The civil-military circles
Venn diagrams to describe the model.
Tim Hsea, on the civil-military relations, in the At War blog:
At West Point one of the most spirited debates I witnessed as a cadet revolved around a discussion concerning civil-military relations. The class was divided into three camps, one group which argued that the military was a microcosm of American society, a small circle within a larger circle. Another group claimed that the military shared some beliefs with society, but also had values which were incompatible, and hence the relationship was better represented by two circles which overlapped in some areas. A third group of cadets disputed both groups, and contended that the American military and society were really two distinct circles sharing only one point in common, a commitment to the Constitution.[At War]
Which model describes the current state of civil-military relations in India: concentric circles, partially overlapping circles, or two distinct circles?
” commitment to the Constitution.”
[1] Committed to the US of A constitution:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Calley
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/an-apology-for-my-lai-four-decades-later/?hp
( better SSB pl ?)
[2] The constituents of the Wehrmacht similarly devoted to the C_V Venn.
Peace in our time please.
“sic vis pacem, parabellum” — if you want peace, be prepared for war.
“Peace in our time” can only follow “consensus/agreement in our time”. There is no indication of agreement between the powers that be on important things like the definition of terrorism and who constitutes a terrorist, so any yearning for peace in our time is a fantasy. Power politics still rules.
The question of overlap of civilian-military rule sounds like a judgement call on the nature of how a state asserts its power outside its borders via its military.
The constitution only deals with the treatment of citizens of the state within the boundaries of the state, whereas the rules that army folks abide by when at war are rules of engagement with people outside the state. As such, constitutions today are silent on the treatment of non-citizens who reside outside the countries borders, which can only mean that the two circles do not overlap, seeing as their rules of engagement with the rest of society is under completely different contexts. The army’s operations outside a country’s borders are neither legal nor illegal as far as the constitution is concerned. Just a ramble.
Here too. delete conflict of interest.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/financetopics/recession/6092941/Have-you-heard-about-the-company-that-runs-Britain.html
I would go for two separate circles, the commitment to the constitution – on part of both the circles – I am not too sure of. I sincerely hope there is commitment.
I do not see this as a question of who is more committed to the constitution, the militiary or the civilian — clearly both parties need to follow the constitution when it comes to their interation with the state and its citizens. A military man/woman has to follow the same rules as a civilian when he/she is not officially on duty, and while on duty is bound by the military code, which demands much higher standards of behaviour from its soldiers than the civilian code does to the average citizen. (This is probably because military people have access to deadly weapons and need to have sounder judgement than the average citizen). But the military does not owe any explanations (well, they do, but in theory they don’t) for its actions on non citizens outside the country’s territory.
The armed forces draw their manpower from society, so at first glance they might be assumed to be a subset of society itself.
Once inside, however, the raw manpower is trained and moulded into something that civvy-street would not be able to easily identify with. The qualities hammered into recruits are alien to society. So once inside the armed forces, recruits move away from their roots in society in terms of their value system.
And yet the armed forces do share some fundamental beliefs with society, or the relationship between the two would be purely financial, akin to that between the ancient Persians and their Greek mercenaries. Since that is not observed, at least in our country, I would hazard a guess that the relationship, in our case, can be described as two circles that overlap in some areas but have substantial uncommon portions.
Of course, a more fundamental question is whether civil-military relations should be modeled in terms of a Venn Diagram in the first place, which invokes the notion of “mathematical sets”, and one presumes that the notion is about the similarities/differences between the “set of rules”: military and civilian.
If the question is phrased this way, then there is an analogous question:
if a person works for Multi-National Corporation and Signups various non-disclosure agreements and the rules of the corporation (violations have legal consequences), is that person now a capitalist droid, or is he/she still a human being?
Overall, seems like a pretty silly angle of questioning the state of affairs.
I think Alagu Periaswamy has hit the nail on the head. It is dangerous trend to treat human relations through cold mathematical representations. However mathematically concise the placement of army-civil relationship is, the human factor will always destabilize it. it is not only that raw recruits become trained soldiers in army, but elsewhere also, people, after going through requisite training (management, finance and so on…) see the world through the prism of their training. So in general, all people will remain a subset of the society, whatever profession they choose.
Firstly, thanks for pointing us to the brilliant article by a young army captain.
American military and society were really two distinct circles sharing only one point in common, a commitment to the Constitution
I believe that the best we can hope for is overlapping circles. However, unlike the American example, in India, one of the circles/sets among the two in question is amusing itself if it believes that ‘commitment to the constitution, is a subset of theirs.
There is only one set in India ; the Netas the Babus the Policewala and latest entery is the journos and the liberals. These people think they are the rulers; yes they infact are but they think defending the nation is a job of the have nots of the society. They do not let their siblings join the forces and expect someone elses son to die for thier dear nation. They think defence forces are their slaves to be treated like they desire
This Civvy / Military gent sounds brandied:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/audio/2007/apr/20/great.speeches.of.the.20th.century.winston.churchill
70 years ago this evening.
http://www.worldwar-2.net/
1. TWO DISTINCT CIRCLES–is the classic Huntingtonian model that achieves high level of “Professionalism” within the armed forces while maintaining “Objective” civil control. However, this has seldom been achieved even in advanced societies of the West, let alone emerging countries like ours.
2. PARTIALLY OVERLAPPING CIRCLES–was achieved during the times of the British Indian army due to the following-
(a) Officered almost entirely by the English whose value systems
and beliefs were typical of the “Conservative/Individualist”
society unlike ours.
(b) Achieved relative isolation from the society (atleast in the
armies of Bombay and Madras presidencies if not Bengal).
3. However, in the last sixty two years, the “Indianisation” process of the armed forces is almost complete and consequently, the value system of the armed forces today reflects that of the society to a large extent.
HENCE, SMALL CIRCLE WITHIN A LARGE CIRCLE.