About four Christmases ago, I received the Battlestar Galactica Complete Original and Modern Series DVD collection as a gift. I then deployed on operations and the DVD set languished at the back of the bookshelf. I remember watching the original series as a kid in the 80s. I was glad to hear that the new series had moved away from the cheesy kitschness of the original series. I love that the womanizing Starbuck was recast as a woman and was very happy to have met Katee Sackhoff at the London ComicCon in 2010! When I returned home, I intended to find the time to start watching it but was always too busy with family and work. On our last move to another city, the boxed set was ‘rediscovered’ and I have now focused on trying to watch the whole series over the summer break as a means of procrastinating from writing my thesis on civil-military relations in Australia.

Thinking that I had somewhat discovered a ‘new’ topic about the civil-military relations in Battlestar Galactica, manifested in the tension between Commander Adama and President Roslin, I was at once pleasantly surprised and disappointed (that I hadn’t been the first to think of the topic!) that aspects of the topic had already been covered. Carpenter, Cvijanovic and Mason from the University of Massachusetts had already covered the tension between security and human security inherent in the interaction between Adama — who was focused primarily on closing with and killing Cylons — and President Roslin — whose focus was on preserving what remained of the human race from Caprica. [1] David Costelloe, over at the Never Felt Better blog had also written about the Pegasus episodes from Season Two, where the Battlestar Pegasus is juxtaposed with the Galactica as a mechanism for comparing a military dominant paradigm (Pegasus) with the civil control paradigm (Galactica). [2] The Duck of Minerva blog also covers the topic over a number of posts.

In sum, the topic of civil-military relations in Battlestar Galactica is the topic of extensive academic commentary by much more experienced and distinguished bloggers than this Learner Blogger!

Having said that, I do have one observation to make about my initial reactions to that scene in the pilot episode between Adama and Roslin:

Roslin: Do you plan to declare martial law? Take over the government?
Adama: Of course not.
Roslin: Then you do acknowledge my position as president?
Adama: Miss Roslin, my primary objective at the present time is to repair the Galactica and continue to fight.
Roslin: …There are fifty thousand civilian refugees out there who don’t stand a chance without your ship.
Adama: We’re aware of the tactical situation, and I’m sure that you’ll all be safe here on Ragnar after we leave.
Roslin: After you leave? Where are you going?
Adama: To find the enemy. We’re at war, and that’s my mission.
Roslin: That’s insane.
Adama: You would rather that we run?
Roslin: Yes, absolutely. That is the only sane thing to do here, exactly that: run. The human race is about to be wiped out. We have fifty thousand people left, and that’s it. Now, if we are even going to survive as a species, then we need to get the hell out of here and we need to start having babies. Adama: Excuse me. (Adama exits.) [3]

When I first saw this scene, I was struck by the bloody mindedness of Adama’s approach — that he had to go out and find Cylons to kill them. That’s great, but to what end? Adama’s ‘mission’ was not underpinned by any strategic plan as it did not seem to link the destruction of Cylons with any clear objective or endstate other than destroying the Cylons as an end in itself. It would seem that Adama was lost in ‘the moment’, with the invasion of Caprica still fresh in his mind — he seemed to want revenge. While this is an understandable human reaction, it is clearly not a smart way to apportion limited military power, with the Galactica as the only surviving Caprican military capability. As President Roslin was quick to highlight, the Galactica was necessary for the protection of the remaining human population from annihilation. After all, for what other reason does a military force exist?

But then I realised that my reaction to that scene was a product of my cultural bias, which led me to view that scene in a particular way. In most Western liberal democracies, military forces exist to protect or pursue the national interest. The raison d’etre of military forces cannot be severed from this purpose. A military force that ventures on its own to pursue a purpose that does not link with national interest would seem to be lost — more akin to a well armed force run by a warlord that pursues whatever purpose the individual leader decides?

Commander Adama ultimately came to the conclusion that balanced the demands of the Cylon war with the expectations of the Caprican population — that the Galactica could not venture out into the galaxy on its own to pursue to the Cylons while leaving the civilian ships to an uncertain and grim fate that was likely to lead to the demise of the Caprican race. A decision was made for the Galactica and thus the remnants of the Caprican population to fight another day. As I make my way through the episodes of the series, it is interesting to see the balance between the requirements of the war and the expectations of the civilian leadership play out. This is consistent with Huntington’s discussion in The Soldier and the State:

“The military institutions of any society are shaped by two forces: a functional imperative stemming from the threats to the society’s security and a societal imperative arising from the social forces, ideologies, and institutions dominant within the society. Military institutions which reflect only societal values may be incapable of performing effectively their military function. On the other hand, it may be impossible to contain within society military institutions shaped purely by functional imperatives. The interaction of these two forces is the nub of the problem of civil military relations’. [4]

[1] Carpenter, Charlie; Hrvjoe Cvijanovic and Wesley Mason. ‘Security or Human Security? Civil-Military Relations in Battlestar Galactica’ https://people.umass.edu/charli/bsg.pdf (accessed 26 December 2014).

[2] David Costelloe. ‘Battlestar Galactica: The Pegasus Mirror’ http://neverfeltbetter.wordpress.com/2011/03/15/battlestar-galactica-the-pegasus-mirror/ 15 March 2011 (accessed 26 December 2014).

[3] Quoted in Carpenter et al. ‘Security or Human Security’, p.1

[4] Huntington, Samuel P. The Soldier and the State — The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations (1957) 2.