2024 Annual Estimate of the Strategic Security Environment

• Front Matter
  Foreword Introduction
• Regional Challenges and Opportunities
  Asia Europe The Middle East and Central Asia North America Central and South America and the Caribbean Africa
• Domestic Challenges
  Civil-Military Relations Strengthening the US Defense-Industrial Ecosystem
• Institutional Challenges
  The Profession The Force The Strategy
• Challenges to the US Strategic Advantage
  The Polar Regions The Space Domain Emerging Technology Nuclear Deterrence

Civil-Military Relations

Today’s civil-military environment is one of the most challenging the military has seen since the advent of the all-volunteer force in 1973. Public confidence in the military has been steadily declining, the US Army is facing a yearslong recruiting crisis, and the trust between senior military and political leaders has been eroding for over a decade.¹⁴ In particular, three apparent contemporary trends threaten to damage the military’s relationship with both American society and its political leaders further: the emergence and widening of the civil-military gap, the increasing politicization of the military, and the blending of civilian and military infrastructure as a consequence of modern war. Contemporary trends and the concerns they raise offer fruitful paths for research that might refine our understanding of the trends and help us understand appropriate responses.

The Civil-Military Gap

The first important trend impacting civil-military relations today is the emergence of a civil-military gap. When the United States established the all-volunteer force in 1973, more than 20 percent of American adults had previously served in the military. With the decrease in the size of the force after the end of the Cold War, the increase in the US population, and the establishment of the all-volunteer force, only 6 percent of people today call themselves veterans, and only 15–20 percent of Americans report knowing someone who has served in the military.¹⁵ Declining civilian connections to the military may jeopardize civilian control in the United States and damage the legitimacy of the military more broadly. Today, more than 80 percent of recruits have a close family member who has served, concentrating military service within families and risking the emergence of a warrior caste.¹⁶ Evidence shows some veterans and servicemembers see themselves as having superior values to the rest of American society and see themselves as superior in love of country and honor. If such servicemembers do not respect the values or beliefs of the people they are supposed to put their lives on the line to defend, the democratic ethos is in jeopardy. Second, the emergence of a civil-military gap can undermine the legitimacy of the force, particularly as the officer corps continues to diverge from the American public along demographic and ideological lines.¹⁷ In an era in which identity and demographic characteristics increasingly drive political preferences and behavior, a military that becomes too homogenous could make for an especially attractive target for politicization. Should that happen, delegitimization could then have tangible effects on the force as recruiting skews and eventually drops, and the American people no longer trust the military to serve the state rather than be loyal to a single political party or agenda.

The Honorable Christine Wormuth, the US Secretary of the Army, joins Lieutenant General Scott A. Spellman, US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) commanding general and chief of engineers, and Colonel Estee S. Pinchasin, USACE Baltimore District commander, and representatives from Unified Command for a site visit of the Francis Scott Key Bridge response effort on board the USACE survey vessel HR SPIES (Key Bridge Response 2024 Unified Command photo by USACE Public Affairs Specialist Dylan Burnell).

Politicization of the Military

The second trend in American society today that threatens the principles of civil-military relations is the ongoing and escalating politicization of the military.¹⁸ Military politicization is the tendency of political elites either to use the prestige of the military to try and win political power, or to discredit military leaders as partisan and ideological actors when military leaders’ advice conflicts with the preferences of a political group. Efforts to politicize the military could effectively turn the military into a partisan political player, unable to give advice or implement policies without being accused of supporting or rejecting a political party. In the process, politicization could severely damage the military’s legitimacy and ability to operate as a profession. Indeed, the politicization of the military has, according to some surveys, led to sharp declines in public trust, and appears to be having at least some effect on populations traditionally considered easier to recruit.¹⁹ Political elites must also be able to trust military advice is free from partisan political bias, which is key to the profession’s effectiveness in its role. Opposition to participating in partisan politics continues to deteriorate among the retired general officer corps, casting a shadow of doubt on military leaders currently serving.²⁰ Civilian leaders questioning the professionalism of military leaders because of the politicized actions of military leaders’ retired counterparts jeopardizes the entire profession.

