Thanks for Your Service

Welcome to shield of the Republic, a podcast sponsored by the Bulwark and the Miller Center

of public affairs at the University of Virginia, and dedicated to the proposition articulated by Walter Littman during World War two that a strong and balanced foreign policy is the necessary shield of our Democratic Republic Eric Edelman, counselor at the Center for Strategic and budgetary assessments, a Bulwark contributor, and a non resident. Fellow at the Miller Center, and I’m joined from Cape Cod by my partner in this enterprise Elliott Cohen, the Roberty Ozgood Professor of Strategy at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and the Harley Burke Chair and Strategy at the center for strategic and international studies. Elliot welcome from the cape.

Well, thank you. It’s good to be here. I I have to say there are very few things that would take me away from a crystalline New England day where I just swam back and forth across a pond and was skipping through the breakers on the ocean side. Of wellfleet. But but to be here with Peter Fever and with you, I mean, I would miss anything for that.

Well, I think you should introduce our guests since he was your two t at Harvard. So you’re responsible, for all of these. All of his ideas good and bad.

I mean, I was just a year or two, a year or two ahead of him. And so, you know, like, like, one of those awful private schools where the, you know, the upper class would get to beat up the ones who are one or two years. I love them, but Peter has forgiven me, I think, So, our friend Peter Fever, and he really is our friend. He’s been on this podcast before, is one of the country’s leading experts on civil military relations. He’s professor at Duke University.

He is, however, also, unusually somebody who’s, from academia who has seen a lot of the world of practice, including serving an on the National Security Council staff is one of the as I guess the main strategic planner.

In Two tours on the National Security Council.

Yes. Served as a naval reservist, which is probably not irrelevant to the topic of the book, all around good guy, which doesn’t mean that we will give him an easy time. We will not. Who has just written a very interesting book called Thank you for your service. It’s a as as you said, Erica, Data Rich, study of civil military relations.

I’m I’m gonna begin just by framing it and then throwing it to you, Peter, to kind of take open up the discussion. I think one of the points you make, which is a great point, is the, the American public by and large, although there’s been some slippage recently has a quite a high view of the American military, particularly in comparison with other institutions in American society. And what’s what’s equally interesting is the one thing that they may know about the military is that everybody else thinks that way. Too. So, why don’t you take that and, run with it for a bit?

Well, thanks. And and it’s I’m honored. I I think I’m a triple defender. Three strikes and I’m out. But thank you for having me back.

I I must say also thank you, Elliot, for your generous blurb. You blurb the book. And, when I first read your blurb, I thought you said Peter is one of academine’s most cute observers. And I thought, oh, that’s a very flattering thing. Then I read it again, those acute, observers.

I’ll I’ll take it either way. But, The the point you flagged at the outset is an important one. This is a social fact. The idea of that the public has high esteem in the military. This is a social fact that is known by other Americans, and it’s one of the few things they know about the the military.

When you pro detailed questions, you get, either the I don’t know response or you get wild guesses that are wrong. It’s also one of the few things that the military knows about American public opinion. So I bet you’ve had the experience. You really can. Have a conversation with a senior military leader that goes past five minutes before they’ll point out.

That the military is held in I assume. It’s something the military cares about, and the book says they’re right to care about it. I the book also reminds people that it was not always so. So it’s not as if since the founding of the Republic Americans have held the professional military in high steam. I would say the normal, the the for most of our history, we held the citizen soldier in high esteem the one who answered the call of the bugle and rushed to rescue the country, but then went home to the farm plow.

And the professional military who served during peace time, that was they were not held in high esteem. That created a crisis after the shift to all volunteer force. When we had to recruit people into this so called low esteem service, for an extended period of time, And I think the pivot point in the the chrono chronology is the Reagan era. When Reagan rebuilt confidence in the military and was able to you know, have that confidence be extended to the professional military, not just to the, wartime military. And that’s, that’s more or less held true for the last, four decades.

How how

healthy is that degree of esteem? And that awareness on the part of the military about it. Because on the one hand, obviously, you do wanna have people appreciate the sacrifice that some military Will Saletan, not all military people. Let’s remember. But on the other hand, and I’ll betray my own views.

I think There are also pernicious consequences from this, including a degree of escaping real accountability, or am I being too harsh?

Well, so there’s really two questions, you can ask from the skeptic’s eye. One is it’s high, but will it remain high? And I’m of the view that says it’s it’s high but hollow. Of course, in the last several years, it’s gone down and and we can dig into that in a moment if you want. The other skeptic’s question is the one you asked, which is it’s high, but is that a good thing?

And my view is that, it comes with some positives and it comes with some negatives. And all in all, the positives outweigh the negatives. And I would rather have the problems we have with American highest team of the military than the problems that, say, Canada might have or some of our NATO partners have with low esteem of a military that they need for national security purposes. There are things that are worse. Even amongst our, you know, advanced industrial democracies, there are civil military problems that are worse than the ones we have here.

But you do put your finger on one of the downsides. When you put the military when you hold the military in such high esteem, you’re putting them on a pedestal. And in the book, I talk about pedestalization. When you put someone on a pedestal, they are up there looking down. And potentially looking down on you.

