Tertara National Indonesia

This is a theoretical framework for a political situation where the Military and State struggles for control. This article discusses the nature of praetorianism or the politicization of the Military. It also discusses the level of Professionalism in Huntington’s framework such as officer’s expertise, corporateness, and social responsibility of the Military structure.

The first dimension is the officers’ expertise in the management of force and violence. The officer corps is not a simple collection of military professionals but a hierarchically organized professional bureaucracy. If the military bureaucracy is rationally organized, the recruitment, promotion, and placement of officers will be based in accordance to their military expertise. However, this is rarely achieved, the promotion and placement, especially of senior officers, are sensitive matters such that their political and personal loyalties are taken into account, sometimes at the expense of their military expertise.

Since the recruitment, promotion, and placement are of prime importance to career officers, those who are professionally competent but sidelined by political, personal, and other irrational reasons may develop strong emotional sentiment against the military leadership. Takashi cited the Japanese Army in the 1920s when professionally competent non-Chosu officers like Tojo and Nagata hated the army leadership dominated by the Chosu who blocked junior officers of Non-Chosu origin from entering the army college, the gateway to army leadership. He further argued that in countries that are communally divided along religious, racial, ethnic, and other lines, the rational achievement criteria becomes problematic, because promotion and placement tend to be read in communal terms. Also, armies that are formed from guerilla forces into modern conventional armies, promotion, etc., tend to be read in political terms.

The second dimension is the military as a corporate body having its own corporate interests. Corporate interests refer to adequate budgetary support, autonomy in managing its own affairs, the preservation of its responsibilities in the face of encroachments from rival interest groups, and the continuity of its own institution. Thus, when its corporate interests are threatened by outsiders, for instance, by the interference of civilian politicians in the promotion of officers, the military tends to react and intervene in politics to defend further and expand its corporate interest.

The third dimension is the social responsibility of the officer corps. Like any other professionals, the military has its own client. Just as doctors have their patients, the military’s client is the nation it serves. However according to Huntington, the nation is essentially an image and there is no such thing as military national interest. This implies two things. First, officers themselves decide who their client is depending on the officers’ ideology as formed by their experiences in training. Second, the choice of client depends upon the legitimacy of civilian political civilian institution.