(Draft, please do not quote)

Civil-Military Challenges for the U.S. as the War on Terrorism Comes Home

David S. Sorenson U.S. Air War College David.sorenson@maxwell.af.mil

Presented to the 20th World Congress of the International Political Science Association, Fukuoka, Japan, July 2006.

2 Abstract: Civil-Military Challenges for the U.S. as the War on Terrorism Comes Home. The lines for American defense between foreign and territorial are increasing blurred by the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT). Thus, there is the potential for the U.S. active military to be drawn into policy areas traditionally under civilian agency jurisdiction. This paper considers the civil-military relations implications of these intrusions, which include intelligence gathering, surveillance, and the possibility of the newly created NORTHCOM taking the lead in domestic terrorism emergencies. The issues include possible threats to civil liberties, jurisdictional disputes with civilian agencies, command and control problems, and the weakening of military professionalism. The main issues here are the differences in the strategic approach taken by professional military and civilian agencies to the GWOT. American military strategy has traditionally emphasized the necessity to strike at enemy homelands rather than to wage a defensive campaign in U.S. soil, whereas the civilian agencies holding responsibility for homeland defense must plan for a defensive and responsive campaign in the U.S. Technological issues may also hamper coordination, including the lack of interoperable communications systems and control over lethal technology in the homeland theater.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, The North American Aerospace Command was holding an exercise called Vigilant Warrior to test its ability to defend the skies over North America. However, on the same day that terrorists hijacked four U.S. civil

airliners to use as weapons, Vigilant Warrior instead simulated a threat from a Sovietstyle bomber attack on the U.S., even though the Soviet Union had disappeared more than ten years before. Those two events on the same day came to symbolize how close the U.S. military remained to Cold War thinking on the dawn of a new emphasis on homeland defense. This paper considers the consequences for a possible emerging role for the active U.S. military on homeland defense and its implication for American civilmilitary relations. 1 There are two issue areas here: first, the implications for civil

authority and civilian rights from military encroachments into those arenas, and, second,

3 the implications for the professional military from their involvement in non-traditional military missions like homeland defense. The paper first presents a framework for these civil-military issues, and then applies it to the homeland defense role.

Tradition and American Military Roles.

American military tradition in the 20th

century emphasized a strategy of forward defense in its most basic form: to take the war to the land of the opponent rather than engaging in the direct defense of the American homeland. There are many indicators of this tradition, including the meager resources committed to homeland defense during such crisis times as World War II, the overwhelming preference for strategic nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and the two land wars fought in Asia after World War II to contain communism. The continuance of that tradition into the twenty-first century is shown by things like the statements by current Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld that the U.S. military response to domestic terrorist attacks would be to take the war to the enemy in their own lands, and by operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, justified by their supporters as a way to stop terrorism there before it gets to the American shores. Homeland defense, by way of contrast, emphasizes exactly the opposite. Civil defenders, by tradition, are usually civilian-led and directed. Traditional civilian agencies were either established to cope with homeland defense, (like the Civil Defense Agency of World War II) or mobilized into the tasking, as was the American Red Cross. President Truman formally enhanced civil defense by creating the Civil Defense Administration in 1950, and President Eisenhower merged the Civil Defense Administration with the Office of Defense Mobilization to attempt a civilian organization

4 that might cope with the possible consequences of a nuclear attack on the United States. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter created the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which combined a host of domestic disaster agencies with the Defense Civil Preparedness Agency (renamed from the Office of Defense Mobilization), though FEMAs primary responsibility was domestic disaster preparedness for fire, flood, earthquake and other natural disasters, along with contamination disasters (New York states Love Canal contamination, for example). The reasons for this are complex, but revolve around a mutual belief shared by both the professional active military and the American public at large that a homeland defense mission puts the military too close to American politics and threatens to de-professionalize it. Thus the recent reaction to the September 11 attacks against the U.S. in creating a Northern Command under the U.S. Department of Defense breaks with this tradition and, in doing so, raises some significant issues relative to American civil-military relations. Should the active military expand this homeland defense role, there may be some civil-military relations challenges, which this paper explores.

APPROACHING CIVIL-MILITARY RELATIONS.

Two questions guide this

inquiry; 1) What is the active military in homeland defense, and, 2) Where does the authority of the president and his civilian agents for the making of military policy conflict with the soldier's understanding of professional autonomy, and the latitude to make and implement military policies? Tensions between the professional military and the civilian political leadership structure are an endemic part of American political history. They are

intertwined with a long-standing tradition of civil supremacy over the professional

military.

However, the very concept of "civilian supremacy" begs the question,

supremacy over what? The answer to the question will differ depending upon, among other things, the nature of the particular policy area, and where it falls in institutional responsibility.

Military Intrusions into Domestic Civil Affairs. American tradition emphasizes a preference for local control over federal control, across a variety of issues. Americans want local control over schools, and thus local taxes rather than federal funds pay for the bulk of public educational expenses. Americans prefer local rules that accommodate local circumstances to federal rules enforced by federal courts. Americans also prefer local law enforcement to federal law enforcement, and should local authorities become overwhelmed or otherwise incapable of managing law enforcement problems, American prefer that National Guard forces, local in origin, be used before federal troops get the mission. This is partly because American tradition favors local intrusions over national intrusions, and fewer intrusions of the state, no matter what its locus, even in times of crisis. Friedberg persuasively argues this point by noting that even during the Cold War and its accompanying fears of the Soviet Union, the American populace did not embrace expanded state power. Says Friedberg about the late 1940s to the late 1950s, while most people did not want to see the federal government grow in size or expand its responsibilities, few supported efforts to cut it all the way back to its pre-war dimensions. 2 Such beliefs and core values apply to the intrusion of the military as an arm of the state into American public life. Traditionally, the greatest power a military