And it’s an invitation and opportunity for alienation on both ends. You know, you have unreasonable expectations of them. And then when they fail, you knock them down, and trample on them. But up there, if they’re on the pedestal, they they can avoid, some of the messiness that comes from being down amongst the rest of us. And and in the book, I particularly draw attention to, what I call the partisan blame game which is, an opportunity that the military have to play off of their high status and avoid accountability, avoid some of the tough scrutiny for operational challenges or even outright failures.

That happened on their watch. And and so when the military is held in high, it seemed that’s easier to play that game. And that’s a cost of hiring.

Eric, you had to live that. Do you wanna

Yeah. I wanna I wanna dig into some of this with you, Peter. So One of the points you make in the book is that, and and for the benefit of our listeners, I think it’s worth explaining that, this is based on two very large surveys, that, proprietary surveys that, you conducted in twenty nineteen and twenty twenty, but it also draws on a wealth of other data polling the national election, sir, American national election survey data. There are lots of sources of data here. And as Elliot said, I, as I’ve mentioned, it’s a very data rich book.

But the the real I mean, correct me if I got it wrong, but from reading it, the the real increase. I mean, you talked about the lowest team that the all volunteer force faced in the wake of Vietnam and trying to recruit a force, then also problems of drugs, chief of staff of the army saying it was a hollow army, etcetera. The real two enormous, boosts to the public estimation of the military. Were the first gulf war, in in nineteen ninety one, and then nine eleven. And the deployment of the US military into the wars against terrorists that followed on from from that.

But to to to dig into what Elliot was just saying, the public also seems quite ambivalent about those wars. The the endless wars, the forever wars, they were clearly inconclusive in the case of Afghanistan. It it ended, you know, disastrously and tragically. In twenty twenty one. And yet, I I would say, and, you know, from my own experience here that, you know, in the Pentagon, The military has really escaped from a lot of accountability.

And and you found that there is this sort of immunity from prosecution, if you will, in the data about public attitudes. I mean, can you talk about that a little bit?

Sure. And let me just emphasize for our listener that the data was proprietary, but is now available for anyone to download. So if you’re a grad student looking for something to write a paper on and you need to show off your statistical analytical chops, download this, these data files because we’ve the book just barely scratches the surface of of what we got. But one of the things surveying in twenty twenty, it’s which is before the Biden decision to leave regardless of consequences, but still in the middle of president Trump’s debate about or signaling that he wanted to leave Afghanistan regardless of consequences. So the policy issue was available for the public to evaluate.

And it was clear that the war in Afghanistan by twenty twenty was not going the way. We all hoped it would, you know, in the early two thousand two time frame and thought maybe it had a chance of going. What was interesting was when you dug into the respondents and disaggregated by whether they were Republican or Democrat or independent. And then ask them more specific questions about who should get blame, who should get credit, you know, how did these people, how did our leaders do in the conduct of the war. So much more, nuanced questions than previous polls have asked.

This odd pattern emerged. Where Democratic respondents would say Democratic leaders did pretty well as did the military, but Republican leaders really screwed up the war. And then Republican leaders would say Republican leaders did pretty well as did the military, but Democratic leaders screwed up In other words, the partisans were willing to blame the other partisan civilian leader but not blame the military. And if it was a question of giving credit, they would give credit to the military. If it was a question about blame, they give blame to the civilian leaders.

Now as you know, you both served at senior levels as civilians. Civilians do make mistakes, so they they should

be held accountable. Absolutely. And I just don’t wanna stipulate for all our listeners that I am not suggesting that civilians did not make mistakes or, you know, should not bear plenty of share of the blame for things that went wrong in either of those two conflicts.

But what what the polling suggests is that the civilians do not enjoy any insulation beyond partisanship. Whereas the military enjoys an insulation from criticism, and possibly from accountability. Just by virtue, and they can sort of attach themselves to whichever is the the in the insulated partisan, civilian leader. Now our polls weren’t showing that the military was actively fomenting this, but our polls showed that the mill this was available to the military when they’re in the hot seat. And so that, you know, that is, a potential downside of high confidence because it could insulate the military.

If I had money to do more surveys now, I’d wanna follow-up because it’s now two years after the disaster. Disastrous departure. And what is the public thinking now about the military? My own guess would be that the military is still avoiding, the, you know, suffering the most, blame and the decline in confidence is not really driven so much by Afghanistan as by other factors. But that’s an empirical question worth investigating.

I mean, I agree with the basic conclusion, but I think I pushed the implications harder. I think it’s It’s extremely unhealthy because look, when you had a draft based military, people saw the underside of Military is a big complicated organization with a lot of wonderful people and a lot of not so wonderful people, and which does some things brilliantly well, and some things, you know, that are just stupid or bizarre or incompetent or ineffective. And in a draft military, everybody knew that. I mean, hence, cartoon strips like Beatles Bailey, which I don’t I have no idea how that one survives, although it seems to, which is, you know, the army is seen from the point of view of the draft tea. Basically.

And, and I think the result was a kind of a healthy weariness. And I Whereas, I I really do feel that when we look at the Afghan and Iraq Wars, although there were some very big successes, you know, I would think about the surge, which played a role in Peter. You definitely did Eric. I played it maybe a minor role in it. But, I mean, it was military military idea executed by by military people, so they’re the ones who really deserve the credit for it, but you also had things which were appalling.

