Author: Daniyar
Tengelbay
According to Huntington (1991), objective control of the
military is better than subjective one. He highlights that it includes three
main points: expertise, corporateness and responsibility.
The aim of the military is to manage violence and serve the general society. And
he argues that for achieving these aims professionalism of the military and
objective civilian control over it are necessary. Military should be an
autonomous institution that does not interfere into the politics, while
civilians do not interfere into the military affairs. There should be a proper
professional division of duties. One of the significant qualities of the
military is political neutrality. People accept them as nonpartisan; and they
are the most respectful institution. The author of the article, Bryan Bender (2017),
argues that as a military officer person should be fully suspended from
politics. While, as a person out of military he has full rights to represent
election official, participate in political club, share his views, but not to
be a part of political party.
Bender’s
main concern is the role of social media in recent civil-military relations. The
rules that separate military from politics are old and social media was not
concerned during that time. According to these rules a uniform officer cannot
participate in any political actions, but there is nothing about social media
in those rules. Meanwhile, sharing and reposting political posts or news can
mean active participation in promoting certain political views and ideas.
According to the poll, soldiers and officers actively practice such political
participation. This leads to loss of the value of military professionalism. Military
is high rated institution by public. However, if such “online” political
participation will continue, military will lose both its value and public
support. The idea of objective control will not matter anymore.
Moreover,
author says that Trump’s embraces of military and use of retired military
generals on his side will also diminish the brand of US military as nonpartisan
and professional institution. He provides a link between those two things - the
survey and Trump’s election. However, according to “Task and purpose” (2017), a
site that analyzes veterans and military affairs, the survey was conducted in
2015, long before Trump’s election. They also argue that “Politico” is
ironizing that military was fully out of politics and just started to be
involved. It could be said that both are right to some extent. Social media is
really a tool that affects people and helps to promote certain ideology or
views and it is increasing the political involvement not only of military, but of
general public as well. However, as “Task and Purpose” says, military was not
fully out of politics as in administration of presidents there have always been
retired officers and generals. This does not mean neither that military is
politicized, nor that it fully out of politics. It keeps being professional
prior of various changes in politics of the state. Therefore, it is wrong to
say that Trump is politicizing the military, while the increasing role of
social media is clear.
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