6 could have over civilians was to take their property, their incomes, and press their people into service as soldiers. Therefore, it is understandable that political tradition would separate the military both physically and politically from the public. The U.S. military has long been isolated from American society. It bases (Army and Air Force in

particular) were often located in relatively remote places (the Navy was an exception, as it required large seaports, usually the core of a coastal city, for its bases). The military was often quite small, particularly in peacetime, and military demobilization usually followed wars. Military conscription was often unpopular: violent riots in the North followed the introduction of conscription in the Civil War, and the combined unpopularity of the Vietnam War and the draft put an end to the system under President Nixon. 3 The size of the U.S. defense budget as a percentage of GDP is another indicator of the limits on the military. While topping out at almost 44 percent of GDP in 1944, it reached only nine percent during the Korean War and rarely exceeded five percent of GDP since that time. Indeed, the Eisenhower Administration justified partly its emphasis on nuclear deterrence as grand strategy by noting that nuclear weapons were a substitute for more expensive conventional forces. 4 There were exceptions, though, as noted later in the paper, but mostly the tradition has held.

Political Authority and Military Professionalism.

One of the core aspects of

professional military education and training is the principle of civilian control of the armed forces. Lessons first taught in basic training are repeated and reinforced at the nation's war colleges for senior officers. General Curtis E. LeMay, the former

Commander in Chief of the Strategic Air Command, put it succinctly, ...the Secretary... and the administration...say, This is what you will have and this is the way you will do

it... We may not like it. We may think, in our judgment, it is wrong and we should do it some other way, but that is the way we must work, and we do. 5 Since General LeMay himself sometimes pushed the bounds of civil-military relations, 6 his commentary is instructive of the prevailing ethic even at a time LeMay himself sometimes challenged civilian control of the military. Those norms were also demonstrated when the Joint Chiefs of Staff refused to back General Douglas MacArthur after President Truman relieved him of command during the Korean War, and by the almost total lack of open military criticism of civilian leaders during the ten-year-long Vietnam War. It is a deeply ingrained part of U.S. military officership. However, at the same time, a combination of experience, education, and tradition has provided the professional officer with a belief that the management of military resources is their responsibility. Since the military has no authority to challenge the president or Congress directly when they disagree with civilian direction, the military can use indirect methods instead. Those techniques

include building coalitions with those individuals or groups that do have the authority to challenge a political antagonist, leaking supporting information to the media, and/or relying on generally pro-military groups like the American Legion and the various retired officer's associations that can mobilize a significant portion of the public.

Locating Organizational Boundaries. One way to think about civil-military relations is through a framework of organizational boundaries. There are two types of boundaries, formal and informal, where law or contract establishes formal boundaries, and tradition and professional identity shape informal boundaries. Formal boundaries are usually codified in some way (though not always specifically), while informal barriers are rarely specific. Crossing formal boundaries of authority can usually result in a prescribed penalty or a nullification of the act (as when the Supreme Court declares an action of Congress unconstitutional because Congress lacks the authority to create the legislation in question). The crossing of an informal boundary is more likely to produce resentment

as opposed to punishment (for example, few things can exceed the wrath of a college professor who finds that someone from another department is teaching in their departmental discipline). There are several reasons for the formation of organizational boundaries, whether formal or informal. autonomy. One is to wall out incursions against organizational

Boundaries generated from within can protect organizational turf, or

outside authority may establish perimeters to preserve organizational autonomy. Boundaries circumscribing institutional power are traditionally established in liberal democracies to prevent the concentration of institutional political power.

Constitutionally imposed limits on the scope and functions of political institutions are one example, where the boundary prevents institutional power from spreading outside certain confines. Presidential spending power, for example, is restricted by both the Constitution and by legislation (i.e. the Congressional Budget Act of 1974), that clarifies those limits. Like most other organizations, the military sets its own boundaries, even if they are not designed purposely to do so. The very uniform of the military professional is one boundary. So is the isolation provided by the military basing system, where the military purposely fence themselves off from the civilian world. There are reasons for both uniforms and bases beyond setting boundaries, but the fact is that they serve the purpose of providing an identity and, at the same time, barriers against the civilian world.

ISSUE AREAS. There are a number of issue areas involved in the civil-military area, but three will form the focus of this paper. They are:

1) Control over the formation of policy on roles and missions. 2) Control of military weapons acquisition, and, 3) Control over military personnel accession. Each of these issue areas has a history of civil-military tensions before the Cold War ended, but the new world disorder following

in the wake of the Cold War has at least renewed the issue and, in some case, reinvigorated it.

Determining Roles and Missions.

Some of the more important conflicts in civil-

military affairs have occurred over determination of service capabilities and missions. Traditionally, the Army fought on the ground, the Navy at sea, and the Air Force in the air. All emphasized force projection capability over homeland defense, for a variety of reasons. There was some preference for homeland defense in the 1930s when economic conditions and political attitudes limited military budgets, and so the Army contested with the Navy in the 1930's over coastal defense. However, the force structure and lessons learned from World War II turned military thinking and military equipment from homeland defense to force projection overseas. The Army, Navy and Air Force all equipped their forces with a variety of nuclear weapons for an assortment of missions (strategic attack, or attack against conventional enemy forces, for example) with the emphasis on deterrence by a foreign threat with a counter-threat of nuclear annihilation. Disagreements broke out between civilian authority over issues like the role of conventional forces, limited wars, service-distinct missions, but there was little disagreement in the civilian-military arena over the question of force projection over homeland defense. The United States had not fought a major conflict on its territory since the Civil War, there were no nearby enemies, and tradition since World War was that defense started on somebody elses territory. The core missions of the military became part of military tradition, and the services equipped their forces with weapons appropriate to them. Thus, when outside pressure (often from a secretary of defense) came to challenge those core missions, the services resisted. The result often was a compromise where the service agreed to take on something supported by outside forces, but at a low enough level that the new responsibilities would not interfere with core responsibilities. Thus, the Air Force