And I’m I’ve I’ll give you just one example. And when I first went to Afghanistan for Secret Podcast Rice in two thousand seven, and I I was astonished. There were like seven different chains of command. There were seven like seven different wars. You had a an American force, operation enduring freedom.

You had a NATO chain of command. You had the so called white special operations forces. They were fighting their own war. That sort of green berets. We had Bulwark special operations forces.

In other words, Delta, the super secret ones, they’re fighting their own war. CIA is fighting its own war. The people who were responsible for training the Afghan military, but we’re also conducting operations. They were fighting their war. And, you know, when I when I talked to military people about that and then, well, and I said, what about this unity of command thing that you’re already pre always preaching?

So, no, no, no, no, we coordinate just fine, which is exactly what the two commanders of Pearl Harbor said, by the way, after the attack when and, you know, and there are similar things or the other pieces of malpractice. So this will be a bit down in the weeds. In both Afghanistan and Iraq, we rotate a divisional headquarters. So these are very high level headquarters every year. Which meant that that you obliterated any memory, institutional memory of what you had been doing.

You incentivized people to drop their predecessor’s plans in favor of their own plans, but it it cost all kinds of distortions. It was completely unnecessary. That was a military judgment civilians had nothing to do with it. And it it, you know, I felt it really had a deleterious effect on our conduct of the war. And I have not only have I not heard criticism of this from the outside.

The thing that troubles me most is I don’t think the United States military really kind of held up a mirror to itself after the first decade or so in Afghanistan and Iraq saying where did we screw up because they most certainly did.

So there’s two things here and the that are they weren’t distinguishing. One is they’re both drivers of public confidence, by the way. One is what I call patriotism, and that’s the rally to the flag. So after nine eleven, public confidence in military went up immediately, not because the military had done anything yet, but because we were in war time, and so there’s a rally effect. And and this rally effect is probably the number one pillar undergirding public confidence in the military.

If you can only ask one question and you have to predict confidence. Ask are we at war or not? And if we’re at war, public confidence is likely to be higher if we’re not, it’s likely to be lower. The second, though, gets to the heart of what you were talking about, Elliott, and that’s performance is the military good at the military mission. That it’s doing.

And here, the poll results are pretty clear that drives public confidence in the military. If you prime the public with information that the military is not doing well, you can drive down confidence. So it it does respond to bad news. Abba Graeb, probably a little bit of a drop in confidence after those reports, you can drive down public confidence, but the public has baked into its view of the military the idea that the military is very competent and is good at what it does. And so it’s anchor.

It’s a view that’s anchored and takes a fair bit of a push to drive it down. I’ll just flag one a third one because it’s somewhat related and that is ethical pro professional ethics. The public likewise believes that the military is ethical in how it wields its responsibilities. And if you prime the public to with information that suggests it’s not ethical, then again, you can drive down the the public confidence. And so the the public sort of starts with a view.

Our military’s good. Good at what they do. They’re ethical in what they do. And then it’s hard to move them, but not impossible to move them. And I and I do think that that a, you know, an unvarnished assessment of the sort you are suggesting, Elliot, would uncover.

Genuine criticisms, and it would have the effect of driving down con confidence. I don’t that that’s a price worth paying, I think, for deservedness. My recommendation at the end of the book is the military should not worry about keeping public confidence high it should worry about deserving high public confidence that that’s the that’s the focus. And when they make mistakes, they should own up.

So, Peter, let me let me poke at different elements of this. So first, you know, the book makes a point that the public has a lot of difficulty seeing the military, in, you know, sort of kind of granularity, yeah, of detail. So there’s not a whole lot of distinction made between retired former senior officers who they see on, you know, television, you know, providing commentary on events with active duty. There’s not that much distinction between senior officers and the enlisted personnel. And the public doesn’t seem to have you know, any kind of detailed grasp that would enable it, for instance, to make reasonable judgments about performance, you know, how how well did the military perform?

On top of that, you have the phenomenon that, we talked about at the outset that you described in some detail in the book, which clearly has an impact on confidence, which is the social desirability, a bias, of of saying, you know, thank you for your service, you know, honoring the military. All of which really does, you know, kind of, kind of, create this insulation particularly for the senior, active duty military from from criticism for performance. And I one of I guess I would say two things. One, to Elliott’s point, there doesn’t seem to have been a lot of self reflection. I mean, there there have been efforts at lessons learned.

There’s been a very, you know, interesting and pretty good, two volume detailed history of the US Army’s performance in Iraq, for instance, but you don’t get a sense that that has been really reflected on or even read by a lot of senior officers. And you also have this, and I would just I would take maybe not a issue, but maybe just put one nuance into what Elliott said earlier. There does seem to be an awareness among junior officers that their seniors are not being held to account. And that that came up a couple of times you know, while we were in office with articles appearing in, professional military journals by active duty officers saying, Hey, wait. How come no one got, you know, fired for some of these failures.

