M00264-21-R-0002 Attachment S-4 LCSC Paper for Review.docx

Woven through the fabric of American ideology looms the explicit protections afforded by the United States Constitution. Conversely, the pursuit of refining and protecting those moralities often leads to conflict and disagreement between senior members of the military and their civilian administrators. Time and again, military officers experience a strain to communicate when their best military advice becomes confined amid military-strategic options and the most advantageous political position. Still, politics aside, the officer holds the incontestable responsibility to ensure that the civilian official possesses the relevant information to make an informed decision. In fact, situations occur where civilian officials disagree with the officer’s sound advice. At this moment, the officer must evaluate if this is the time to satisfy the order or to offer an alternative course of action, reexamining the ends, ways, and means.

While military officers hold a professional obligation to follow orders, their oath, sworn to support and defend the constitution, empowers the officer to disagree. This pledge to “carefully and diligently discharge the duties” of their office, supports the officer not only to contravene unlawful orders but obligates the officer to do so.[footnoteRef:1] In contrast, when given a lawful directive, military officers must execute. Neither a personal difference of opinion to strategy, a contradiction of individual religious beliefs, nor disagreement with philosophy provide a reprieve to disobedience. Amid the strategic objectives of the military commander, which at times contradicts the political agenda, a military officer must confront the question, “Do you face insubordination to your boss or the constitution?” [1: “The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription,” National Archives and Records Administration (National Archives and Records Administration), accessed September 17, 2020, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript.]

Military officers hold the responsibility to disagree with a directive that is immoral, dangerous or in conflict with the constitution. According to their oath, “to support and defend the constitution,” officers possess the obligation to operate exclusively within the constitution’s legal structure.[footnoteRef:2] When civilian officials give contrary directives, military officers must employ tact, courage, and, most importantly, trust. From the collection of these virtues, trust is unto its own. Trust undergirds the civilian-military relationship, and without trust, the possibility of the military officer persuading the conversation becomes nonexistent. The formulation of trust is not microwavable. Trust requires time, empathy, and deliberate action between the military officer and the civilian official. Mutual respect, consistent behavior, and the military officers meeting the expectations of their civilian supervisor are deliberate actions that cultivate a professional relationship between the two parties. For their efforts, the military officers earn the trust and confidence of the civilian official, and the opportunity to mitigate an otherwise unconstitutional position. Further, the civilian official yields the consistent and wise counsel of the military officer. [2: Mackubin Owens, “What Military Officers Need To Know About Civil-Military Relations,” United States Naval War College Review, 2012, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1001901.pdf.]

Insubordination refers to the intentional refusal of a lawful order when the accused knew the order was lawful and, irrespective of the reason, failed to obey. Article 90: “Willful Disobedience of a Superior Commissioned Officer” and Article 92: Disobeying a direct order,” under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, both criminalize disobeying lawful orders.[footnoteRef:3] These articles illuminate that the disobedience of an order is only accepted if the order is illicit or would violate statute. Further, Article 92 implies that the adherence to an illicit directive does not constitute protection for obedience’s sake. However, consider the contrast, a willful disobedience or insubordination of a military officer to a superior official, on the grounds of disagreeing with ideology. Envision if in late 1863, during the late stages of the Civil War, Union officers who vehemently agreed with the foundation of slavery, refused to adhere to orders; solely on the grounds of disagreeing with the emancipation proclamation. The disobedience of these orders constitute insubordination, as they were a lawful and constitutional application of Lincoln’s authority. The ramifications of military officers deciding to oppose orders are great as they degrade the principals that govern the officers’ responsibility to the constitution. [3: “10 U.S.C. 892 - Art. 92. Failure to Obey Order or Regulation,” U.S.C. Title 10 - ARMED FORCES, 1950, https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/html/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partII-chap47-subchapX-sec892.htm; “10 U.S. Code § 890 - Art. 90. Willfully Disobeying Superior Commissioned Officer.” Legal Information Institute. Legal Information Institute, 1950. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/890.]

