaders "in life and unto death without mortal peril."

Nearly two thousand years later, the importance of the sovereign's active engagement with his army was clearly understood and emphasized in the writings of that famous Florentine political philosopher, diplomat, poet, and playwright, Niccolò Machiavelli. The point is evident in his repeated warnings in The Prince that "A ruler, then ... should pay attention to nothing aside from war, military institutions, and the trainings of his soldiers"; that "the prime reason for losing power is neglect of military matters"; and that "a ruler must think only of military issues, and in time of peace, he should be even more occupied with them than in war."

Machiavelli also tackled the weighty issue of whether armies should be staffed by citizens or contracted foreigners. Like many other medieval city-states, Florence had traditionally depended on a citizens' army. By the beginning of the fourteenth century, however, the reluctance of ever more prosperous citizens to bear arms had forced city fathers to turn to mercenaries for protection. The condottieri—the word actually means "contractors" in Renaissance Italian—often proved more dangerous to their civic employers than to the enemy because of needlessly prolonging campaigns for larger payoffs, threatening to retire at the hour of crisis, and so on. Not surprisingly, Machiavelli was an early champion of the popular militia. Still, three centuries later he was criticized by the Prussian military thinker, Carl von Clausewitz—who otherwise praised Machiavelli's "very sound judgment in military matters"—and others for denying that war needed to be either civic or moral and, especially, for discounting the significance both of the individual soldier and the need for military professionalism. In Machiavelli's The Art of War, Fabrizio Colonna, the Papal Captain declares that

I should not so much consider the nature of their [military] profession as the moral virtue of the men, and which of them could perform the most services. For this reason, I should prefer to choose husbandmen and men who have been accustomed to work in the fields as men more useful in an army than any other kind of person.

Notwithstanding Machiavelli's uncharacteristic myopia on this point, the notion that officership was a profession has been a perpetual theme of the literature on the military from, as we have seen, Plato onward. Weber maintained, for instance, that the reason that best explained the success of the numerically small French and British troops that colonized India in the late 1700s was not their superior firepower—Indian armies were well equipped with cannons and often with muskets—but their organizational excellence, methods of drill, and rigorous battlefield discipline. The signal weakness of India, on the other hand, was its military tradition that honored the exploits of the individual rather than of the unit.

By this time, the British had also benefited from civil-military relations in which generals considered political intervention anathema to their profession. Civilian rule was last supplanted by military force in Britain during the English Civil War (1642–51) between parliamentarians and royalists. The former, led by Oliver Cromwell, overthrew the monarchy and replaced it with parliamentary authority—first the Commonwealth of England (1649–53) and then the Protectorate (1653–59) under the personal rule of Lord Protector Cromwell and, after his death in 1658, of his son, Richard. Cromwell introduced a new kind of army that in its entire conception and organization constituted a major advance toward modern professional militaries. The personnel of his New Model Army consisted of full-time professionals rather than part-time militiamen; it was intended for service anywhere in the country rather than tied to a garrison or a particular region; levels of discipline were high; promotions were based on merit; and, perhaps most importantly, officers were professional soldiers who did not have seats in either the House of Lords or the House of Commons and, therefore, were not linked to any political or religious faction among the parliamentarians.

The great innovation of the French Revolution was that it introduced masses of ordinary people—rather than mercenaries and individuals selected for their martial skills—as participants of war. Indeed, the modern form of conscription emerged in the French Revolution, when the government utilized its power to press able-bodied men into military service for a limited period of time. As Clausewitz noted, "Instead of governments and armies as heretofore, the full nation was thrown into the balance." Soon many countries adopted this practice to bolster their military power, to reduce the cost of warfare, and to be able to maintain a standing army even in peacetime, and, not incidentally, to create a sense of common identity particularly in ethnically and regionally divided states.

Clausewitz was a student of Gerhard von Scharnhorst's, the first minister of war and chief of the General Staff of Prussia (1808–10) and, no less importantly, the founder of the world's first modern institution of military higher learning, the Preußische Kriegsakademie (1810). Prussia was unique in the first half of the nineteenth century because the authority of the king as Supreme War Lord was not challenged by a parliament and thus he could continue to isolate the military from constitutional politics. While Cromwell's army was strongly influenced by profound ideological and religious undercurrents, in Prussia a more uncontaminated professionalism became institutionalized. Increasingly, career advancement in the Prussian army was based on merit instead of family background, and as Huntington pointed out, the by-product of the rise of nationalism was the concept of "a nation in arms" and its corollary of a national army in which, according to an 1814 law, all male citizens were obligated to serve for five years (three on active duty, two in the reserves). In other words, about two centuries ago the armies led by aristocrats and staffed by mercenaries began to give way to armies led by professional officers commanding conscripted men.

In his posthumously published On War (Vom Kriege), a monumental work on the nature, theory, and strategy of war, Clausewitz also laid down some of the essential principles of modern civil-military relations. Military officers must always be subordinate to civil authority and ought not participate in politics. Political activism, Clausewitz claimed, would undermine their professionalism, would create unnecessary cleavages within the officer corps, and would distract them from their responsibilities. Rather, he contended, officers should be politically neutral and guided by statesmen whose job it was to know the "big picture" and to provide the armed forces with clear directives and policy objectives. A successful minister of war does not have to be intimately familiar with military affairs but he must be aware of the capabilities and limitations of his forces and must be willing to listen to and carefully consider the opinion of expert military professionals. As Huntington summed up, for Clausewitz

the military profession exists to serve the state. To render the highest possible service the entire profession and the military force which it leads must be constituted as an effective instrument of state policy.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Soldier and the Changing Stateby ZOLTAN BARANY Copyright © 2012 by Princeton University Press. Excerpted by permission of PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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