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15 J. Conflict Resol. 1 (1971)

handle is hein.journals/jcfltr15 and id is 1 raw text is: Editorial Notes As we begin our fifteenth year of publica- tion, we find strong echoes of problems raised in the first issue of JCR. Then, Morris Jano- witz argued that to understand war and war- making, we must understand the organization of political and military elites as crucial to the outcomes of high-level policy decisions. He sought especially to identify social condi- tions under which military elites might come to dominate, and the contrary conditions un- der which such unanticipated militarism could be prevented in democractic states. Now, Benjamin and Edinger offer data con- cerning the general conditions under which military elites prevail when they oppose the manifest preferences of political elites con- cerning particular policy decisions. Though the data obviously do not measure all aspects of militarism, and certainly do not permit unequivocal identification of factors leading to totalitarian or garrison state sys- tems of military control, they do bear directly on an aspect of military control which is highly relevant to international relations. It is noteworthy that of the many factors ex- amined, two variables are especially valuable in predicting military dominance over foreign policy decisions-the proportion of national income devoted to military expenditures, and the size of the military establishment. These were two of the main factors, influenced by technological developments, that Janowitz implicated in the causal nexus of militarism. The view that military control over foreign policy is something to be avoided, or at least minimized, stems from the assumption (com- mon among peace researchers) that military leaders are more warlike than civilian leaders. Thus, concern with who controls the decisions is rooted in concern with the content and con- sequences of those decisions. In their analysis, Benjamin and Edinger do not pursue this underlying concern, but their data contain directly pertinent information. For each his- toric decision in their sample, the case sum- mary describes the alternative actions pro- posed by military and by civilian leaders, and then specifies which alternative was finally chosen. In a large proportion of the cases, the issue was whether to take a stronger, more militaristic action or a milder, more diplo- matic action. Two striking facts appear upon inspection of these case summaries: in several instances where the civilian leaders prevailed, their preference was the more warlike alterna- tive; and in several instances where the mili- tary prevailed, their preference was the more conciliatory action. Added to the fact that the sample excluded cases where civilian and military preferences coincided, this raises doubt about the significance of the civilian- military distinction for the quality of foreign policy decisions. An obvious next step is to extend the Benjamin and Edinger data to test directly the widely shared assumption that military elites are more warlike than civilian elites. But the quality of foreign policy decisions, and their conduciveness to war or peace, may depend more on the process by which the de-

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