And to his credit, I think Bob Gates when he was secdef did try to bring some of that back a little bit by making some changes. By essentially firing some people when things went wrong, but, you know, that, you know, what’s so striking about what Gates did is how singular it was. And it really hasn’t happened, you know, it didn’t happen before. Obviously, his tender really hasn’t happened since. I I would invite either or both of you to comment on any of that.

Well, you’re I agree with you that the that the public doesn’t follow the issues closely enough. For for it for these this level of granularity to shape its attitudes. The polls show that that the public can distinguish that knows that there is a difference between officer and enlisted or something knows in the abstract knows in the abstract. There are different services. But they’re not closely following it and it and so their view of the military tends to be, you know, more of a blobby moving like that.

That doesn’t mean though that those differences aren’t important. And you you put your finger on it. One of the challenges senior leaders have is not maintaining public confidence, but maintaining confidence within the rank and file. And and partly for the reasons that you identified. But I wanna flag a second factor which I think, maybe even, well, I won’t say more impactful, but just as impactful.

And that is the a change, really late in the trump years that tried to drive a wedge right between the senior military leaders and the rank and file. And he was messaging the public. He being president Trump. So he really was trying to shift the public. Attitudes.

And he wanted to say public, don’t have confidence in the generals because they’re criticizing me. Do have confidence in the rank and file who are keeping quiet, and I’m gonna tell you they all support me. And so, That was a very unusual moment to have an American commander in chief sort of try to split you know, the public’s views between the senior leaders and the the rank and file. And the poem, which was done since my book, confirms that he had some success. It’s not just, of course, it wasn’t just him making this message, Tucker Carlson and other Republican leaders have echoed it as well.

And the biggest drop in confidence has been among Republicans. And I think that I traced that back to this effort to, by president Trump and others, to, sort of, separate the military that doesn’t seem to like Trump from the military that does seem to like trump and create sort of a two tier system for the public

So I I wanted to push a little bit further on that. You know, for first one thing is, you know, it it does strike me that the criticism that the military does get has nothing to do with military competence. So if it’s on the right, it’s, though, the military is woke. There is a very quite significant, critique on the left which has had real consequences, which is the military doesn’t deal with, sexual offenses and, you know, is is inequitable to women and and stuff like that. And that’s actually had real consequences in terms of pulling certain kinds of investigations and, disciplinary procedures out of the the normal chain of command.

So One question I suppose I have for you is, are those norms shifting? I mean, in particular, setting aside well, it’s hard to set aside Trump, but to the extent one can. But it it it is striking to me that some of like Ron DeSantis, and there are, I think, other politicians as well are now willing to be openly critical of the military for being quote unquote woke. And You know, in a certain way, it’s almost criticizing them for being unmanly. I mean, that’s the the kind of this to be perfectly honest.

That’s the subtext. They’re they’re, you know, they’re not, they’re they’re they’re not heroic figures. Now he hasn’t been able translate that into a critique of actual military competence, because I don’t think it Bulwark, but but it it’s striking that it’s there, and I so I wonder if

Well, Ted Cruz. Elliot, Ted Cruz explicitly made that, argument remember he he was the one who put the video of the Russian military engaging and exercises up and saying, oh, look at this manly military as opposed to our feminized military because it’s so woke, you know, and you can see how well that masculine military has performed in Ukraine.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that But but still, I mean, it is it is striking that that’s now changed. The military is fair game on in the culture wars. On both on both sides, primarily from the right, but there is, but there is some from the left. Is that significant, or do you think that that’s just you know, this is more of the after wash of of Trump.

No. This is the this well, certainly part of the after wash of Trump I think he accelerated and transformed and created permission space for Republicans to do things that in a previous Sarah Longwell the most extreme, you know, notwing of Republicans would ever dare to say some of the things that are now coming out of, you know, senior Republican, voices. That so there I don’t think we can diminish or we can minimize, I should say, Trump’s, role. But I think it fits into a larger, phenomenon, which I would call the politicization of the military. And that is mostly done to the military by civilians.

Although, occasionally, as we’ve talked about in a previous podcast, the the military can be sloppy or, you know, allow themselves to be politicized or in the case of retired military officers campaigning in, for on behalf of presidential candidates, they can be actively politicizing themselves. But what happens in this politicization and what the polling suggests is that the public looks at the military and says the military is politicized when they agree with my the opposite party. So Democrats say when the military agrees with me, say it’s, implementing, you know, a strong pro policy is designed to recruit all Americans from all walks of life, what Democrats would call deI policies. Okay? Then the military is not being politicized.

But when it’s agreeing with the other, party, then it’s being politicized. And of course, Republicans do the same. And that’s what the the Republican critique of woke is is it’s a it’s attacking the military using a civilian cultural war context. And it’s very bad for the military. And I have a norm that I’m trying to get out there, which is let’s give the military non combatant immunity in the culture wars.

Let’s have them, you know, not be combatants so they can’t be targeted. So the Republican should stop targeting them as say Tuberville is doing with his hold, but the Democrats can’t hide behind them. You know, if they have a culture a a policy that’s controversial. It should be civilians who are defending it at the military. And then the military have to learn how to talk about this these issues without triggering without sounding like the culture warriors.

