Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211022738
• Published date: 01 October 2022
• Date: 01 October 2022
• Subject Matter: Articles

https://doi.org/10.1177/0095327X211022738

Armed Forces & Society

2022, Vol. 48(4) 982 –1002

© The Author(s) 2021

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X211022738

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs

Article

Is There a Public–Military

Gap in the United States?

Evaluating Foundational

Foreign Policy Beliefs

Zachary Zwald

1

and Jeffrey D. Berejikian

2



Abstract

The presumed “gap”in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington

(1957) described as “liberal society”and the “conservative military mind”lies at the

core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little

about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’core foreign policy

orientations. This study presents the f‌irst empirically grounded evaluation of the

public–military gap. We deployed a unique survey to directly compare the views of 470

active-duty US military off‌icers against a representative sample of the American public.

Our study included beliefs concerning the appropriate role of military force and of US

engagement in global affairs, the likely direction of US national security in the coming

decade, and the causes and costs of future military conf‌licts. While we conf‌irm aspects

of Huntington’s dichotomy, we also observe critical differences between the two

groups that diverge from the traditional conceptualization of a “civil–military gap.”

Keywords

civil–military relations, defense policy, democracy, international relations, military

culture

1

The University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

2

The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

The authors contributed equally to this project.

Corresponding Author:

Zachary Zwald, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.

Email: zjzwald@uh.edu

Zwald and Berejikian 983

Is There a Public–Military

Gap in the United States?

Evaluating Foundational

Foreign Policy Beliefs

Zachary Zwald

1

and Jeffrey D. Berejikian

2



Abstract

The presumed “gap”in fundamental foreign policy beliefs between what Huntington

(1957) described as “liberal society”and the “conservative military mind”lies at the

core of research on civil–military relations. However, we still know surprisingly little

about the precise nature of differences between the two groups’core foreign policy

orientations. This study presents the f‌irst empirically grounded evaluation of the

public–military gap. We deployed a unique survey to directly compare the views of 470

active-duty US military off‌icers against a representative sample of the American public.

Our study included beliefs concerning the appropriate role of military force and of US

engagement in global affairs, the likely direction of US national security in the coming

decade, and the causes and costs of future military conf‌licts. While we conf‌irm aspects

of Huntington’s dichotomy, we also observe critical differences between the two

groups that diverge from the traditional conceptualization of a “civil–military gap.”

Keywords

civil–military relations, defense policy, democracy, international relations, military

culture

1

The University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA

2

The University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

The authors contributed equally to this project.

Corresponding Author:

Zachary Zwald, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA.

Email: zjzwald@uh.edu

Introduction

This study offers the f‌irst systematic comparison of US military off‌icers and the

American public concerning foundational beliefs about US foreign policy and military

conf‌lict. We investigate the extent to which these two groups exhibit the systematic

differences advanced in Huntington’s (1957) depiction of a “civil–military gap.”In

particular, we assessed each group’s beliefs about the utility of military force, the

appropriate level of US engagement in foreign affairs, and about the cause and

consequences of potential future conf‌licts.

The “gap”between public and military beliefs on these matters lies at the core of

research on civil–military relations. Huntington (1957) based his case for “objective

civilian control”of the military on the argument that the “liberal values”of US society

clash with the military’s“conservative values.”In many ways, Huntington’s analysis

provides the conceptual foundation for subsequent civil–military scholarship (Brooks,

2020). For instance, following the Cold War, Kohn (1994) and Ricks (1997), among

others, focused on the “representative gap”between the public and military institutions.

This research maintained that the US all-volunteer force was disproportionately

drawing personnel from the more conservative segment of society, thus widening the

ideological gap advanced by Huntington and, subsequently, creating tensions in civil–

military relations harmful to US policymaking. Moreover, much contemporary

scholarship on, for example, the degree to which military service affects policy

preferences takes as its premise Huntington’s argument that “signif‌icant civil–military

gaps exist between the attitudes and experiences of the civilian and military spheres of

American society”(Lupton, 2017).

However, we know very little about the differences between the two groups’

substantive views on foreign policy. The assertion of agap in core foreign policy beliefs

tends to rest on scholarship focusing on differences between civilian and military elites,

eschewing the question of how the broader American public may differ from military

off‌icers. For example, assertions of a widening civil–military gap are often anchored to

observations of disagreements between elites during the Cold War and immediate post-

Cold War eras. Two foundational studies on the civil–military divide, Kohn (1994) and

Holsti (1999), focus on accounts of disagreements between General Colin Powell and

civilian elites within the Clinton administration, such as Secretary of State Madeleine

Albright, over when and how to use military force. This focus on elite differences, to be

fair, was a sound empirical strategy to understand foreign policy decision-making

because “civilian and military elites are most likely to be able to inf‌luence foreign

policy”(Feaver & Gelpi, 2005, p. 21).

Yet,our focus here is somewhat different. We are interested in whether current trends

in US public opinion indicate a narrowing of that long-presumed civil–military gap in

core foreign policy beliefs. Recent public opinion data consistently demonstrate that

most Americans now place greater trust in the US military than other political

institutions—for example, Congress and the presidency (Marist Poll, 2018;Pew

Research Center, 2018). As Schake and Mattis (2016, p. 10) note, public support

2Armed Forces & Society 0(0)