WASHINGTON -- Almost a quarter-century after the end of the draft, military analysts warn that the all-volunteer forces are becoming increasingly isolated from a civilian society that is less likely to share their experiences, values or concerns.
Some observers, such as former Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr., suggest that the rift could eventually erode the nation's longtime civilian control over the military.
"They have become more and more separate, almost a military caste," Mr. Lehman said. "It's not that people need to worry about a coup d'etat. But it is something that, down the road, is going to lead us into bad decisions, bad policy."
Eliot Cohen, another civilian analyst, said: "The state of the military-civil relationship is very poor."
Mr. Cohen, strategic program director at the Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies, recently told fellow experts: "The signs are that there is something profoundly wrong or unhealthy about civil-military relations. The fact is, the societies have become very separate."
More than a social phenomenon, the growing separation is viewed by some as capable of undermining civilian control of the military. It could, they assert, eventually give the military exaggerated influence over national security policy and the missions assigned to the armed forces.
Such worries have not been expressed by civilian leaders at the Pentagon, who seem comfortable that their control is unchallenged.
"I don't think there is any concern for the continuation, the need and the value of civilian control over the military," said Dennis Boxx, a Pentagon spokesman. "It's hard to see what the long-run, socio-political impact of these things might be."
The apparent weakening of civilian-military relationships is in part an inevitable, if unintended, consequence of President Richard M. Nixon's decision in 1971, as the American role in the Vietnam War was winding down, to end the draft and replace it with an all-volunteer force.
"The draft changed everything," said a Navy admiral who declined to be quoted by name. "The volunteer forces are those people who want this lifestyle. So we are becoming more homogeneous. As you get more homogeneous, you form a pack."
The end of the draft freed many of the men now in Congress and the Executive Branch -- including some holding senior civilian dTC
posts in the Pentagon -- of the military service that was an almost universal experience for the preceding generation.
The end of the Cold War in 1991 brought another factor into the equation -- defense cutbacks, making it even less likely that leaders in politics, business or industry would experience for themselves the demands of military life.
Under current Pentagon planning, total troop levels will shrink from 2.1 million as recently as 1987, through the current level of 1.6 million, to 1.4 million in 1999. That is a 33 percent reduction in little more than a decade.
President Clinton is hardly unique among the Washington elite in not having served in the military. The 104th Congress, to be sworn in Jan. 4, will have 53 veterans among its 100 senators. Of the 435 members of the new House, 154 are veterans. By contrast, the 94th Congress of 1975-1976 had 73 veterans in the Senate and 306 in the House.
The demographic base from which the officer corps is recruited is also narrowing. The number of Reserve Officer Training Corps programs on college campuses has declined, while enrollment in the service academies has remained steady, increasing the proportion of officers trained in military settings.
In 1988, for example, the Army commissioned 8,000 second lieutenants through ROTC and 1,000 through the U.S. Military Academy. This year, ROTC commissions dropped to 4,000, reducing the number of Army officers educated at civilian colleges. The West Point graduation rate remained at about 1,000.
Military observers, former soldiers and others warn that a military increasingly disconnected from civilian society, combined with civilian leaders who lack military experience, is a recipe for trouble. They see civilian leaders being unable to grasp, except as abstractions, the demands of military service.
A Marine Corps general and former military lobbyist on Capitol Hill said: "I would not say categorically that it makes a difference, but if you are dealing with a member of Congress who has a military background . . . he understands your experience and, potentially, there is both an appreciation and even an empathy for your concerns."
Arizona Sen. John McCain, a Vietnam veteran, Republican member of the Armed Services Committee and strong supporter of the military, said: "I don't believe every member of Congress should have served in the military, but I believe there should be enough of them to appreciate the rigors of military service."
To Andrew J. Bacevich, executive director of the Johns Hopkins University's Foreign Policy Institute in Washington, politicians without military experience are at risk of being pressured to adopt unsound military policies by generals and admirals who hold a near monopoly on military expertise.
"An uninformed leadership is more likely to get rolled by military professionals who will be able to claim that they alone possess all the secrets to understand the proper use of force or understand the secrets of warfare, and therefore deserve to have a very large say in the size of forces to be maintained and so on," Mr. Bacevich said.
Moreover, Mr. McCain said, today's military leaders are likely to have firm views and to be assertive in pressing them because of their experiences as junior officers during the Vietnam War. "They saw what they perceived as a failure of military leadership in not resisting more the policies that doomed the Vietnam conflict to failure," said Mr. McCain, a Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner in North Vietnam.
Those who see potential problems in the civilian-military relationship view the Election Day victories of the Republicans -- generally regarded as more supportive than Democrats of the military -- as giving the military brass the opportunity to flex its political muscle even more.
"The political turn of events we have just had in November creates great new opportunities for the military to play off the Congress against the president to their own advantage," Mr. Bacevich said. "Effective civilian control is something that we ought not to take for granted. We would be foolish if we just assumed that the only problem is that the generals don't like this guy Clinton, and therefore it is a problem that will go away when Clinton goes."
The Clinton administration's relationship with the military got off to a rocky start. The president's record of draft avoidance and his early ill-fated effort to permit gays to serve openly in the military, the reported refusal of an unnamed White House aide to shake a general's hand, and the tardy pace of Pentagon appointments heightened tension between the civilian and military leadership.
Since those early days, Mr. Clinton has sought to strengthen his ties to the military by jogging with the snubbed general and later promoting him; firing his first defense secretary, Les Aspin, who was unpopular with the brass; and making frequent visits to U.S. military installations.
But some civilian analysts fear that military officers will become more inclined to play politics as they encounter the human difficulties of downsizing, cope with new roles and missions in the post-Cold War era, and confront a technological revolution in warfare.
"All of these things bind together to create a military leadership that is defensive, wary, worried, concerned it is about to be sold down the river," said Hopkins' Mr. Bacevich, a veteran of 23 years in the Army. "Therefore, they are much more willing to engage in political activity that is certainly inconsistent with the concept of civilian control in its purest form. These tensions are spilling over into a willingness to challenge civilian control, which is not unprecedented, but which is a concern."