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adopted the A-10 aircraft in response to congressional demands for Air Force-supplied close air support, but bought a limited number and shifted them to reserve and Air National Guard units as soon as congressional attention dissipated. How will the post-Cold War era effect civil-military relations? Who controls the assignment of tasks? Moreover, what tasks are appropriate for the military to perform? The question becomes particularly significant in the area of non-traditional missions of the type that Janowitz refers to as requiring a constabulary force. Janowitz describes this force as "...continuously prepared to act, committed to the minimum use of force, and seeks viable international relations, rather than victory... 7 Janowitz may have been ahead of his time (though the 1958 U.S. military experience in Lebanon may have influenced him), but his concept is clearly useful for the post-Cold War military. However, the peacekeeping missions so typical of the constabulary force are only one form of non-traditional missions. Another category is civic actions, to include disaster relief, crime control, assumption of public functions during labor strikes, and so forth. There is nothing unusual in assigning the military to non-traditional missions. In the early to mid-point of the nineteenth century, the Army in particular provided planning, coordination and often labor in the construction of a national economic infrastructure. The Army built roads, dug canals, and laid railroads across wide expanses of wilderness. 8 The military had also played roles as enforcers of

domestic tranquility. Throughout American history, the military intervened between hostile forces, sometimes as a neutral party, and sometimes as advocates. For example, in the 19th century soldiers sometimes protected Native American tribes when white settlers victimized them. As one officer put it, Who will say that it is not the duty of the American people to do all this and more for these helpless remnants of races which we have slaughtered, oppressed, and driven off from all the best of land... 9 From that point on the military has been used in a variety of domestic peacekeeping duties, including the breaking of strikes and control of urban disorder. Army forces intervened in pre-Civil

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War Kansas, against Mormon insurrection in Utah in 1858, and against rioting railroad workers in Wyoming in 1868. 10 The military has also engaged in disaster relief

(responding to hurricanes or floods) and law enforcement (integration of the University of Mississippi, or riot control in Detroit, for example). These non-traditional roles are not always popular with professional military leaders, for understandable reasons. They detract from preparation for more conventional missions in a number of ways. Most combat training missions cannot be accomplished by troops performing hurricane relief, for example.11 Sometimes the

normal peacetime accomplishment of a myriad of tasks (maintenance of equipment, filing of reports, cleaning latrines, and so on) cannot be completed because of the distractions of nontraditional deployments. Such missions also cannot make use of most of the array of modern weapons and the supporting equipment that the military has an investment of many billions of dollars. An F-117A is of little use in south central Los Angeles, nor is a Los Angeles class submarine much good against drug smugglers. The Defense Department has a long list of weapons improvements waiting in the wings, including the F-22 fighter, roll-on/roll off sealift vessels, additional aircraft carriers, the Future Combat System, and many smaller programs. None of these weapons systems, all of which cost billions of dollars to procure and maintain, can play much, if any, role in the conduct of nontraditional missions. It is little wonder that the military leadership is less than

enthusiastic about performing such tasks. Military Preferences. Professionalization of European militaries developed in the 18th and 19th centuries as officers sought to develop training and education in the growing technical nature of warfare, and to elevate the social and political status of soldiering. 11 In the United States, the art of war was only one aspect of this professionalization, as the

12 military also emphasized such endeavors as engineering (the foundation of the U.S. Military Academy), and a tradition of professional autonomy on military matters. The American military also adopted over time what many have called the American way of war, which emphasized, among other things:

Warfare fought to military rather than political purpose. What the military sought was complete victory on the battlefield with little regard for the political consequences that might follow,

The exploitation of technology in warfare, and the control over the design and production of such technology,

A preference for regular over irregular warfare, where regular war is set-piece force-on-force battles fought with conventional armies and navies. Irregular war is hit-and-run tactics fought by guerillas against a stronger regular foe.

A belief that military service was a special calling, not for everyone. Military conscription eroded this belief somewhat as draftees learned military skills, and some chose to remain in the military after their enlistment expired. Possibly, the end of conscription in the U.S. in the 1970s may have once again enhanced this elite belief among professional soldiers that the military is a special calling.

Like other large organizations, militaries build storehouses of traditions about how they operate, and those legacies become a part of professional identity. Such traditions or styles of war include war orientation (a preference for offense or defense), and location (away from the homeland, or defending the homeland). The origins of such

13 styles are complex, and include topography, geographical location, and interpretations of history. Civil-military issues also shape these traditions. Often professional soldiers prefer to be based as far away from national capitals as possible, to avoid political oversight over their operations, and their doctrinal development. For example, in the 1930s, the Air Corps Tactical School moved from Langley Field near Washington DC to Maxwell Field in Alabama because Langley was too close to the capital and the interfering politicians who were skeptical of Air Corps doctrinal developments. 12

The Military and Policy Making.

