Is There a Public–Military Gap in the United States? Evaluating Foundational Foreign Policy Beliefs
Author | Zachary Zwald,Jeffrey D. Berejikian |
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
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DOI: 10.1177/0095327X211022738
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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
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