Salute and Disobey?

Ultimately, there is no such thing as a "proper civil-military balance." What is necessary for effective policy, good decisions, and positive outcomes is a relationship of respect, candor, collaboration, cooperation -- and subordination. Nothing would undermine that relationship more than a resignation by a senior military officer. The role of the military is to advise and then carry out lawful policies and orders, not to make them. To threaten resignation -- taking disagreement public -- directly assaults civilian control of the military. Political and international strategic considerations are the responsibility of civilians, elected and appointed. No military officer, even at the very top, can know all that is involved in the highest levels of decision-making, which is inherently political (in the generic, not partisan, sense). In other walks of life, professionals can resign, but a military leader sworn to defend the country would be abandoning it, along with the people under his or her care or command.

There may be some extraordinary or dire situation in which an officer must for personal reasons ask to be relieved or retired: for example, when people would be slaughtered for no explicable or conceivable reason or the existence of the country jeopardized with no conceivable justification. But one individual's definition of what is moral, ethical, and even professional can differ from someone else's. There is no tradition of military resignation in the United States, no precedent -- and for good reason. Even the hint of resignation would encourage civilians to choose officers more for compliance and loyalty than for competence, experience, intelligence, candor, moral courage, professionalism, integrity, and character.

The fact is that the president and the secretary of defense have the authority and the right to reject or ignore military advice whenever they wish. That is the law, in accordance with the Constitution and consistent with U.S. historical practice. Even if Desch does not understand or accept that, the military does -- and so, too, do the American people.

RICHARD B. MYERS, Colin Powell Chair of Character, Leadership, and Ethics at the National Defense University and Foundation Professor of Military History and Leadership at Kansas State University, was first Vice Chairman and then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 2000 and 2005.

RICHARD H. KOHN is Professor of History and Peace, War, and Defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

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FAILURE'S MANY FATHERS

Mackubin Thomas Owens

Desch is correct to observe that there is a troubling rift between the uniformed U.S. military and civilian leaders (although it is not as great as he suggests). But Desch errs when he blames most of the current problems on the Bush administration in general and on former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in particular. In fact, the uniformed military deserves a significant share of the blame as well.

Desch charges the administration with willfully ignoring military advice, initiating the Iraq war with too small a force, ignoring the need for preparations for postconflict stabilization, failing to foresee the insurgency, and not adapting once things started to go wrong. This criticism is predicated on two questionable assumptions. The first is that soldiers deserve to have a voice in making policy regarding the use of the military -- indeed, that they have the right to insist that their views be adopted. The second is that the judgment of soldiers is inherently superior to that of civilians when it comes to military affairs -- and that in times of war, accordingly, civilians should defer to military expertise.

Both of these assumptions are questionable at best. They are also at odds with the principles and practice of U.S. civil-military relations, which subordinate the uniformed military to civilian authority even in what might seem to be the purely military realm. As Eliot Cohen demonstrates in Supreme Command, a book that Desch cites disapprovingly, successful wartime presidents, such as Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, "interfered" extensively and frequently with military operations.

Desch's first assumption rests on a misreading of McMaster's Dereliction of Duty. Many serving officers believe that Dereliction of Duty concludes that the Joint Chiefs of Staff should have more openly voiced their opposition to the Johnson administration's strategy of gradualism in Vietnam and then resigned rather than carry out the policy. But in fact, this is a serious misinterpretation that has reinforced the increasingly widespread belief that officers should be advocates of particular policies rather than simply serving in their traditional advisory roles.

Desch's second assumption -- that soldiers have better judgment than civilian policymakers on military affairs -- is called into question by a review of the historical record. Lincoln constantly prodded George McClellan to take the offensive in Virginia in 1862, while McClellan constantly whined about insufficient forces. During World War II, there were many differences between Roosevelt and his military advisers. General George Marshall, the greatest soldier-statesman since George Washington, opposed arms shipments to the United Kingdom in 1940 and argued for a cross-channel invasion before the United States was ready. History has vindicated Lincoln and Roosevelt.