Most military officers have little interest in

controlling the national strategy-making process. They prefer consultation by civilian leaders on strategic matters. Likewise, few civilians want to intervene in the minutia of military policymaking. If soldiers want to paint their barracks brown, there are few civilians wishing to argue against it. In most nations, the real contest for responsibility is the middle of the spectrum. Operational doctrine (the linking of training, weapons, and tactics to strategic objectives) and the acquisition of weapons and troops to support operations has traditionally been the province of the specialist in military conflict. As Posen (1984:52-3) states, "Functional specialization between soldiers and diplomats, and the tendency of soldiers to seek as much independence from civilian interference as possible, combine to make political-military integration an uncertain prospect." 13 Figure I indicates the areas of conflict between civilian political leaders and the military in the policy arena:

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Figure I. The Contest for Responsibility

Civilian responsibility National security Strategy Operational Doctrine Military responsibility Weapons acquisition/ personnel acquisition Choice of barracks color

Oversight (assertive control)

Civilian leaders
Civil authority

Military leaders
Military responsibility Contested authority

Here civil authority has clear responsibility for shaping and executing the broad parameters of national security strategy, while the military has uncontested responsibility for the minutia of military policy (barracks color, uniform regulations, and so forth). The rest of the policy spectrum is contested ground. There is little debate over the

responsibility of civilian leadership for national security strategy, as it is clearly a political role. Operational doctrine and weapons and personnel acquisition were once the responsibility of the military, but concerns over conflict escalation during times of limited war led to an increased power by civilian leaders over operations. Civilians control also increased over weapons and personnel acquisition for a variety of reasons,

15 including the end of military conscription in the 1970s and the growing influence of Congress in the weapons acquisition process. So much of the line of assertive control represents contested ground between civil authority and military professionals. One way to maintain civilian influence and control in those decision areas is to remove senior military leaders from them. For example, in 1958, an Act of Congress removed the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff from the chain of command, thus also removing them from direct control of military operations. However, most of the control issues stem from relations between the professional military and the secretary of defense and other members of the defense secretariat. Sometimes the parties involved find relative harmony between them on most issues, but in other cases, like during the Kennedy-Johnson years and, more recently under Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, relations were tense and have been tense over a number of issues. The World War II relationship in the U.S. between President Roosevelt and his military leaders probably typifies the customary relationshipwhile civilians set the broad political objectives for the war, the military chiefs got wide latitude to pursue those goals as they judged best. However, particularly in the post-World War II era, civilian leaders have moved to assert more control of those inter-linked processes, challenging the professional status of military leaders. This is not to suggest that such a relationship has always held. Elliot Cohen finds that civilian leaders (including Abraham Lincoln) encroached into operations and tactics, particularly when they believed that their military leaders were incompetent. 14

The Homeland Defense Tradition. The first responsibility of the fledgling American military was homeland defense, against indigenous tribes, and against European forces.

16 However, after the U.S. Civil War, defense of the homeland became a secondary priority to the choice of either neutrality or overseas operations. The U.S. fought both World Wars I and II largely outside of the continental U.S., and the military regarded remaining homeland defense assignments as largely backwater jobs with little threat or military glamour. Such duties involved monitoring the coastal areas of the United States that might provide a target by the enemy, or coastal patrol by naval forces. 15 However, as it became clearer that the danger was low, units like the U.S. Armys Coastal Artillery were slowly phased out and the Army closed coastal forts (Fort McArthur in California, or Fort Warden in Washington, for example), or converted them to other missions. During World War II, the Western Defense Command of the United States Army concluded that American security required the removal of all American citizens of Japanese ancestry from the entire state of California, the western half of Oregon and Washington, and the southern third of Arizona. U.S. Army personnel participated in locating and removing these persons from their homes to relocation camps placed in remote places in the American west. In early 1942, the military shifted the task of housing and caring for the refugees to a new civilian agency, the War Relocation Agency, which reduced the role of the Army considerably. During the Cold War the new U.S. Air Force did organize an Air Defense Command to intercept a feared Soviet bomber attack against the U.S., but as U.S. strategic policy increasingly emphasized the threat of a retaliatory strike against the USSR as a deterrent, the air defense mission was also marginalized. The Navy left coastal defense to the Coast Guard (and even the Civil Air Patrol). Ballistic missile defense of the homeland grew in stature after a brief life in the Kennedy and Johnson

17 Administrations, and later when President Ronald Reagan became attached to the concept as a way to render nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete. Again, however, the military tried to minimize the mission as it fell outside of its traditional roles and missions, and even when ballistic missile defense resurfaced once again during the second Bush Administration, there was not much support for it in the professional American military ranks. As noted earlier, while civilian-military tensions existed over a variety of issues, the question of a military role in homeland defense was not one of those issues, except for missile defense. The question remained as to the effect of the 2001 terrorist attack on this relationship. A post-2001 effort to define the new homeland defense environment envisioned the following threats: A weapons of mass destruction (WMD) attack on Americanbased military forces and/or against civilian targets, A specialty weapons attack (rocket-propelled grenades, or air defense missiles, for example) against such targets, Information attacks against military or other governmental information systems. Smuggled WMD into the United States, Large-scale refugee flows into the U.S., The use of cruise or ballistic missiles against the U.S. 16

18 The first reaction to those attacks was the creation of the Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) in 2002. The professional military may come to regard USNORTHCOM with the same enthusiasm as they regarded Coastal Artillery, or it may become a respected mission supported by significant resources. However, it is important to note that the very fact that the military did not establish a major command based in the U.S. with homeland security emphasis is indicative of the possible attitude from the military.

