Panama, Greenland And The Potential Threat To US Civil-Military Relations – OpEd

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Reflect for a moment, that you are the U.S. military: perhaps the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; perhaps the combatant commander of the U.S. Southern Command or the U.S. European Command; perhaps the commander of a high-priority, deployable unit in the field.

You are aware that the incoming president has expressed an intention—perhaps real, perhaps just bluster—to use the military, if necessary, to retake the Panama Canal and take control of Greenland.

You know that, by virtue of the 1977 Panama Canal Treaties, the United States relinquished control over the canal in 2000 and thereby guaranteed its permanent neutrality. You know that Panama, a founding member of the United Nations whose sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence are therefore to be respected by all other UN member states, maintains full jurisdiction and operational control over the canal.

You know that Greenland is a fully self-governing, sovereign territory under the principal control of Denmark, which is a founding member of both the UN and NATO. Greenland’s status, then, is very much akin to U.S. territories such as Guam, the Marshall Islands, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands, all of which presumably would demand U.S. willingness to spill blood and treasure to defend them from outside intervention.

You consider territorial expansion to be an outdated concept of a bygone era, as well as a vestige of an imperialistic, Manifest Destiny American past. You recall, by analogy with a Greenland takeover in particular, the insensate 1893 overthrow of Hawaii’s constitutional monarchy, abetted by U.S. Marines, as a reflection of the self-serving, expansionist mentality of the time.

You are fully familiar with the laws of armed conflict that reflect long-standing Just War precepts: the requirements that there be a justifiable cause for employing force in the first place; that force be used only as a last resort after all other reasonable options have been exhausted; that one’s intentions be clear and legitimate; that the harms of employing force not outweigh the harms suffered in the absence of such a response; that there be a reasonable probability of success when force is employed; and that any decision to use force must emanate from the highest authority (however unclear it may be in a representative democracy whether the highest authority is the head of state or the people themselves).

You realize that U.S. policymakers have chosen not to be a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court, the rationale being that domestic legal institutions and processes are, in the ideal, perfectly capable of holding accountable individual Americans alleged to have perpetrated or directed the sorts of crimes the ICC oversees (war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and, of particular relevance here, crimes of aggression). In this manner, individuals like you, charged with undertaking potentially violent acts at the behest of and on behalf of the U.S. government, ideally need not fear being apprehended and tried by outside authorities for atrocities or associated unlawful or inhumane acts. Realizing this, you also acknowledge how ambiguously defined and interpreted is the crime of aggression (any use of armed force by a state against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another state).

You know all too well, based on the experience of the ages, that occupation forces are lodestones for strategic failure; breeding grounds for animosity and resentment from the occupied populace; sitting ducks for daily, hourly sabotage that produces casualties among the occupiers, feeds their frustration and demoralization, and leads almost invariably to retaliatory atrocities. All of this diminishes the credibility of the occupier to such an extent that it inevitably is forced to withdraw in ignominious failure. Mission not accomplished.

You have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution, which implicitly carries with it an obligation to see that the laws be faithfully executed, an acknowledgement in turn that the treaties the United States has signed and ratified are the law of the land. Moreover, your original enlistment oath makes even more explicit your obligation to obey the lawful orders—not just any orders, but lawful orders; not just implied expectations, but expressed orders—of those appointed over you.

You fully embrace the necessity of sound civil-military relations to a viable democracy: including a military that is strategically, not just militarily, effective; whose leaders provide sound strategic, not just military, advice to civilian authorities who themselves are strategically competent, not just politically adept, and answer to a strategically aware, civically engaged public.

And, lastly, you subscribe unreservedly to the normative values of honor and courage that are at the heart of the stated core values each armed service espouses.

So, considering all of this, what will you do—what should you be expected to do—if tasked to deploy troops to support either or both of these missions? Will you simply comply – silently, obediently, unquestioningly – under cover of the claim that you are being politically neutral and obedient to properly constituted authority? Or will you stand up to be counted and demand to be heard in light of the strategic consequences that could result?

Will you demand to be given explicit, official orders in writing that emanate directly and transparently from the president himself? Will you demand to have your views heard internally, and will you actually be willing to express them? Will you consider speaking out in public if necessary, and will you be willing to do so? And will you, if worse comes to worst, be willing to resign on principle if the situation calls for such a dramatic act?

These are questions you shouldn’t be forced to confront and wouldn’t have to confront if your relationship with the commander-in-chief was one of mutual respect and adherence to the principled norms that are supposed to underlie sound civil-military relations. But all of that will have been lost by the fact that these circumstances have been made a subject of discussion in the first place by an incoming commander-in-chief who respects neither the norms nor the limits that practice and time have put in place.

Gregory D. Foster

Gregory D. Foster is a former J. Carlton Ward Distinguished Professor and Director of Research and former George C. Marshall Professor at the National Defense University. The views expressed here are his own.

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