Yesterday was Labor Day, the day set aside to honor the American worker. So there’s no better time to examine a recent Military Times op-ed in which Air Force Maj. Kevin A. Deibler argues the military should eliminate the current officer-enlisted rank structure with “a position-centric force that allows for rapid advancement based on job performance.” Oh, my head.
In his article, which is summary of his 2012 doctoral dissertation for his psychology degree, Deibler argues that the current system “that has served our nation well for centuries is not suited for our modern conflicts.” He cites thee examples, one tactical, one operational, and one strategic, where he claims his position-centric model would have prevented “missed opportunities.”
The problem with Deibler’s theory is that it further undermines the notion of what it means to be a professional, and the very real and consequential nature of legal authority.
what makes an officer an officer?
Despite the egalitarian impulse to reduce the divide between officer and enlisted (how many installations have eliminated officer’s clubs?), there is a very real reason for the divide. Changing it would not just take decades, as Deibler asserts, it would require changes to the Constitution. Good luck with that.
In discussing the concept of a “deep state” several weeks ago, and in discussing dissention within the CIA last week, we examined the president’s prerogative to appoint officers to develop and execute his policies. The role of developing policy is exclusively reserved for those officers who the president has appointed, and in many cases, to whom the Senate has given its advice and consent. Military officers are no different (the Senate approves all commissions and officer promotion lists).
Under the Constitution, all executive authority flows from the president as the chief executive. What we colloquially call “officers” are properly “commissioned officers.” Commissioned officers hold a formal document from the president investing them with the authority to command troops. The president issues commissions to many other types of officers as well. Recall that the landmark Supreme Court decision Marbury v. Madison was based on Secretary of State James Madison’s refusal to deliver a commission as justice of the peace, issued by President John Adams, to William Marbury.
The language on an officer’s commission is little different than it was at least as far back as the Civil War.
Warrant officers, by contrast, exercise authority by virtue of, not surprisingly, a warrant, which is a lower classification of legal document than a commission. Non-comissioned officers — corporals, sergeants, and petty officers — exercise that authority which a commissioned or warrant officer delegates to them. Their nature of command (as opposed to leadership) is that there are some responsibilities which a commander may not delegate. Only those officers who hold a commission (or in limited circumstances, those with a warrant) may exercise command.
amending the constitution
These distinctions are not simply conventions, they are based in the Constitution. In enumerating the powers of the Congress in Artilce I, we find that the Constitution empowers Congress to organize the militia, but reserves “to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers.” Article II gives the president the power to appoint “all other Officers of the United States,” and that he also “shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.” While it’s tempting to argue that this refers only to civil government officers, Article II makes that distinction in only one place. Section 4, outlining who may be impeached, applies to “The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States.”
Had the founders intended “officers” to mean only civil officers each place it appears in the Constitution, they would have made that clear. As it stands, the only place where that distinction is drawn is in Section 4.
The problems Deibler describes are leadership failures, or failures attributable to individual character flaws. While serious, perhaps even potentially deadly, they are not justification for his call to overturn the entire system of American legal authority.