What Role for the Military in Homeland Defense? As noted above, the U.S. active military has engaged in homeland defense before 2001, and was apparently careful to ensure that the creation of the Department of Homeland Security would not emerge as a competitor for the mission. Section 876 of the Homeland Security Act specifically states that, Nothing in this Act shall confer upon the Secretary (of Homeland Security) any authority to engage in warfighting, the military defense of the United States, or other military activities, nor shall anything in this Act limit the existing authority of the Department of Defense or the Armed Forces to engage in warfighting, the military defense of the United States, or other military activities. 17 Within the homeland defense umbrella, the Department of Defense played circumscribed roles. The military had responsibility to guard air approaches to the United States under the control of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), thus continuing the traditional mission of this organization shared between the United States and Canada. The military air services have provided this defense since

19 the advent of military aircraft, though the services reduced coverage after the end of the Cold War, and only reemphasized it after September 11, 2001. The federal government particularly emphasized coverage over the National Capital Region, a new Area of Operations added after September 11 to protect potential targets in the Washington D.C. area. The military shares this responsibility with other agencies, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). The Defense Department also has responsibility for providing ballistic missile defense from a missile interceptor site at Fort Greeley, Alaska. The U.S. Navy and Coast Guard share responsibility for maritime defense of the American homeland, which again continues a long-standing tradition. The Navy protects sea-lane approaches to the U.S. while the Coast Guard covers coastal waters and harbors. The Coast Guard, which has never been a part of the Defense Department or its predecessors, can become a specialized service under the Navy in wartime or when otherwise directed by the U.S. president. In December 2004, the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security signed a memorandum of understanding that established a joint command, control, and coordination process, and another agreement allowing the Defense Department to support Coast Guard operations. Part of the urgency driving these agreements involved the possibility of terrorists smuggling WMD components or weapons into the U.S. using merchant shipping. The air and sea components of homeland defense did not represent dramatic departures from traditional roles and responsibilities of the various U.S. government agencies. The land component also remained relatively true to U.S.

traditions. Responsibility for the primary defense of the U.S. homeland rests with the

20 Department of Homeland Security. The Department of Justice has responsibility for internal policing against terrorists in the U.S. Thus, the official responsibility of the Defense Department ends at the waters edge. However, a number of Defense

Department elements stand ready to render assistance should the president direct. For example, both the Army and Marine Corps have rapid reaction forces that can deploy within the U.S. for a variety of reasons. The Marine Corps maintain a chemical-

biological incident response force at Indian Head, Maryland to assist in detection and removal of possible chemical or biological threats inside the U.S. The Defense

Department has also established a number of joint commands to support civil authorities should a terrorist incident occur within the U.S. They include the Joint Task Force Civil Support at Fort Monroe, Virginia (which is scheduled to close by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure Commission), the Joint Task Force Consequence Management East at Fort Gillem, Georgia (also to be closed), and the Joint Task Force Consequence Management West, headquartered at Fort Sam Houston in Texas. The Joint Force

Headquarters National Capital Region at Fort McNair in Washington D.C. coordinates civil support in the D.C. area, the Joint Task Force North at Fort Bliss, Texas supports counter-drug and cross-border smuggling efforts, the Joint Task Force Alaska and the Joint Task Force Homeland Defense at Hawaiis Fort Shafter cover those two states homeland defense coordination. Some of these functions support provisions of the Nunn-LugarDomenici act (Public Law 104-201) passed in 1996 (following the bombing of Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia) that empowers the military to develop the capability to detect and prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, including their possible spread into the

21 United States. Nunn-Lugar-Domenici also empowers the military to respond to the use of a WMD within the United States. The National Security Agency is also a part of the Department of Defense. Established in 1952, the NSAs primary mission is the gathering, analysis, and dissemination of electronic military intelligence. While NSA headquarters are at the Armys Fort Meade, and its director is a three-star military officer, its identity is somewhat dual, as it is also integrated into the overall American intelligence community directed by the Director of National Intelligence. Because of the secrecy surrounding the NSA, its actual mission was never entirely clear, but common public and political assumptions were that the NSA eavesdropped on other nations and not on the American public. Executive Order 12333 of December 1981 clarified these assumptions,

mandating that the National Security Agency could not directly acquire information on Americans within the United States. The limits were not clear, though. For example, Executive Order 12333 also stated that, Collection, production and dissemination of military and military-related foreign intelligence and counterintelligence, and information on the foreign aspects of narcotics production and trafficking. 18 Should American

narcotics suppliers communicate with foreign suppliers, the language suggested that the surveillance could originate in the United States. Therefore, it apparently was for

international terrorism. With the belief that potential terrorists in the United States would get their finance and operational orders from outside the country, the NSA monitored phone calls and phone records, an activity prohibited by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. Whether or not such activity is legal or not, it is a military intrusion into civilian life in the name of homeland defense. It is also the largest such

22 intrusion, and an exception to the very limited role that the military has played since 2001. In the 1970s, military surveillance on antiwar groups in the U.S. led to strict congressionally imposed limits on such activity. However, in a program known as Talon (Threat and Local Observation Notice), the Pentagon engaged in surveillance against particular groups or activities that they deemed as a possible threat to military bases in the U.S. The Talon program, managed by a secretive organization known as the Counterintelligence Field Activity, or CIFA, founded in 2003, generated reports of 1,519 "suspicious incidents" between July 2004 and May 2005, according to news media that broke the story. 19 The fact that the military itself gathered the data rather than relying on a legitimate civilian organization raised questions about how far the military might go in engaging in such activities in the domestic political realm. That was the concern of the American Civil Liberties Union when it filed a lawsuit in Philadelphia asking the Defense Department to produce records gathered under the Talon program. The

ACLU argued that Talon surveillance extended to peace activists who had no links to terrorist organizations or motives, but were simply expressing their opposition to American military policy. 20 In June 2006, Congress failed to pass an amendment to the defense budget that would have curbed domestic surveillance by the National Security Agency, an arm of the Department of Defense. The Amendment, opposed by President George W. Bush, received support from twenty-three members of the Presidents party in the House of Representatives, indicating that there was some bipartisan support for curtailing military surveillance without the appropriate warrants. In a compromise, though, the