Blending Civilian and Military Infrastructure and Assets

The final trend that challenges civil-military relations today is the increasing blending of civilian and military infrastructure, assets, and effects—both in operations below the level of armed conflict and in kinetic action. Modern war will increasingly demand the integration of civilian and military capabilities—from artificial intelligence (AI) to cyber operations to space to a reinvigoration of the defense industrial base.²¹ Moreover, the rise of AI has challenged conventional notions of ethics, professional judgment, and the role humans must play in waging war. The profession of arms faces two primary challenges: its ability to function as an expert body of knowledge imbued by professional ethics and its ability to design and wage war sustainably and thus offer effective and actionable military advice to civilian principles. Today, senior military leaders struggle to articulate the ways in which the military can integrate AI, machine learning techniques, and other algorithms into war waging. As a result, senior military leaders depend upon actors in private industry to develop both strategies and solutions—yet private-industry actors are not steeped in professional ethics and norms as military officers are over the course of their careers. Increased blending of civilian and military infrastructure and assets might also jeopardize the military’s ability to offer sustainable professional military advice over the course of operations. Whereas traditionally, we think about war as a primarily military phenomenon, novel technologies, domains, and threats now involve commercial and private interests as well. All novel threats require military leaders to understand and account for the possibility—indeed, the likelihood—adversaries will use civil-military integration to undermine Americans’ commitment to any war effort. Military leaders must offer military advice that corresponds with the political realities of the current era.

Conclusion

As the Army heads into the third straight year of not meeting its end-strength numbers, the US presidential election of 2024 approaches (and with it, opportunities aplenty to politicize the military), and dependence on new technologies and domains to fight modern war deepens, civil-military relations will play an important role in defining the strategic environment well into 2025 and beyond.

Endnotes

14. Mohamed Younis, “Confidence in U.S. Military Lowest in over Two Decades,” Gallup News, July 31, 2023, https://news.gallup.com/poll/509189/confidence-military-lowest-two-decades.aspx. Return to text.
15. Katherine Schaeffer, “The Changing Face of America’s Veteran Population,” Pew Research Center (website), November 8, 2023, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/11/08/the-changing-face-of-americas-veteran-population/. Return to text.
16. Dave Philipps and Tim Arango, “Who Signs Up to Fight? Makeup of U.S. Recruits Shows Glaring Disparity,” New York Times (website), last updated January 14, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/10/us/military-enlistment.html. Return to text.
17. Jason K. Dempsey, Our Army: Soldiers, Politics, and American Civil-Military Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010). Return to text.
18. Risa Brooks, “The Creeping Politicization of the U.S. Military: How Republicans’ Loyalty Tests Erode National Security,” Foreign Affairs (website), March 20, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/creeping-politicization-us-military. Return to text.
19. Chris Anderson et al., executive memorandum, “Results from the 2023 Annual Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute National Defense Survey,” November 20, 2023, Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and Institute, https://www.reaganfoundation.org /media/361751/rndf-2023-executive-memo.pdf. Return to text.
20. Risa A. Brooks, Michael A. Robinson, and Heidi Urben, “Speaking Out: Why Retired Flag Officers Participate in Political Discourse,” Texas National Security Review 7, no. 1 (Winter 2023/2024): 49–72, https://tnsr.org/2023/11/speaking-out-why-retired-flag-officers-participate-in-political-discourse/. Return to text.
21. Carrie Lee and Max Margulies, “Rethinking Civil-Military Relations for Modern Strategy,” Modern War Institute at West Point (website), August 14, 2023, https://mwi.westpoint.edu/rethinking-civil-military-relations-for-modern-strategy/. Return to text.

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