It it’s a it’s a norm that I think we need to take hold to push back against what is otherwise just a tidal wave of pressure put politicizing the military. Over time, I think it’s going to, undermine public confidence in the military. It hasn’t done so automatically because of this partisan effect where people say, well, as Oza agreeing with me, then I’m not gonna consider them politicized But that’s a that’s a, I believe, temporary. And over time, if the military gets in this game, it’s going to you know, spiral them down as happened with the Supreme Court. Just one quick follow-up on that.

You know, I I wonder though if that’s really feasible because At the end of the days, militaries have to reflect at some level the values of the society they come from. There are we have, you know, some recent cases of things like gays in the military, large scale integration of women in the military before that racial integration the military. You know, you could have said, well, look, can’t the military be exempt from these large and divisive issues that the society is wrestling with. And the answer was you could the military could adjust to them slower than perhaps the rest of society, although in the case of racial integration, it actually led rather than than followed. Not really the case.

I think of of women or or homosexuals you know, at some level, isn’t that isn’t that truce always bound to break down?

Yes. At the I would say there’s a difference between aligning with cultural values to include the evolution in cultural values, which is what you’re talking about. And I agree. Yes. The military has to.

If it gets too far out of step, then, it has a problem. Especially in an all volunteer sorry, an all recruited force where it needs to draw from the same civilian society. But that’s different from what we’re seeing, you know, in the summer of twenty twenty three, where there’s an active culture war dimension that that goes, I think, beyond what you were, just referencing. I I think there’s a way that the military can evolve without becoming a, a victim of of the culture wars. The it’s also the case that if there’s a problem in civilian society, it will show up in the military.

If there’s suicide problem in civilian society, it’ll show up in the military. Drug problem, it’ll show up in the military. Sexual assault, it’ll show up in the military. That doesn’t mean that we can tolerate it in the military at the same levels that we as a society unfortunately tolerate those hills in our civilian society because the military has a special role. And so we we are right to hold the military to a higher standard of suicide prevention, a higher standard of sexual assault, sexual harassment prevention.

We the we can’t say, well, as those are no worse than the average college, we’re not gonna deal with it. No. We have to the average college needs to reform, but the military desperately needs to reform. In order to keep its, to be mission effective. And at the end of the day, that’s sort of the the the, occam’s razor that comes back to cut through.

Should we go this way or that way? There’s a genuine mission that the military has to meet. And will this foster the mission or will it undermine it? The reason the military cares about integrating Americans from all walks of life is unique cohesion matters. And if you can’t integrate the people, if they can’t trust each other in the Fox, then they’re not gonna be mission effective.

And it turns out you can get folks from all different walks of life to trust trust each other in the Foxville provided that you are training and, supporting them correctly.

So, Peter, you know, you talked about the all recruited force, and I would love, to hear you on how this whole set of issues we’ve just been discussing, impact the the current recruiting crisis. Right? I mean, our our collective mutual friend, Brian Lynn has an article, I think, in parameters, and the most recent issue saying, the recruiting issues that we’ve always had this. It’s nothing new, you know. It’s not a, you know, a new phenomenon, which at some level, of course, is correct.

And as you point out in the book, recruiting has always been, you know, co varied to some degree with economic conditions, at least since the advent of the all volunteer force in the late seventies, But it does strike me that this pattern of increasing criticism by Republicans who have had the highest support for confidence in the military, the attack on the military as woke, in addition to the economic situation, which clearly, a major part of this, is partly responsible for driving this recruiting crisis because you know, people from, largely from the south and from Republican leaning or conservative leaning families are not signing up as much as in the past. And that’s that’s so how do you parse out all of this, you know, and in terms of the recruiting problem. And all the services, I think, are missed their numbers, except possibly maybe the marines.

Marines. The marines.

But everybody else has missed them. The

as they revised.

The the marines may have made them, but everybody else has missed them in the army by significant margins has missed them.

So, yeah, the it is a the recruiting crisis is a crisis. And if Brian is saying it’s not a crisis, then I wouldn’t, elijah He’s not saying it’s a few crises.

He’s just saying we’ve had this crisis before.

Yes. That’s where I agree with him. It is a crisis, but it’s a crisis we’ve seen before, and I’m of the view. It’s a crisis that can be managed. And I’d rather manage it then, break the all volunteer force and go to a whole other form of of, raising and maintaining mainly conscription.

I think conscription is a cure worse than the disease. But what I would distinguish between tier one causes and tier two causes, and the declining public confidence is at tier two. Not a tier one. Tier one, it’s labor economics first and foremost. It’s also changing generational changes in the approach to careers and and what they’re looking for.

And, you know, the youngest cohort eighteen to twenty four, who, of course, is the target for recruits. They want more flexibility. They want more autonomy. They know, one famous, story that recruiter told me was, you know, they asked could I go do distance, work from home join the military and work from home. Well, it doesn’t quite work that way.

So changes in in generational changes and attitudes to what work conditions should look like. COVID was a and the the difficulty, recruiters had to get access. A big factor. And then a fourth one that doesn’t get a lot of attention has to do with the tracking of medical conditions, particularly the use of prescription drugs. Which is, was done.

That was not tracked as carefully before, and it was easy to get waivers. Now it’s tracked more carefully. And the the incidences of it have gone up post COVID. And so now it’s much harder to get waivers. That’s tier one.

