Military Review English Edition September-October 2013 | Page 82

to civil authority, willingly accepting societal direction and limits while maintaining an autonomous culture rooted in military effectiveness. The civilmilitary relationship entails the Army’s leadership exercising professional discretion and autonomous action consistent with the values of the society it serves. Counter intuitively, the subjective control or industrial-occupational civil-military relations models may offer the Army the best chance of preserving autonomous professional discretion. These models suggest that the best means of avoiding benevolence-based violations may be through policies and practices that more closely align military and civilian cultures (e.g., increased Reserve Officer Training Corps commissioning, broadening experiences, and Army leader development in a civilian setting). Maintaining a professional culture that differs from society in significant ways to achieve imagined greater military effectiveness, under this model, is counterproductive.

a uniformed officer being held accountable for a perceived violation. He was perceived by the public as condoning, if not fostering, a politicized command climate.33 The collective and complex nature of the Army as an organization offers some bureaucratic protection against individual level integrity violations that are perceived as non-systemic by the public. In such incidents, the Army must acknowledge the violation, take action to distance itself from the behavior, and demonstrate a history of consistent behavior that suggests that the violation is an anomaly. Addressing an organizational level integrity violation is more difficult, especially if it is perceived to have been sanctioned by the Army’s senior leadership.

Public Misperceptions—The NonViolation Violation34

Integrity Violations

The Pfc. Bradley Manning trial (WikiLeak’s informant) and the Cpl. Pat Tillman incident are two cases of perceived integrity violations linked to perceptions of opportunism at the individual and institutional levels of analysis respectively. With Pfc. Manning, the opportunism and integrity violations were at the individual level.31 In the Cpl. Pat Tillman case, the institutional integrity of the U.S. Army was called into question. Many in the public believed the U.S. Army exploited the patriotism and celebrity of Cpl. Pat Tillman for opportunistic reasons. The Army’s leadership was accused of withholding details of Tillman’s death until after the highly publicized memorial service, to protect the Army’s professional reputation.32 Public perception of Army officers violating the long-standing tradition of avoiding partisan politics is another potential threat to integrity violation. The line delimiting a violation in this area is evolving; the stigma associated with an officer voting or affiliating with a political party has all but disappeared. However, perceptions of partisan politics manifested in command climate, professional advice, and public communications are widely viewed as integrity violations of the Army’s professional ethic. The firing of Gen. Stanley McChrystal is a recent example of
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When it comes to public trust, perceptions of trust violations can be as damaging as an actual violation. Varying degrees of bias and limited contextual understanding among stakeholders within the general public can lead to faulty attribution of motive and distrust in any of the component categories that frame a trust relationship. The perception of deception is an example of an integrity-based public trust non-violation. Adherence to the Army’s professional ethic precludes Army leaders from intentionally deceiving subordinates, the American public, or legitimate civil authority; however, several situations could result in the perception of deception, which would have the same effect as a violation if not countered immediately. The perception of an integrity violation may be based on any number of factors. Incorrect attribution of motives and misinterpretation of the communication based on individual or group bias are among the most common factors contributing to misperception. Bob Woodward reported one such perceived violation in his book, Obama’s Wars. Woodward claimed that the Obama administration did not trust its military leadership to offer viable military options to advance the administration’s desired strategic agenda to rapidly draw down forces and end the war in Afghanistan. The administration’s distrust of senior Army leaders, and the perception that their advice was politicized or insubordinate, is popularly reported as the reason President Obama
September-October 2013 ? MILITARY REVIEW