23 White House agreed to allow more members of Congress to be briefed on the program, thus helping to defeat the bill in Congress. 21 The NSA had been conducting surveillance and enlisted the cooperation of U.S. communications companies Verizon, AT&T Inc. and BellSouth Corporation in obtaining call data records. This complex web of Defense Department organizations exists largely to support and cooperate with civilian agencies at all levels of government to provide homeland defense. As noted above, the Department of Homeland Security is the lead agency and, under Section 202 of Title Six of the U.S. Code, the Department of Defense provides support to that agency when the president approves it. Clearly, political

preferences carefully circumscribe the role of the active duty military that operates under Title 10 of the U.S. Code: those forces considered in active or reserve federal military status (this excludes the National Guard, which operates under Title 32 of the same code). The question is: how do these roles and missions affect civil-military relations in the United States? Despite the flurry of activity following September 11, the military has played a limited role in homeland defense. NORTHCOMs activities since its founding in October 2002 have been typical: providing aerial surveillance during the 2003 Washington D.C.-area sniper attacks, supporting military operations after the Space Shuttle Columbia crash, and creating a task force to cooperate with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). 22 More recently, NORTHCOM provided coordination during 2005s hurricane season. There may be incidental roles, as when the Defense Department enlisted the help of homeland security agencies to assist troubled DoD acquisition programs. Pentagon acquisition officials offered a part of the Air Forces

24 Space Radar satellite system, over budget and behind schedule, to both the Department of Homeland Security and the Coast Guard, stating that, We obviously need to be providing capabilities for them all at the same time," he said, to save costs and avoid duplication. 23 These are small moves, though, hardly typical of a larger belief that homeland defense belongs mostly to state, local, and non-military federal agencies.

Future potential intrusions into the civilian political realm by the military? In a 2002 Defense Science Board study on the military role in homeland defense, the authors highlighted the risks to the security of military facilities in the U.S. from terrorism. Noted the report, DoD is not doing enough to address the vulnerabilities of missioncritical infrastructure and services, particularly outside its areas of direct control. A systematic approach that deals with both inside and outside the fence must be taken to identify and redress vulnerabilities. 24 This means that the military must be aware of threats to its military bases and other infrastructure in the U.S. Currently the military operates over 400 military installations large and small, along with smaller facilities like recruiting offices, finance offices, investigative offices, and a host of other places. From the experience on September 11, 2001 when terrorists attacked the Pentagon after having planned most of the attack while in the U.S., the Defense Department understood that had authorities found out these plans and the terrorists, they might have prevented the attack. The corresponding criticism of the FBI and other domestic agencies in failing to find the September 11 terrorists may convince the Defense Department that it must take a more active role in providing security for its own installations, and for their personnel on and off base.

25 Consequently, there is the potential for the active military to engage in domestic surveillance, as it now shares such intelligence through NORTHCOMs Combined Intelligence and Fusion Center, which analyzes data collected from both federal and state intelligence collection agencies. According to NORTHCOM, our goal is to help connect the dots to create a clear threat picture, playing our appropriate role as part of the interagency team. 25 This, again according to NORTHCOM, will not move the military into areas where established law prohibits it from going: We understand the Posse Comitatus Act and related laws and the clear limits placed on military support to civil law enforcement. 26 In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, USNORTHCOM proposed the establishment of a special corps of active forces to respond to natural disasters in the U.S. The force, consisting of communications specialists, medical personnel, engineers and even infantry, would work alongside National Guard forces in such disasters, but their actions would fall short of law enforcement, thus not potentially evoking the Posse Comitatus Act. 27 Posse Comitatus re-emerged again after the Katrina disaster, with some calling for a review of the act to allow for civil policing in disaster cases where the local authorities are either overwhelmed or absent, or both. Early indications from Rumsfeld were that he would not favor significant changes to Posse Comitatus. 28 However, much of the debate indicated an imperfect understanding of Posse Comitatus (literally county force or power of the county referred to a volunteer force mobilized by a marshal). The Posse Comitatus Act is one form of limit on U.S. federal military power in civilian matters. The Act itself dates to the post-Civil War period in U.S.

26 history, signed into law by President Rutherford B. Hayes in 1878, in response to Southern Democratic complaints against federal troops in the south who were trying to protect the limited rights of freed black slaves. The law, rarely used since

Reconstruction, is difficult to interpret and agreement exists only on the exclusion of the navy from its provisions. 29 It did not prevent the use of federal troops for numerous domestic purposes, including strikebreaking and other attempts to quell domestic disorder. Attention focused on the Posse Comitatus Act only in the late 1970s when questions arose about the use of the military to curtail drug smuggling into the U.S. In 1982, the Defense Department made several changes to its understanding of the 1878 law, including extending its provisions outside the United States. In 1988, the law changed again, adding to a mix of interpretations that Felicetti and Luce call a rotten legal foundation for US Northern Command. 30 Felicetti and Luce may be correct in stating that Posse Comitatus is a weak legal reed to base active military involvement in domestic defense. The fact remains that the U.S. military has played a very limited role in domestic security, and if American lawmakers ultimately repeal Posse Comitatus, the concern remains. In October 2005, the assistant secretary of defense for homeland security, Paul McHale, announced that the Defense Department was planning to enhance the role played by active U.S. military forces in coping with a range of domestic contingencies, from a terrorist attack to a natural disaster. McHale did specify that active force involvement would be limited to mass disasters where thousands of lives might be at risk, such as in a Category 4 hurricane or a biological or chemical weapons attack. 31 There were also hints that active military might be used to cope with an outbreak of avian

