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Summer Essay Campaign #1: “Imagining a Constellation of Capabilities which Navigate Toward Strategic Aims”

To Answer Question #9: “What is the proper relationship between militaries and non-governmental organizations (i.e. the United Nations)?”

By Major Dan Maurer

The question posed by the War Council presumes that there is a “proper relationship”—one that is objectively appropriate to the exclusion of (most) others.   In a way, it echoes most American civil-military relations theory, beginning with Huntington’s, which casts military professionals into a definitive master-servant or principal-agent relationship with civilian authority.[1]  But unlike civil-military relations, the dynamic between a military force and NGOs may not be institutionalized, cemented in law and custom.  Rather than a “proper” form,  I argue that there are relatively better or worse constellations of relationships, with their qualitative value depending more on historical and operational context—which most importantly includes the strategic aim—the raison d’ état—for which the military and NGOs are working in concert (or arguing with each other in contempt).

This recasting of the question implicates the purpose for which militaries are used and the ways and means by which they achieve their purposes—sometimes with, sometimes without, the influence, participation, or engagement with domestic or international NGOs.  Of course, scale, strategy, location all matter but by and large our “purpose” is applying military might on land.  Landpower has been defined in Army doctrine as “the ability—by threat, force, or occupation—to gain, sustain, and exploit control over land, resources, and people.”[2]  “Strategic Landpower” is considered the “application of landpower towards achieving overarching national or multinational (alliance or coalition) security objectives and guidance for a given military campaign or operation.”[3] 

But to help address the relationship between Armed Forces and NGOs, it is possible, and desirable, to take a broader view and attempt to generalize these ideas.  When we do this, the menu of potential arrangements between and among military forces and NGOs gets longer and longer, giving policy-makers that many more choices and opportunities in which to apply the right means, in the right ways, for the given end.  For instance, an actor expresses power by influencing, changing, or controlling the behaviors, expectations, resources, or the capacity to volitionally act among other relevant parties and institutions.  This effect of power becomes “strategic” in quality when it materially advances an actor’s freedom of choice and freedom of action, such that (A) the effect is consistent with that actor’s policy objective that originally animated the expression of power, and/or (B) the effect redirects an adversary’s or a competitor’s actual or perceived policy objectives.[4]