A study recently published by the Triangle Institute for Security Studies shows that the culture gap between the military and civilian communities may be widening.
Peter Feaver, associate professor of political science and co-director of the research project, said the extent of the gap has fluctuated since the nation's founding. Although the study does not indicate that the situation is worthy of alarm, it hints that the gap may be worsening.
Co-director Richard Kohn, professor of history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said the consortium of 20 researchers found no direct evidence that the gap is widening, but several events-including the legacy of the Vietnam War, the end of the draft and the military's difficulty in adjusting to the post-Cold War era-hint at a growing split.
This project was presented at a late-October conference in Chicago dedicated to TISS's findings. The researchers plan to use their analysis in policy discussions with top government officials. "If there are some reasonable, practical or effective initiatives offered, it suggests that they'll be... adopted [at] one time or another," Kohn said.
Feaver said the issue demands immediate governmental attention. "Good leaders address problems before a crisis. Now is the time to address worrying trends [in civilian-military relations]," he said.
However, the culture gap is not widening across the board. "Not all gaps are bad and not all convergences are good... Some differences are to be expected," said Feaver.
Researchers found that many civilians' perceptions of the military stem from whether they or their relatives have ever served. "Different experiences change people's attitudes.... [Their] judgments are based on a wider range of information about the military," Feaver said.
Additionally, researchers believe the switch to an all-volunteer force since the Vietnam War was critical, because the younger generation has not faced compulsory military service. "The general public's connection to the military is dwindling because of the all-volunteer force," Feaver said. "Fewer people are going into the military, and the World War II [and] Korean War generations are dying off."
The results were a compilation of several surveys: a phone survey of public opinion, a written questionnaire for policy-makers and another questionnaire for military leaders.
Lindsay Cohn, one of the researchers, said that "most of the debate up until now has relied extensively on interview and anecdotal evidence-which certainly has its place and played a part in our study-but our project can show in more concrete terms how far apart the military is from civilians on some questions and how surprisingly close the two groups are on others."
Ole Holsti, George V. Allen professor emeritus of political science, has been gathering data about the civilian-military gap since 1976, and decided to join the TISS project in 1997. In order to avoid further widening the military-civilian gap, he said, the military must avoid a conservative bias.
"The military ought to be very careful about being labeled as a partisan organization [by the public]," Holsti said. "It is not in the military's interest."
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