Contemporary Professionalism and Future Military Leadership

Once again the military establishment faces adjustment to peacetime. The process this time will be unusual, for several reasons. There is some evidence that the international environment is changing, and a large military force structure will not be needed. Domestic pressures to reduce defense budgets are stronger than they have been in the past. The situation facing the services may resemble the end of World War I. However, the officer corps is different. It is made up of men who have served in a large bureaucracy for the past thirty years—not the austere peacetime military forces that traditionally operated before the cold war. Bureaucratic management skills may run at cross purposes with military professional standards of competence and integrity, as a recent army study indicates. It may be that not only budgetary and political factors dictate a small military establishment in the future, but also the rebuilding of military professionalism as well.