No Impact – CMR = Resilient

No Impact – CMR = Resilient

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0IBR/is_4_33/ai_111852934/print)

In American academe today the dominant view of civil-military relations is sternly critical of the military, asserting that civilian control of the military is dangerously eroded. (1) Though tension clearly exists in the relationship, the current critique is largely inaccurate and badly overwrought. Far from overstepping its bounds, America's military operates comfortably within constitutional notions of separated powers, participating appropriately in defense and national security policymaking with due deference to the principle of civilian control. Indeed, an active and vigorous role by the military in the policy process is and always has been essential to the common defense.
CMR resilient – inherent patriotism and support for the troops

Carafano 8 (James Jay, senior research fellow for national security at The Heritage Foundation, “Soldiers, Civilians, and ‘The Great War’” accessed 7-22, http://www.heritage.org/press/commentary/ed050808b.cfm)JFS

Civil-military relations are back in the news. There could not be a better time for fresh views on this vital subject. Nancy Gentile Ford's The Great War and America: Civil-Military Relations During World War I is a welcome contribution. Ford, a professor of history at Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania, provides a broad historical survey of the critical issues that confronted the United States leading up to, during and after World War I. In The Great War and America, Ford argues that this period of American history is worthy of particular attention—and she is absolutely right. The dawn of the 20th century was a turning point for how America's military and American society are interwoven. Many of the fundamental military institutions that we rely on today, from recruiting military officers from civilian universities to relying on the National Guard, emanate from this era. The United States has traditionally enjoyed a remarkably resilient and healthy civil society. When civil society is strong, relations between soldiers and the state tend to remain pretty stable. The Great War and America supports this thesis. America's sudden entry into World War I and the rush of transforming a constabulary force scattered throughout the United States into a mass citizen army to fight on the world's first "high-tech" battlefield raised innumerable concerns and challenges. America survived them all—and helped win the war.

It should go without saying that it is not the National Security Advisor's job to intimidate military commanders into dialing down their requests to politically comfortable levels, although that is what Jim Jones is reported to have done when visiting Afghanistan during the McChrystal review. Such politicization of military advice ought to be especially noxious to someone who'd been both the Commandant of the Marine Corps and a Combatant Commander. When the Bob Woodward article recounting Jones' attempted manipulation as published, Secretary Gates and Admiral Mullen commendably defended McChrystal's independence. It is also curious that the one person invisible in this debate, as in the debate about relieving General McKiernan, is the CENTCOM commander, General Petraeus. But beneficially and importantly for our country, policy debates over the war in Afghanistan indicate that the system of civil-military relations is clearly working as designed. We owe much to Gates, Mullen, and McChrystal for shielding the process from politicization and providing military advice the President needs to make decisions only he can make.

No Impact – CMR = Managed

No negative impact to tensions – they’re managed and key to national security

Biddle 9 (Stephen, Senior Fellow for Defense Policy, Council on Foreign Relations, http://www.cfr.org/publication/20283/us_policy_toward_afghanistan.html)JFS

As far as the civil-military relations aspects of this go, we have civilian control of the military.  The military does not make U.S. national strategy.  The military does not even make theater strategy.  The civilians are constitutionally in charge of this. Now, what we would like is I think what Eliot Cohen has termed "an unequal dialogue," in which both sides are respectful of the other and interacting with the other in dialogue, but that dialogue is unequal because, at the end of the day, the civilians are the ones who have the legal responsibility -- not just the right, but the responsibility to make the decisions, and to be held accountable for the results as a result. In that setting, it seems to me the appropriate role for a theater commander -- and remember that General McChrystal is commander of forces in Afghanistan.  We are engaged in conflict in multiple theaters around the world, so this is just one of them.  The responsibility of the theater commander is to produce an objective, clear-eyed, sort of, rigorous analysis of the situation, the way forward, the prognosis, and the required costs of pursing the best strategy for his theater. That then goes up the chain, and superiors, both military and civilian above him in the chain of command, have just as much of a responsibility as he does to rigorously critique and evaluate what he said -- in light not just of checking for the internal validity of what the theater commander has said about his theater, but especially in terms of considerations that are broader than the theater commander's writ. One of the obvious ones, in this instance, is Iraq.  We have ongoing, serious military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  I'm on record as having said in the past that I think U.S. interests engaged in Iraq are very important and require a continued presence, at least as far as the Iraqis will permit. That is not General McChrystal's job to worry about.  It's not General Odierno's job to worry about.  It's General Petraeus's, Admiral Mullen's, the secretary of Defense, and the president's job to worry about the relationship between theaters in an environment where the same forces are in demand by more than one theater and in which the prospects in any theater would be improved by getting somebody else's forces to come and help out.  (Chuckles.) So I see a degree of inherent tension, not just between civilian and military, given the difference of backgrounds and purview and responsibilities, but between different theater commanders at the theater level within the military chain of command. And that tension is healthy and appropriate, as long as it's adjudicated properly by the people above them in the food chain -- both the military people above them in the food chain, Petraeus and Mullen, and by the civilians. Now, if this produces, kind of, endless analysis without decision, it would satisfy academics like me who love that sort of thing.  But it obviously wouldn't serve the national interest.  We will eventually need a decision. I would personally prefer that these analyses be aggressively challenged, critiqued and assessed, and that the administration take the time it thinks it needs to do that. I think in terms of the consequences of getting the strategy wrong, which are enormous, the consequences of taking another couple of weeks to avoid that are minor -- are modest.

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