Thread by @RadioFreeTom

When I first started lecturing to military audiences about civil-military relations 25 years ago, I said U.S. civ-mil relations were a excellent model.
I would never say that now. We have a dysfunctional civ-mil situation in so many ways. /1

https://twitter.com/MrNatProgressiv/status/1383804824534147079

Too many civilian political leaders lack military experience, and so they defer to the uniformed military too quickly. It's all "TYFYS" and "Tell us what you need to get the job done" and no real control other than some budgetary constraints. /2

We've gone from a citizen-soldier model to an army of venerated Spartans, who are treated - and who believe themselves to be - superior to the civilians they are supposed to serve and protect. We are creating a Latin American officer corps, isolated from society and above it. /3

Militaries by their nature are a little more xenophobic and nationalistic than most other institutions, but ours is developing malignancies within itself that are becoming hostile to democracy *at home*. Our praetorian veneration is a kool-aid we keep serving up. /4

We've allowed the military to become a closed ideological ecosystem, allowed it to become super-competent at operations but detached from strategic thinking and social realities. In this, I am sorry to say, PME has not been helping much. /5

I am not sure what the answer is. A draft would solve a lot of it, but that will not happen in this country. More ROTC scholarships in more schools, for more officers from across America, including elite schools? Maybe. But mostly, it's always the same problem: Us. The voters. /6

As long as we outsource our security to volunteers, defer to them, and then treat them as if they are The Avengers in uniform (and then underfund veteran's services once they're out), we civilians are going to create more Mike Flynns (of whom there are many still in uniform). /7

The "civil-military" relationship is not 50-50. Civilians, by the Constitution the leaders of the military. But we've gotten too lazy to bother with that, and too drunk on our own Soviet-like military-patriotic culture to bother to fix it. At our peril. /8x