Marijuana use also is caught in a way. Despite the fact that it’s legal in forty four states.

Yeah. So then tier two is things like the politicization and public confidence and the way they affect recruitment is through shaping the attitudes of the influencers. So there’s not a lot of polling evidence to say that somebody chose not to go into the military because they personally were afraid it was woke. There is evidence that people are less likely to recommend to their kid or to their, you know, if they’re a coach, to their, you know, athlete or whatever to join the military when confidence goes down. And if they think that their the military has you know, is, you know, a leftist organization or something like that.

So those the confidence number is affected you know, on the margins by shaping the the the influencers. And then from the left, there is evidence that a number of, individuals are not are not likely to join or have a decline propensity to enlist for fear of exposure to sexual assault, sexual harassment. And and also the not wanting their daughters or their nieces or whatever. To, to join. And so that problem, the military needs to get a hold of and would affect recruiting if they could, you know, change the reality and the public’s

I would add one thing on the declining propensity to do to serve to the pretty comprehensive list that you just gave, which is, at at least what I hear from, you know, senior officials in the department of defense. There there is, expressed by younger people in that age cohort. The sense that if you enter the military, you’re gonna out damaged with PTSD or traumatic traumatic brain injury or what have you, which is I guess a part, you know, of the you know, long, the kind of critique of the endless wars, but it’s also a little bit, kind of temporally out of sync because we haven’t really had, you know, large numbers of people in combat for, you know, a decade. I mean, we’ve we’ve had, you know, small groups of special forces in, in Syria or Iraq and maybe in places like Mali, but and Najir, but not like it was in the first decade, after nine eleven. So that right seems to be playing

a role here as well. Although, you know, you you you do have to, ask yourself as you watch the war in Ukraine. So I think it was a report leak that we’d now estimate that the Russians may have had about three hundred thousand dead and wounded. The Ukrainians something two hundred thousand dead wounded. You know, if God forbid we ever got into a really big war, I find it very hard to believe.

That you could wage that war with an all volunteer force. It’s just, you know, I think one of the less hard lessons we’re learning is is a quantitative one I was wondering since our, I mean, we’ve been rattling along here. I was wondering if we could shift to a different piece of civil military relations, and that’s not so much the military and society or the military and elites, but the military at the very top and political leaders. And, Peter, I’ll give away a minor secret. You and I belong to a small group of somewhat paranoid students of civil military relations.

We’re always kinda comparing notes Jonathan Last trying

to scare each other.

Trying to be each one trying to be more pure than the other and maintaining civilian authority and control. But, you, you know, the the challenge is never really, I think, outright defiance. I mean, even Douglas McArthur, we do it closely at that case. That wasn’t it. It’s a bit more subtle.

So I I wanted to just do a little bit of a lightning round with you and and and with you Eric since Lord knows you had to live this. So, recently, just like, but there before we take this, the commander of US air forces in, Europe and Africa said that, well, the Ukrainian really won’t be able to master the use of f sixteens for five years. Now, first, that’s a professional judgment, which I think is open to dispute. But quite apart from that, that is a statement which I can have real political consequences in terms of, you know, what sort of support for Ukraine? Do we go ahead and give them f sixteens?

Actually, to buy if I can ask both of you, thumbs up, thumbs down. Is that appropriate or inappropriate?

I’ll let Erica first.

You know, look, part of the problem is, you know, on a lot of these issues, and this is something that the three of us have talked about before. At the very senior levels. The line between what is a professional military judgment and what is a political judgment is very blurred. You know, I mean, in in addition to the exam, you just gave Elliot. You could also adduce the example not long ago of General Minahan who, you know, was saying we’re gonna be going to war with China, you know, in the next couple of years, which may or maybe may or may not be right.

You know, I mean, I I I mean, I tend to be you know, as it goes, China tend to be on the more alarmist side of the spectrum by and large, but whether it was appropriate for, you know, a four star to say that, publicly, you know, or in an unclassified setting. I mean, you know, that that I think is open to question as as well. My own view is that when when it comes to these kinds of statements, senior military leaders would be well advised to take you know, the advice, that speaker Sam Rayburn, you know, once used to give to young politicians and which I used to keep on an index card taped in front of me whenever I was testifying in front of the US Congress. Which is nobody ever got in trouble for something they didn’t say, you know, and and that goes by the way for civilian leaders as as well. I think there’s far too much commentary nowadays in part because of the ubiquity of the media, you know, in and around the decision making process.

People ought not be saying things on the record and they ought not be saying things on background. I mean, there has been a Elliott, you and I have had some exchanges on signal about this. There’s been a concatination of background briefing in the financial times, New York Times, Washington Post, of administration figures, second guessing, the Ukrainians ends. They’re offensive doing badly. They’re not doing the right things.

They’ve got their forces you know, Maloportion. They shouldn’t be in the south. They ought to be defending coupons. Blah blah blah. Whatever.

You know, they’re not capable of making real gains. Those judgments may or may not be right. I tend to think they’re not. But they will not be expounded, you know, in the press. At the same time, the administration is trying to go to Congress for twenty billion dollars worth of additional, you know, material support, in a supplemental for Ukraine.

Because that that kind of background is just undermining their case.

