"This book is one any military professional should read ... This book is most likely on a civil-military relations reading list, but it does not take a civil-military relations student to understand and appreciate the work done here ... Party, Politics, and the Post 9/11 Army forces a self-reflection of the uniformed officer’s role in a democratic society where it stands today and shines a light on potentially discouraging and encouraging trends. This book challenges popular assumptions, investigates curiosities, and still leaves this reader wanting another 300 pages of data and study. It is a fantastic book for lieutenants and lieutenant generals alike." —Aether

"How partisan has the military become and how big a problem is it? Long before 6 January 2021, Heidi Urben, a recently retired Army colonel and now Chamberlain Fellow at Howard University, was digging into this question ... For nonpartisan purists such as myself, what she found is both good and bad news, if more of the latter. ... Urben has delivered a thorough analysis that should encourage military and civilian defense leaders to enact policy reforms, where needed." —Proceedings

“The relationships among our military, fellow citizens, and those elected to serve in public office are changing. However, few seem to appreciate the implications of such changes, even though civil-military relations are at the very heart of our democracy. This book addresses these issues with timely, important insights and refreshingly pragmatic advice. In my time as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, I valued Dr. Heidi Urben’s wisdom, balance, and discipline in dealing with the most complex national security issues—and readers will appreciate those same traits being applied in this book, which I highly recommend.” —General Martin Dempsey, US Army (ret.); 18th Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and 37th Chief of Staff of the Army

“While lots of us talk about what the military thinks, Professor Urben brings the data on Army officers. If this book just presented that it’d be an important addition to civil-military scholarship. But her analysis and practical appendix for use by Army leaders to instill the nonpartisan ethic in their units will help civilians better understand our military, and help our military better serve our country.” —Dr. Kori Schake, Director of Foreign and Defense Policy, American Enterprise Institute

“This book provides a particularly valuable window into the political beliefs and behavior of active duty (primarily US Army) officers. The idea that leaders of tactical units (battalions, brigades, and other service equivalents) should bear responsibility for the inculcation of nonpartisanship and healthy civil-military norms is novel and even somewhat provocative, but it flows logically from the author’s arguments. This focus and the book’s accessible length make it likely to become a required touchstone. This book is highly relevant to policymakers, with particular strengths that include its clear presentation of contemporary data on the political beliefs and behaviors of active duty cadets and officers, its discussion of new dynamics created by social media, its large number of questions for future research, its pragmatic policy recommendations, and its guide for O5 and O6 commanders to use in teaching their units about the nonpartisan ethic.” — Dr. Suzanne C. Nielsen, coeditor of American Civil-Military Relations: The Soldier and the State in a New Era

“This book is a highly useful reference that could be used readily by professors of civil-military relations. It uses a range of survey tools to glean insights into changing norms within the US military. The breadth and depth of data is highly compelling and rigorous. Dr. Heidi Urben does a superb job laying out her argument clearly and logically. Each chapter is written in a manner that is easy to follow and, importantly, successfully ties in the implications that can be drawn from the statistics. Readers will find themselves carefully reading the conclusions at the end of each chapter and gaining new, important insights. This book offers significant findings to be pulled that will improve the dialogue within professional military education and in senior military leader’s writings to their colleagues and guidance to the forces.” —Major General William E. Rapp, US Army (ret.); and Lecturer in Military Affairs, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School

Heidi A. Urben is a Chamberlain Teaching Fellow at Howard University, an adjunct associate professor in Georgetown University’s Security Studies Program, and a retired U.S. Army colonel. She writes on US civil-military relations and also serves as a senior associate (non-resident) at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, an adjunct scholar at West Point’s Modern War Institute, and a visiting Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University. She holds a PhD, MA, and MPM from Georgetown University, an MS from the National War College, and a BA from the University of Notre Dame.

List of Figures

List of Tables

Foreword by Peter D. Feaver

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. Introduction

Chapter 2. Party and Ideology: Continuity and Change in the Officer Corps

Chapter 3. Acts of Citizenship or Partisanship? Political Activity in the Officer Corps

Chapter 4. The State of the Nonpartisan Ethic in the World of Social Media

Chapter 5. “Princes of the Church:” The Much-Debated Role of Retired Officers in Politics

Chapter 6. Does it Matter? Party Identification, Political Attitudes and Civil-Military Relations Norms

Chapter 7. Conclusion

Appendix A. A Guide to Instilling the Nonpartisan Ethic at the Unit Level

Appendix B. Civil Military Relations in a Time of War Survey (2009)

Appendix C. Politics, the Military, and Social Media Research Survey (2015-16)

Appendix D. National Defense University Civil-Military Relations Survey (2017-2020)

Bibliography

Index