Civil−military relations in Britain

This chapter focuses on civil-military relations in Britain. It begins with a discussion of the doctrine of civil supremacy as it exists in both theory and practice, a comparison illustrated by the differences between soldiering in Northern Ireland in the early 1970s as opposed to operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 21st century. It focuses particularly on the role of the military in creating the major strategic and resource problems in Iraq and Afghanistan for which they have too often subsequently blamed the MoD and the government. After exploring the attitudinal gulf between the civilian and military mindset, the chapter goes on to consider how discontented officers have increasingly used covert leaks of classified material to the media in order to defend their corporate vested interests by undermining the government’s position. Above all, it examines the Army’s repeated use of the ‘stabbed in the back’ myth to shift the blame for failures in Iraq and Afghanistan to the government and to absolve themselves from responsibility. It then considers the civil-military relationship which developed between various Prime Ministers and their Service Chiefs before concluding with a discussion of the extremely damaging problem of inter-service rivalry.