Civil control of the military

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Civil control of the military is a doctrine in military and political science that places ultimate responsibility for a country's strategic decision-making in the hands of the state's civil authority, rather than completely with professional military leadership itself. As such, a "fundamental requirement of any nation is to ensure that the activities of its armed forces are subordinated to the political purposes of constitutional government; hence, the armed forces must be under civil control".^[1] The concept of civil control falls within the overarching concept of civil-military relations representing the "societal imperative that the military remain subordinate to civil authority and that it reflect, to an appropriate degree, societal values and norms".^[2]

Civil oversight over militaries puts the power to take military action in the hands of a civil authority, such as through government ministers or legislative bodies, or the democratic apparatus of the Crown in constitutional monarchies. Allowing the civil component of government to retain control over the military or state security illustrates the power of the citizenry, a healthy respect for democratic values, and what can be described as good governance.^[3] Giving power to the civil component of the government over what the military can do and how much money it can spend protects the democratic process from abuse. Nations that can achieve legitimate relationship between the two structures serve to be more effective and provide accountability between government and military.^[4]

Civil control can be accomplished in a number of ways, for example through complete civilian control or for a mixed civilian-military approach, for example, "typical for the British model of armed forces administration is the balanced ratio of civilian and military personnel in key ministerial positions".^[5] Under the civil control model, a state's government and military are confined to the rule of law and submit to civil oversight to make an effective security apparatus possible.^[4] Transparency has taken hold throughout the international system to improve bureaucracy and the democratisation of both democratic countries and resistant authoritarian holdovers. This has grown to involve the armed forces/security forces themselves to work towards the international norm of fully liberalising these organisations.^[6]

Civil control is often seen as a prerequisite feature of a stable liberal democracy. Use of the term in scholarly analyses tends to take place in the context of a democracy governed by elected officials, though the subordination of the military to political control is not unique to these societies. For example, there is often civilian control of the military in communist states, such as the People's Republic of China. Mao Zedong stated that "Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party," reflecting the primacy of the Chinese Communist Party over the People's Liberation Army.

As noted by University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill professor Richard H. Kohn, "civilian control is not a fact but a process".^[7] Affirmations of respect for the values of civil control notwithstanding, the actual level of control sought or achieved by the civil leadership may vary greatly in practice, from a statement of broad policy goals that military commanders are expected to translate into operational plans, to the direct selection of specific targets for attack on the part of governing politicians. National leaders with limited experience in military matters often have little choice but to rely on the advice of professional military commanders trained in the art and science of warfare to inform the limits of policy; in such cases, the military establishment may enter the bureaucratic arena to advocate for or against a particular course of action, shaping the policy-making process and blurring any clear cut lines of civil control.

The reverse situation, where professional military officers control national politics, is called a military dictatorship.

A lack of control over the military may result in a state within a state, as observed in countries like Pakistan. One author, paraphrasing Samuel P. Huntington's writings in The Soldier and the State, has summarised the civil control ideal as "the proper subordination of a competent, professional military to the ends of policy as determined by civilian authority".^[8]