The Military and Liberal Society ─ Societal-Military Relations in Western Europe

The aim of this book is to analyse the ways that liberalism determines the military capacities of West European societies.

It is a generally accepted view in the academic literature that the military is a ‘Janus-faced’ organisation. One of its faces has to watch the strategic requirements and the other face looks at its parent society. The Janus-face analogy indicates that the strategic and societal views are intrinsically antithetical. The notion of the antithetical relationship between liberal ideology and military security was established as early as the 1950s in Samuel Huntington’s seminal book The Soldier and the State. This book is conceived as a critical debate with Huntington, challenging, in particular, the notion that societal and functional imperatives are inevitably distinct, even contradictory and antithetical.

The empirical analysis is carried out on the cases of the German Bundeswehr (from the 1950s onwards), the British armed forces (from the beginning of the 20^th century onwards) and the Swedish armed forces (transformation processes after the end of the Cold War). Despite the historically distinct paths taken in these country-cases, they possess a recognisably similar pattern of behaviour. This examination reveals that specific policies, institutions and practices are preferred because of their relation to liberal principles. Sometimes, liberal norms are used merely to advocate an otherwise necessary policy, such as universal conscription in times of emergency. Regarding other issues, such as the right to conscientious objection, liberal principles are the most relevant causal factor. Among the issues affected by liberal ideology are also the varieties of military mission, military ethics and the professional identity of soldiers. The case studies examined here demonstrate that a meaningful adaptation of the military to the principles possessed by its parent society can be, more often than not, desirable also from the perspective of security strategy.

This book will be of much interest to students of civil-military relations, military sociology, western European politics, security studies and IR. 

Tomas Kucera is Assistant Professor in the Department of Security Studies, Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic.