ABSTRACT
Contemporary civil-military relations can be examined in the context of Hew Strachan’s idea of strategy as the necessary ‘bridge’ spanning the fault line or chasm between the policy aspirations of politicians and the plans drawn up bymilitary professionals for usingmilitary resources. Colin Gray takes a similar view of strategy as ‘the bridge that relates military power to political purpose; it is neither military power per se nor political purpose.’ He further defines strategy ‘as the use that is made of force and the threat of force for the ends of policy.’2 To be sure, this conception of strategy and the purposive use of force can involve both the actual application of military power in actions such as operations, missions, and tasks as well as the effects that stem in part from the mere existence of what the great maritime strategist, Sir Julian Corbett, referred to as ‘forces in being.’3
Military strategy can, in other words, include both the actual use of military capabilities in discrete actions and also the readiness of forces to undertake activities when called upon to do so. The military instrument is a potent element of national power that a state may bring to bear to attain national strategic objectives. And the absence of strategy and strategic dialogue are at the heart of the problem of civil-military relations in modern democratic states. As a result, more research ought to be focused on developing a new model of civil-military relations, built upon a sustained dialogue between civilians and soldiers that rests ultimately on a more realistic assessment of the military means available to attain policy ends.
