Q&A with Military Expert Judith Hicks Stiehm

Judith Hicks Stiehm at FIUJudith Hicks Stiehm is a professor of political science at Florida International University. Her areas of expertise include civil-military relations, the status of women, and political theory, and her books include Champions for Peace: Women Winners of the Nobel Prize for Peace, and It’s Our Military, Too!: Women and the US Military.

Q: Your most recent book is titled "The U.S. Military: A Basic Introduction." What would you say are some of the biggest misperceptions about the U.S. military?

A: I doubt that most citizens know that we have troops in 150 countries, that our Department of Defense divides the globe into combatant commands with a four star in charge of each region, that the senior officers who head those commands are referred to as warrior-diplomats, that our military's formal mission statements include countering transnational crime, human rights, humanitarian aid, etc., particularly in those areas where we, in fact, have no enemy and no threat, but where we still have a good deal of military activity.  (Example: Southern Command, which covers South America and the Caribbean.)

Q: What do you think will happen to the military budget in the next several years?

A: This is the first time in decades that there has been any talk about cutting the defense budget, which has consistently grown even when all costs related to the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are removed, but the projected cuts tend to be for things which Congress may not be willing to accept, i.e., they tend to be cuts for things related to personnel and not for items such as the new aircraft carrier.  (We have ten or eleven carriers; the next highest is a country with two, and China is just acquiring its first, a second-hand carrier from Russia.

Q: How has the role of women in the military changed over the years that you've been studying that topic? 

A: Remarkably.  Numerically from less than 2 percent, which was the legal limit, to now roughly 15 percent.  Further, they can serve in virtually all roles except ground combat and even that is under discussion because women have been and are "attached" to units they cannot formally serve in.  Further, in both Iraq and Afghanistan where there are no "front lines" women have been in the line of fire. The changes have been propelled by the end of the draft more than pressure for "equality." At the beginning of the war women were limited to less than 2 percent of the total.

Q: Do you think the Vietnam legacy has affected U.S. policymakers involved in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and if so, how?

A: No. The Vietnam legacy was the Powell Doctrine, which was forgotten or dismissed by the Bush-Cheney administration.  Also, a Vietnam legacy included putting a number of important specialties in the reserves so we could not go to war without calling up the reserves.  That was supposed to put a damper on going to war.  But it didn't. Reservists and National Guard troops are serving regularly and over and over again, first in Iraq and then in Afghanistan.  The American public is generally detached, and Congress hasn't declared war since World War II.

Q: Anything else we should know?

A: Madeleine Albright once said, “What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?" I believe she was referring to our restrained response to conflict in Bosnia and Kosovo.  The converse would be "If you have a superb military will that lead you to use it?"  That is the question citizens should ask.  When I was at the Army War College for a year students were taught that the military's mission was to defend the U.S. and its "vital interests."  Now military strategists talk about  the interests of partners and allies and  training and "balancing" and more. The military is building roads and schools in other countries.  The problem is it can get a budget for things for which a civilian agency would not be funded.

Interview with Deborah Kalb, co-author of Haunting Legacy.