2.1Separation and the normal theory
Huntington's The Soldier and the State (1957) gives the classic statement of one answer. Its reading note puts the core in one line: objective civilian control through a professional officer corps that stays out of politics. This article reads that answer as a division of fields, in which civilians set the ends and a professional body handles the means; the note itself says only what is quoted above.
Cohen's Supreme Command (2002) is written against what Cohen calls the normal theory, the view that civilians set the aims and leave operations to soldiers. His reading note records his finding that Lincoln, Clemenceau, Churchill and Ben-Gurion questioned and intervened in military matters, in what he calls an unequal dialogue. The note does not say what made the dialogue unequal. Set beside Huntington's note, it gives a contrast in kind, as this article reads the pair: one answer keeps the executing profession apart, the other finds four wartime leaders reaching into military matters.
2.2Principals and agents
Feaver's Armed Servants (2003) recasts the relation in the terms of agency. In its reading note, civil-military relations are a principal-agent problem: civilian principals monitor, and military agents may work or shirk. The note says nothing of how the principal tells working from shirking, or of results that fall short for reasons neither party controls. Those are the questions this article puts to Clausewitz.
2.3Plans, corrigibility and the bearer of loss
Three further works bear on decisions written down under uncertainty, though none is about civil-military relations as such.
Clarke's Mission Improbable (1999) holds, in its reading note, that organisations write plans for catastrophes they cannot control, which he calls fantasy documents, and that such plans could not work as written but serve to persuade others, and the organisations themselves, that the risk is under control. The note gives a test that can be put to any written plan: could it work as written?
Collingridge's The Social Control of Technology (1980) is, in its note, about the dilemma of control: while a technology is young its effects cannot be known, and once they are known it is entrenched and hard to change. Collingridge argues for keeping decisions corrigible, that is, easy to monitor and to correct, and for keeping options open. The article borrows only the term and its two properties.
Luhmann's Risk (1993) separates, in its note, risk, a possible loss attributed to one's own decision, from danger, a possible loss attributed to something outside one's control. The same loss is a risk to the one who decides and a danger to those who are affected but did not decide. The distinction gives a vocabulary for asking where an emergency decision puts the uncertainty it cannot remove.
2.4The positions side by side
| Question | Huntington (1957) | Cohen (2002) | Feaver (2003) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where is control secured? | In a professional officer corps that stays out of politics | In civilian leaders who question and intervene in military matters | In civilian principals who monitor |
| What is the relation between civilians and those who execute? | A professional corps kept out of politics | An unequal dialogue | Principal and agent |
| What can go wrong on the executing side? | (not in the note) | (not in the note) | The agent may shirk |
| What the note leaves open | What happens when the plan meets resistance | What made the dialogue unequal | How the principal tells shirking from shortfall that no one could avoid |
The first three rows restate the reading notes; the last is this article's. It marks one gap across the three positions as the notes give them: none says who carries the uncertainty between a civilian decision and its execution. Clarke's test, Collingridge's corrigibility and Luhmann's distinction are three ways of asking that question of a written decision.
2.5What Clausewitz is brought in to do
On War is not, in its reading note, a contribution to this debate. It enters because its Book I joins a claim about authority (policy governs) to a claim about resistance (friction and uncertainty), and so speaks to the gap in the table's last row, and because its Book VIII states a preference about who should frame the plan of a war. Section 4 reads the text; Section 7 returns to the table.