So my response will be a little more cagey. The the polling shows that the military queues can move, can nudge public opinion. Meaning if a military leader says something, it can it can nudge the public in one direction or the other. The nudge the effect is bigger when the military says something surprising and against type. So the, a military, person saying we’re gonna go to war tomorrow.

You know, that that would be shocking. And so that would have a bigger impact. Military person saying we need to spend more on defense. That’s not gonna move public needle much. A military person saying we’re spending way too much on defense.

We can cut back. That would have a bigger impact. That’s the first thing I’ll say. The second thing is that there is a big difference between military candor in private and military outspokenness in public. And the And I think that was the goes to the hard way you were just saying, Eric, that I think, senior air force general opining on how long it’ll take for the Ukrainians has learned to fly the f sixteen.

I hope he’s giving that view to his senior leaders inside the chain of command because that’s a genuine militarily relevant, and he’s an expert presumably. And so he has a an informed opinion Jonathan Last the what you’re talking about Elliot is if you say that publicly, now you’re part of the information warfare space, you have to be much more careful.

I think that I mean, that’s exactly the point. I mean, of course, there should be and in some ways, there should be more candor in private than I think I saw and I suspect Eric that you saw, you know, it it it is quite striking how you can see very highly decorated general or flag officers And when they get to the presence of the president of the United States or even the Secret Podcast of state or Secret Podcast defense, all of a sudden, know, everything is going swimmingly, madam Secret Podcast if, you know, if you hic hiccups here and there. Let me ask just one other, quick one. So, General Millie, who’s about to retire. We all know quite well.

Was, after initially apparently thinking that the Ukrainians would be done in in a few days to change his view. And then, but then, you know, he gives this is a statement where you’re saying, well, it’s gonna be a long hard slog, and, you know, eventually this this should be solved by negotiations. Again, and and I ask the two of you not to weasel, please. Because I I will give a very forthright answer whether or not the two of you do. Should he have said that in public?

Not in private.

I think it’s fine for Millie to say that this, from his vantage point right now looks like a long hard slog. That’s a reasonable military judgment period. That’s where he should have stopped his comment. To talk about whether it should be a diplomatic solution or not is, to me, that’s policy.

I’m wanted to give him a little bit of rope, but maybe I’m being, maybe I’m pedifogging and, being academic, but every war even the wars that ended with surrender require some negotiations at the end. So there was surrender even in, Japan and certainly in the east and where we’re, I mean, in the west and where we’re two. And if that’s what he meant, then at some point, the Russians and the Ukrainians are gonna have to sit down and forge a post war agreement. I think he’s right. And I’ve written on that subject.

So I I do think that, the world will have to in that way. But if he’s saying we need to throttle back the military support in order to put pressure for the, the Ukrainians to make a diplomatic concession and, you know, and thus seek some sort of temporary ceasefire. Now he’s in the that’s that if that’s what was meant, that’s in the realm of policy and Okay.

I would hit the buzzer on that one. Because the truth is when somebody like that first, he’s not talking about the quote unquote negotiations that, you know, where Admiral Dunitz signs the, the ceasefire or the Japanese officials are on the quarter neck of Missouri. That wasn’t much of a negotiation. Let’s face But but I think, you know, the the the point that I would make is when somebody of that seniority says something, it is consequential. And and the way it it almost doesn’t make a difference how you intended it to be taken.

It’s how it is taken.

Elliott just on on that point. Look, it’s a a lot of this, of course, depends on the context. And and in a context where presidential candidates are saying, you know, we have to make the Ukrainians, you know, negotiate or we to end this with the negotiation, it that kind of comment inevitably plays into a policy debate. That that was why I you know, took took issue with it. I mean, Peter, I take your point that, you know, every war must end, right, as one of my, you know, distinguished predecessors as as undersecretary of Defense for Policy argued in a very, very good little book.

But, I I think senior officers in general in my experience are not sufficiently sensitive to the fact that when they speak as a four star, there are potential political consequences to what they say and and therefore they ought to air, you know, on on the side of being laconic in their responses.

Alright. I I think on on this one, I am as the French would say, pure and hard. Let me I wanna we’re we’re just about out of time. And if Eric, with your permission, I’d like to shift over to something completely different. Our, only those of our our listeners who are students at Duke know that Peter is a fantastic teacher of undergraduates.

He’s written a book on the subject. I’ve taught many of his, his students when they’ve taken sit down and come into my classes, for graduate school. You really are terrific. And we were talking a little bit before about what is like teaching in the age of chat GPT? And I’ll just, kind of just sitting out my own position.

I’ve played. I’m first, thank goodness. I’m retired from teaching. And in part because I wouldn’t like to have to deal with this. And having having tried CHPT a few times, it’s it has always struck me as a resembling a mediocre extremely ambitious, kind of somewhat sycophantic sophomore.

You know, who will dish up anything that you really want. If you say, I I didn’t like that answer. It’ll say, oh, I’m terribly sorry. That’d give you something else that’s completely fallacious also. So how do you how do you and, of course, this is just where a g chat GPT three point five or four point something.

But it’s gonna be a serious issue what what these models can do. And I’m just wondering if you could talk a little bit to our listeners Some of whom may be students, some of whom may have kids who are students, about what what’s the world of teaching and learning in this era?