27 flu, possibly to enforce quarantines, though few details emerged. 32 In June 2006,

Secretary Rumsfeld reinforced the message when he indicated that the U.S. federal military would respond to at least fifteen hypothetical situations involving nearsimultaneous attacks by terrorists inside the U.S. The scenarios included massive

chemical or biological attacks, truck bombings, and other large-scale attack modes, and called for thousands (the exact number is classified) federal troops to assist local officials in the wake of such attacks. 33

What may limit military involvement in homeland defense may be less a desire by the current or future administrations to have it more involved, but instead a continuing sense of its professional roles and missions: what they are and what they are not. For the military, it appears that homeland defense still begins beyond the waters edge, meaning a continuation of the preference of stopping terrorists abroad before they or their weapons reach the United States. Perhaps Admiral John B. Nathman,

Commander of the Atlantic Fleet, put it best when he asked rhetorically, Would you want to stop a container ship (with a weapon of mass destruction aboard) in Yemen, or would you rather stop a container ship at the entrance to the harbor at Long Beach? 34 For the military, the answer was clear. Admiral Nathman was testifying in favor of a higher shipbuilding budget to help stop container ships in Yemen or elsewhere.

Another indication of the limits to military involvement in homeland defense may come from the public itself. One interesting indicator is a summer 2006 Gallup Poll asking Americans, What issue do you think should be the top priority for the president and Congress to deal with? 42 percent indicated the War in Iraq or war in

28 general, 29 percent indicated fuel prices, and 23 percent indicated illegal aliens and immigration issues. Other issues included the economy and health care, while terrorism came in at sixth place, with only 4 percent indicating it as the top priority. 35 Of course, this indicator would probably jump to the top of the list should another incident like September 11 occur in the U.S., but if it does not, then public support for an active military role in homeland defense might not be as high.

It appears that Friedberg basic anti-statist thesis holds even after September 11. The United States avoided turning itself into a garrison state during the Cold War, and it continues to avoid the garrison state today, even after the most severe attack on American territory since Pearl Harbor.

Civilian Intrusions into Military Policy. One of the more fundamental issues in U.S. civil-military relations is that of boundaries between the military and civilians on policy making, as noted earlier. As the military moves into the arena of homeland defense, some aspects of the policy arena challenge those boundaries. As noted above, there are policy areas clearly under the purview of civilian authorities, and other areas where military leaders make decisions, and a large area in between where military and civilian leaders negotiate responsibility. Homeland defense may exacerbate the normal civilmilitary tensions over policy making as the military moves into an area traditionally reserved for civilian authority. If the military wants greater authority in homeland defense issues, that authority will go to the more traditional providers of domestic security. Those would include law enforcement agencies at all levels, state emergency management agencies,

29 and elements of the National Guard. Title 32 of the U.S. Code charges these latter organizations with emergency protection, including disaster relief and law enforcement. In 25 U.S. states, the Guard Adjutant General is also the state emergency management director. The military would also potentially clash with other federal agencies that have homeland security responsibilities, to include the Coast Guard, the Department of Agriculture, the Federal Bureau of Investigation,

The Implications for Civil-Military Relations from the Current Homeland Defense Role. Currently the role of the active U.S. military in homeland defense is circumscribed carefully along the lines of American tradition. That tradition holds the military at bay in the arena of national politics, to include national law enforcement. The role of the military in previous times on homeland defense was quite limited, even during World War II, when Americans did fear that foreign enemies might engage in sabotage within American borders. It remains that way now, and, barring another attack like September 11, it is likely to remain. The military has taken on a very limited set of responsibilities, with most homeland defense responsibilities assumed by other organizations. Those organizations include the National Guard, the Border Patrol, FEMA, the Justice Department, the Treasury Departments, and state and local law enforcement and investigative agencies. Consequently, the implications for the active military from There have been no major missions

homeland defense responsibility is limited.

practicing for homeland defense post-attack scenarios that, for example, might push the military outside of their traditional mission areas. There has been almost no significant

30 delegation of active military personnel to train or liaison with civilian agencies, thus disrupting more traditional military activities.

Conclusions. Despite the tremendous effects of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the United States government did not mobilize its military in significant ways to respond to engage either in preventative measures or the post-attack impact of a subsequent terrorist action. Instead, the traditional providers of homeland protection mobilized to survey, prepare, and ferret out potential terrorists, as well as to prepare for any postattack consequences. It appears that Friedbergs argument about the traditional antistatist attitude by both the military and other American political actors has held even after the shock of September 11. There was very little pressure for an increased active military role in homeland defense from any political quarter. Instead, the Bush Administration proposed and Congress approved a Homeland Defense Administration consisting largely of the traditional providers of U.S. homeland security: the FBI, the Coast Guard, the Treasury Department, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Secret Service, U.S. Customs, and others. While other federal departments lost organizations to Homeland Security (for example, Treasury, Transportation, Justice, and Agriculture), the Department of Defense did not surrender any of its sub-organizations to the Department of Homeland Security except the small National Biological Weapons Defense Analysis
Center.

The Secretary of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff, has no military

experience, but rather a background in law enforcement as a federal prosecutor and prior professional experience as an attorney. The Homeland Security organization is almost entirely civilian-manned, with only one office of military liaison.

