The Officer Corps and Profession: Time for a New Model

Much has changed in the 50 years since Samuel Huntington wrote "The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations." The prospect of a large standing army in peacetime is no longer viewed as an aberration but as the normal state of affairs. Furthermore, this force is no longer conscript-based, but totally professional; Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines are all volunteers, adequately paid, and many serve full careers through retirement. Despite the shift away from a manpower system based on civilian-soldiers serving short enlistments, the officer corps is not viewed as a threat to society. Although this is the product of the officer corps and society's acceptance of Huntington's argument, his model remains trapped in time; it does not allow for adaptation of the officer corps as the world changes. In addition, Huntington's model does not account for Service differences and inter-Service rivalry since it treats the Services as monolithic. It is important to have a working model of profession for the officer corps because neither society nor the officer corps is enamored with the implications of the alternatives. The author begins with the traditional works on concepts of profession within the military -- Samuel Huntington's "The Soldier and the State" and Morris Janowitz's "The Professional Soldier" -- to establish the foundation of military officership as a profession. He then turn to Andrew Abbott's "The System of Professions," paying particular attention to Abbott's major concept that professions are dynamic, competitive, and evolving in a world of changing jurisdictions. The resulting descriptive model of profession provides a new perspective for studying the evolution, or transformation, within the individual Service officer corps, inter-Service competition, as well as changing concepts of war and combatants.
Pub. in Joint Force Quarterly, n45, p104-110, 2nd Quarter 2007.