Well, the truth is we’re still figuring this out, and we’re going to be we have to fly this plane as we build it. And I’m prepared to to hear back that I failed miserably in the approach I’m I’m gonna be taking. But there there’s broadly two approaches. One is that, you build up the castle walls, you widen the moat and you say, everything is gonna be done hand, pencil, and paper and in real time no access. And I think that’s appropriate for some evaluative exercise.

I’ve always done some of that. That’s a very real life situation. There are times when you are hauled before your boss and asked, you know, a question and you don’t have any time, you gotta be able to answer it in real time. So there’s but I don’t think, you can have all your evaluative exercises in that because one of the most important skills Elliot, and Erica, you know well, is writing. You have to be able to write to work in our business that when you’re working the national security they care about, your oral and your written expression.

And so that requires papers, and that opens the door for use and misuse of chat GPT. I link liken it to Wikipedia in the early days. I don’t know if you remember what it was like, but the first your true of Wikipedia. It was, you know, a swamp. It’s it’s gotten much better.

And now Wikipedia is, you know, a reliable first step like an encyclopedia of Maricana, you know, that you pull off the sales and take a quick look. When did, you know, the battle happen? Okay. That’ll give you the the a quick answer. In the early days, you couldn’t be sure.

I think chatgy PD is gonna evolve in the same way. And within a few years, our students are going to expect to be able to use it in their post college employment. Thus, I think it’s important that we help them learn how to use it responsibly. And so that’s what I’m gonna be trying to do this year. Is there a responsible way of using chat GPT?

You put your finger on one of them. Is if you think that the output of chat GPT is truth, then you are not using it responsibly or wisely. Because it will make up stuff. Well, I think we need to teach our students how to how to fact check the outputs of chat GPT. It’ll also, you know, paper over with banalities when you want hard in entice of things.

Well, first drafts often look that way. I mean, I’m sure that you can think of first drafts you’ve read that were pretty mushy and they need to be tightened up. So I think chat’s EBT is gonna be used for an iterative process helping a little bit, but then the human is supposed to improve on what the AI produces and back and forth. And I’m gonna try to have my students do it that way. And, talk to me a year from now, and I’ll tell you if I succeeded or failed.

I think that Elliot thinks that you’re in my answers to his pop quiz on on who violated, you know, best practices on civil military relations was filled with the banalities that ChachiPC would generate.

You guys, you know, while I was asking the questions.

So, you know, I we are we are already over time and at the risk of imposing on on you, Peter. There is one last question I just have to ask, which is to me the most distressing part of this book, the most upsetting part of your book. Because as Elliot pointed out, I’ve I’ve lived on on this divide of of civil military relations was the degree to which the public is either completely ignorant of or at odds with what we in this, you know, kind of rarefied world of experts on the civil military relations and military institutions regard as the appropriate norms and guardrails for maintaining, you know, civilian control of the military particularly given as you talk about in the book from time to time. The deep suspicion that the founders had. For, the role of a standing army, to democracy.

The the fact that the public is so at variance with those norms. Frankly, it was one of the things that surprised me more than anything else I read in the book and and disturbed me more. So What should we do about that?

Well, I I think you’re right. I just clutched at a straw to say, well, at least the public doesn’t want a military dictatorship, you know, there’s a range of questions ranging from, you know, the most pure to the most

Yeah. Only nineteen sent wanted military rule in your in your survey.

Yeah. And I say, okay. Well, that’s good news sort of. But But you’re absolutely right that the public is not a good umpire or enforcer of civil military best practice. And so one of the things we have to do is we have to get the military to behave even when they’re not gonna be rewarded punished by the public appropriately.

That’s professionalism. That’s what professionals do. And you know, when I’m talking to the military, I emphasize that aspect of it. Don’t look to the public as well if the public lets me get away with it, it must be okay. No.

However, the public ignorance is a function I think of two things. One is the growing gap between the American public and the military. The passing of the World War two generation, the passing of the draft era, fewer and fewer families have kitchen table conversations with Uncle so and so about what it was like to serve in the military. That’s now a very small subset of Americans. Who have that personal experience.

So what they know, they’re knowing from TV, Marvel, the universe, movies, you know, who knows what where the sources are. And that’s that’s a problem. But the second piece of it is the decline of civics education in the country. And in particular, and I now I’m pandering to my hosts, but in the decline of military and diplomatic history that taught at the, you know, k through twelve level or at least at the high school level So my students are coming in with much less of a knowledge base just of how the wars happen and how they went and how diplomacy happened knowing the warts and the the positive aspects. And when you know those things, you have a healthier respect for the military, but also a healthier respect for the limits of the military.

And that, I that’s reclaiming civics, I think, is an important, priority. And if we have those civics courses, they can buy my book on Amazon and OUP and and learn all they could possibly wanna know about public confidence in the military.

We can all agree on that.

We can. Our our guest today has been Peter Fever, professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, and the estimable author of thanks for your service that causes and consequences public confidence in the US military. Peter, thanks for joining us on on Shield of the Republic. We’ll we’ll unfortunately make you come back again in the future.

I hope so. Thank you for having me.