Insubordination degrades the respect and trust of civilian officials for military officers. Left unchecked, insubordination will dismember the principals of any organization and sow dissent. Insubordination requires swift and proportionate adjudication. When insubordination occurs, the collective organization, either military or civilian structured, observes the leader as ineffective. The outcome presents itself as a dysfunctional civil-military relationship, with weakened communication between the military officer and the civilian official. This subduing of communication manifest itself in two ways: the reliance of operational competence and pursuit of military advice from the military officer to the civilian official[footnoteRef:4]. Without the trust of the military, the civilian official feels empowered to make strategic decision without consulting their subject matter expert. The possible implications of uninformed decisions are profound. [4: Foster, G. “Failed expectations: The crisis of civil-military relations in American.” (1997).]

In conclusion, questioning the efficacy of civilian management of the Armed Forces is vital to improving the quality of the relationship but is narrow-minded.[footnoteRef:5] The more functional inquiry revolves around the strategic involvement of civilian officials in military operations and the occurrences of unlawful directives. In these cases, military officers face the dilemma of objecting to inappropriate instructions or appearing insubordinate. [5: Sager, J. “A weak link in the chain: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Truman-MacArthur controversy during the Korean War.” (2008).]

The dynamic relationship between a military officer and a civilian official can often be riffed with dysfunction due to a lapse in communication. Correspondingly, to mitigate the instances where the military officer suspects they are underutilized and civilian officials give unsound guidance, the establishment of trust must permeate the relationship. Trust affords both parties the understanding that actions by the other are acts of commission to achieve common objectives. Moreover, trust safeguards the free flow of communication when military officer’s questions orders perceived to be wrong, dangerous, or unconstitutional.[footnoteRef:6] Without communication-a residual of trust, the military officer feels disposed to their “nuclear professional option;” actions to resign and walk away from a policy or operation. As well, without trust, the civilian official may align the questioning of a directive as an act of noncompliance. [6: Campbell, C. and Auerswald, D. “Congress and Civil-Military Relations.” Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015.]

Civil-military affairs are supported by communication, constructive debate, and subsequent compromise that affords expert knowledge from the military officer to their civilian superior. Inherent to this relationship and ingrained in the constitutional structure of government is the tension between the military officer’s pursuit of military strategy and their superior pursuit of fiscal responsibility and legislative oversight[footnoteRef:7]. To this end, often, these goals convolute communication and tempers the civil-military relationship to the point of being adversarial. Though the execution of grand strategic goals remain diverse, in dialogue, each proponent must actively understand their roles. The officer must retain a voice in the arrangement of strategy, and understand that the civilian official ultimately owns the responsibility of the final judgment and may disagree. [7: Allen, C. “Civil-Military relations in transition: Behavior of senior military officers.” Joint Force Quarterly 83 (4th Quarter, 2016). https://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-83/Article/1219683/civil-military-relations-in-transitions-behavior-of-senior-military-officers/]

References “10 U.S. Code § 890 - Art. 90. Willfully Disobeying Superior Commissioned Officer.” Legal Information Institute. Legal Information Institute, 1950. https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/10/890.

“10 U.S.C. 892 - Art. 92. Failure to Obey Order or Regulation.” U.S.C. Title 10 - ARMED FORCES, 1950. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCODE-2011-title10/html/USCODE-2011-title10-subtitleA-partII-chap47-subchapX-sec892.htm.

Allen, C. “Civil-Military relations in transition: Behavior of senior military officers.” Joint Force Quarterly 83 (4th Quarter, 2016). https://ndupress.ndu.edu/JFQ/Joint-Force-Quarterly-83/Article/1219683/civil-military-relations-in-transitions-behavior-of-senior-military-officers/ Campbell, Colton C. and David P. Auerswald. “Congress and Civil-Military Relations.” Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015.

Foster, Gregory. “Failed expectations: The crisis of civil-military relations in American.” Brookings Institute, 1997. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/failed-expectations-the-crisis-of-civil-military-relations-in-america/ Sager, John. “A Weak Link in the Chain: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Truman-MacArthur Controversy during the Korean War.” ProQuest Dissertations Publishing, 2008.

Sir John Winthrop Hackett, The Profession of Arms (New York: Macmillan, 1983), 202.

Owens, Mackubin. “What Military Officers Need To Know About Civil-Military Relations.” United States Naval War College Review, 2012. https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1001901.pdf.

“The Constitution of the United States: A Transcription.” National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration. Accessed September 17, 2020. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution-transcript.

Grading Criteria:

1) Feedback that focuses on clarity and higher order concerns (thesis, organization, structure) first 2)Feedback that prompts the writer to make choices 3)Feedback that teaches writers to fix patterns of error