How Civilian Control May Breed the Use of Force 1 Y AGIL L EVY The Open University of Israel This article is about a puzzle: strong civilian control of the military may promote the use of force not lessen it. Existing theories about civil– military relations and militarism do not adequately resolve this puzzle because they neglect the link between civilian control and the legitimacy to use force. The argument here is that an increase in the civilian control of the military may promote the use of force by legitimizing it under specific cumulative conditions: the existence of a previous militaristic infrastructure in the civilian political culture, which is triggered by an external event, and is augmented by three mechanisms deriving from civilian control that increase the legitimacy of using force by reducing deliberative decision-making. These three mechanisms are: (1) the depo- liticization of the military caused by reinforcing civilian control, so the professional opinion of the military reigns supreme; (2) the militariza- tion by inflating threats and setting ambitious war goals to remove such threats, which balances out the aversion to sacrifice for war that civilian control produces; and (3) the transition produced by civilian control to a volunteer, technology-intensive, downsized military that reduces the stake of citizens in military policies. The plausibility of this argument is explored by reference to the cases of the United States, Israel, and Russia. Keywords: civilian control, legitimacy, militarization, United States, Israel, Russia Does effective civilian control of the military restrain the use of force? This ques- tion is implicit in debates about militarism, civil–military relations, and the impact of the “democratic peace.” However, these debates have left a gap in the litera- ture. Students of civil–military relations have always debated whether the military is a war-prone institution. By implication, the dispute also involves the role of civil- ian control in checking the military. Some claimed during the Cold War era that civilian control of the military would lead to a reduction in the use of force, argu- ing that the military promoted aggressiveness. Lasswell’s (1941) “garrison state” model maintained that empowering the military in response to an external threat would hinder civilian control over it because, as “specialists in violence,” officers would be interested solely in military solutions to conflicts and impose their opin- ions on civilians. Choi and James (2004) present statistical evidence supporting this claim, demonstrating that the more the influence of the military increased, the more likely the country would become involved in military disputes. Similarly, Snyder (1984) supports Lasswell’s thesis by claiming that when civilian control is 1 I would like to thank Jeffrey Isaac, Ronald Krebs, and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Levy, Yagil (2016) How Civilian Control May Breed the Use of Force. International Studies Perspectives, doi: 10.1093/isp/ekv020 V C The Author 2016. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Studies Association. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com International Studies Perspectives (2016) 0, 1–18 International Studies Perspectives Advance Access published February 3, 2016 by guest on February 3, 2016 http://isp.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from