31 There is a second point to underscore: federal power over civilians did increase after September 11. While the National Security Agency did engage in warrantless surveillance of telecommunications, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Treasury Department, and many other organizations at both the federal and state level also increased surveillance over the American public. While it is clear that American political tradition fears active military power over domestic politics and society, it may not really distinguish between military and the civilian police power over their lives. It is hard to argue, for example, that the National Security Agency is any more of a threat to individual civil liberties than is the Treasury Department when it monitors individual financial transactions. Moreover, the issues that have risen to the top of the political controversy in the aftermath of September 11 are about the quiet intrusions of agencies (both civilian and military) over personal records. They are not about the intrusion of active military force used in domestic situations. The military has not mobilized to ferret out and arrest terrorists, nor has it specifically increased its presence in civilian affairs other than to engage in surveillance pertinent to the protection of military infrastructure. Intrusion is intrusion, and it may matter less who is engaged in it. It matters that it is occurring at all. Under dire threat, Americans may welcome such incursions into their private affairs if it helps to make them more secure. There were very few complaints about increased surveillance over Americans during World War II given fears of enemy sabotage or covert landings on American coasts from enemy submarines. However, when the public perceives the threat to be low, or at least not critical, it is more likely to

32 oppose any kind of increased government power, especially federal power, over their lives. In sum, the renewed emphasis on homeland defense in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks in the United States has not really challenged long-established patterns of American civil-military relations. The military has not played an increase role in American public life, and in turn, the political system has not had to intrude much on the established military mode of doing its traditional business. If there are no repeats of September 11, it can be expected to stay that way. Anti-statism has triumphed in the end.

33 Notes.
1

The term U.S. military refers here to active full time and reserve forces. It does not include the National Guard that, as noted below, operates under a different chain of command than does the regular and reserve military, and draws its authority from Title 32 rather than Title 10 of the U.S. Code. Aaron L. Friedberg, In the Shadow of the Garrison State: Americas Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Strategy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000, p. 58. For a good discussion of American military personnel policy, see Eliot A. Cohen, Citizens and Soldiers: The Dilemmas of Military Service. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985, Chs. 7-8.

Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961, Ch. 4; Glenn H. Snyder, The New Look of 1953, in Warner R. Schilling, Paul Y. Hammond, and Glenn H. Snyder, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets. New York: Columbia University Press, 1962, pp. 379-524.

Study of Airpower. Hearings before the Subcommittee on the Air Force of the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate, 84th Cong., 2nd Sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1956, p. 162. General LeMay appears to counter administration policy in the critical area of initiating a preemptive nuclear strike against the USSR. See David Alan Rosenberg, "A Smoking, Radiating Ruin at the End of Two Hours: Plans for Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954-55," International Security, Vol 6 (Winter 1981-1982), p. 13.
7 6

Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1960, p. 418. See Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America. New York: The Free Press, 1984, pp. 130-131. Quoted in Skelton, Op. Cit., p. 314.

Michael L. Tate, The Frontier Army in the Settlement of the West. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1999, Ch. 4. See G. Teitler, The Genesis of the Professional Officer Corps. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1977.
12 11

10

That was one reason, the other was that Air Corps leaders wanted to distance themselves from the Army Staff that was also skeptical of the Air Corps efforts to develop strategic bombardment as a doctrine, preferring instead to have the Air Corps primary mission to provide air support to ground forces.

Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984, pp. 52-3.
14

13

Eliot Cohen, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, And Leadership In Wartime. New York: Free Press, 2002.

There were obviously other duties performed in the homeland theater, including training, medical care in U.S. military hospitals, staff duty in Washington, maintenance, and numerous duties that supported overseas troops as well as domestically located forces.

15

34

Eric V. Larson and John E. Peters, Preparing the U.S. Army for Homeland Security: Concepts, Issues, and Options. Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2001, p. xvii-xviii.
17

16

Homeland Security Act. H.R. 5005, 107th Cong., 2nd Sess, p. 110. Executive order 12333, December 4, 1981. Pentagon Will Review Database on U.S. Citizens, Washington Post, December 15, 2005. ACLU Sues Pentagon for Antiwar Groups Data, Miami Herald, June 15, 2006. House Approves a Pentagon Budget, Wall Street Journal, June 21, 2006.

18

19

20

21

Hearings on National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004. Committee on Armed Services, House of Representatives, 108th Cong., 1st. Sess. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 2004, p. 1021.
23

22

U.Ss Lofty Plans for Smart Satellites Fall Back to Earth, Wall Street Journal, February 11, 2006.

Defense Science Board 2003 Summer Study on DoD Roles and Missions in Homeland Security, Vol. II, Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, May, 2004, p. 6
25

24

Hearings on National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004, p. 1022. Ibid, p. 1023. Military May Propose an Active-Duty Force for Relief Efforts, New York Times, October 11, 2005.

26

27

Skelton: Rumsfeld Confirms DOD has no Plans to Alter Posse Comitatus, InsideDefense.com, October 11, 2005. Gary Felicetti and John Luce, The Posse Comitatus Act: Liberation from the Lawyers, Parameters, Vol. 34 (Autumn 2004), pp. 94-107.
30 29

28

Ibid. p. 106. Pentagon Plans to Beef Up Domestic Rapid Response Forces, Washington Post, October 13, 2005. Military Sees Limits to Role in Disasters, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2005.

31

32

Rumsfeld Calls for Detailed Plans for Military Support for Disasters, Inside the Pentagon, June 8, 2006. Admiral Defends Role of Navy in Combating Terrorism, Newport News Daily Press, October 7, 2005. On the same day, the Chief of Naval Operations defended sea basing as a way to deliver relief supplies to disasters, noting the role of the carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in delivering emergency supplies to tsunami victims in Asia. Relief Efforts in Gulf Demonstrate Sea Basing Capability: CNO Says, Defense Daily, October 7, 2005.
35 34

33

Public Wants Government to Focus on Iraq, Fuel Prices, Immigration, Gallup Poll, June 5, 2006.