Since its first installment came out in 1977, the hugely popular Star Wars saga has managed to capture the minds of countless viewers. It has also influenced many creators, both in the cinematographic industry and well beyond it. Although the stories told in the Star Wars movies happened “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away”, their far-reaching cultural impact makes understanding the social representations and ideas they convey about politics and warfare an insightful endeavor. Indeed, films, books and other media both reflect and contribute to shaping how we see our world, and the study of these mutual influences has been a fertile field of research in the social sciences. In this article, I will attempt to summarily analyze a very specific aspect of the Star Wars saga, namely how the first six films portray civil-military relations — that is to say, how civilian and military authorities interact and how power is distributed between the two. Non-movie material, such as books and television series, will not be taken into account (and neither will the more recent The Force Awakens movie).
Traditionally, the central normative objective of much of the literature on civil-military relations has been to find the optimal way to combine the existence of ‘strong’ and ‘effective’ armed forces (1) with an enduring civilian control of the military, and to have as little political involvement of the military as possible (through military coups or less extreme means). This has led authors to develop various models of civ-mil relations, some advocating for a strong separation between the political and military spheres, others arguing instead that civilian authorities should closely monitor the military and sometimes be involved in macro-level military affairs. In the first six films of the Star Wars saga, there are four main political entities engaged in warfare; they are characterized by civ-mil relations of various forms. In the original trilogy (episodes IV to VI), the Galactic Empire is opposed by the Rebel Alliance. In the prequel trilogy (episodes I to III), the Republic is at war with the Confederacy of Independent Systems (a faction I will not touch upon here, for reasons of brevity). To what extent are the political and military spheres separate within the Empire, the Rebel Alliance and the Republic, and what impact does this have on how they perform militarily (and politically)?
The Empire’s political leader is a civilian, Emperor Palpatine. Operating immediately under him is Darth Vader, who’s harder to categorize: although he is often directly involved in the military operations conducted by the armed forces of the Empire, he has no military uniform or title (officers address him as “Lord Vader”). He did, however, hold the rank of general in the former Grand Army of the Republic. The examples of the battles of Hoth and Endor show that the Emperor and Vader actively command and lead military forces at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. They are apparently effective in doing so, although unforeseen factors do thwart some of their plans (and bring them military defeat at the battle of Endor). With regards to the political influence of the military, we learn in Episode IV that “regional governors now have direct control over their territories”. Since there are military officers among the Imperial regional governors, at least some officers in the military do wield considerable political power.
In the Rebel Alliance, the lines between civilians and military officers are blurred to a significant extent. Their leader is a civilian, Mon Mothma, but civilians sometimes give tactical briefings despite having no formal military rank or uniform (as Princess Leia does during the Battle of Hoth). Civilians can apparently also get promoted very rapidly to the highest ranks in the military hierarchy (Han Solo and Lando Calrissian are both generals by Episode VI). This does not hamper the efficiency of their armed forces, since we see them achieve victory in two out of the three battles they engage in throughout the original trilogy (and they successfully retreat against overwhelming numbers in the sole battle where they do suffer defeat, on Hoth). There is no information on the degree of political influence of the military, however, since in the movies the Alliance largely concerns itself with fighting the Empire militarily rather than with exercising political authority.
The Republic constitutes a particularly interesting case, since there is a divide in its Grand Army between the combat forces (whose soldiers are clones) and the highest echelons of the military hierarchy, largely composed of members of the Jedi Order. The clones (who are grown and trained by the apparently civilian Kaminoans) are entirely subservient to the political leader of the regime, Supreme Chancellor Palpatine (a civilian who was elected as head of state by the Galactic Senate). It is under his direction that they obey the Jedi. The latter are introduced as a spiritual organization acting as the “guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy”, but they are eventually shown to have fully integrated the newly-created armed forces (despite still pursuing their other activities). Indeed, the Jedi hold military ranks and they direct the conduct of the war at the strategic, operational and tactical levels. This arrangement appears to be militarily successful, with notable victories in the battles of Geonosis, Coruscant and Utapau. The distinction between the Jedi and the clones is important to keep in mind when examining the political influence of the armed forces of the Republic. The clones do not seem to get involved (or want to get in involved) in politics whatsoever. The Jedi, meanwhile, attempt (and fail) to arrest and depose the Supreme Chancellor in episode III, after uncovering his plan to permanently hold on to the executive powers he was granted for the duration of the war. Immediately after the failed attempt, the Chancellor orders the clones to turn against their Jedi officers and assassinate them, an order that is carried out throughout the galaxy without hesitation.
What do these three cases tell us about how civ-mil relations are portrayed in the Star Wars saga? With regards to the efficiency of the various armed forces, the involvement of civilians in military strategic, operational and tactical decision-making is not depicted as detrimental to the successful conduct of warfare. Despite its overall victory in the Battle of Hoth, the Empire fails to fully destroy Alliance forces not because of Darth Vader’s plan of attack, but partly because a subordinate imperial commanding officer ruined the element of surprise through a poor maneuvering decision. The Emperor’s plan at Endor would have successfully crushed the Alliance if his elite troops had not been spectacularly incompetent at defending imperial installations on the planet. Likewise, the civilian heroes who participate in the Alliance’s military operations (sometimes after being rapidly promoted to the top of the military hierarchy) make substantial contributions to the war effort and are capable of astute tactical decisions (see Lando Calrissian’s call during the Battle of Endor to move Alliance spaceships closer to the Empire’s star destroyers in order to shield them from the Death Star’s laser weapon). In terms of military effectiveness, porosity between the military and civilian spheres is therefore not shown to be a liability.
Star Wars does not portray the substantial political influence of the military as inherently harmful either. Although we are not provided with much information on how imperial military officers govern their sectors of the galaxy (other than through fear), in particular compared to civilian governors, the Jedi Order is unambiguously depicted as a positive influence and a force for good in the Republic. The Supreme Chancellor’s decision to place Anakin Skywalker on the Jedi Council as his personal representative is depicted as part of a malicious stratagem against the Jedi, even though it could be seen as a simple civil-military oversight mechanism. Furthermore, the Jedi’s attempted coup d’État against the Chancellor is shown in a positive light (although Jedi Master Yoda does initially warn that Mace Windu’s call to “take control of the senate in order to secure a peaceful transition” is a dangerous path), because the audience is made to understand that the Chancellor was aiming to (and eventually does) maintain and expand his emergency powers, and (legally) transform the democratic Republic into a dictatorship. Jedi Obi-Wan Kenobi’s exclamation that his “allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy!” is in this respect somewhat reminiscent of Gen. MacArthur’s argument that the armed forces’ primary allegiance should be to “the country and its Constitution which they are sworn to defend” instead of to “those who temporarily exercise the authority of the executive branch of government” (even though the contexts of the two quotes are obviously very different).
In short, although military subordination to civilian authority is the norm rather than the exception in the first six films of the Star Wars saga, the movies do not endorse a specific model of civil-military relations, nor the idea that the military and civilian spheres should be kept strictly separate. The example of the Jedi in the Republic shows that the movies do not even contend that the military hierarchy should always stay subservient to the civilian authorities; instead, an underlying motif is that the civilian/military distinction is secondary to the value of having leaders who are benevolent, well-intentioned and sincerely attached to democracy. Since in Star Wars the main threat to democracy comes from within the civilian authorities themselves, more emphasis is put on the need to be vigilant with respect to those who would try to exploit crises to expand their power, rather than on institutional safeguards guaranteeing civilian control of the military. In fact, we are shown in Episode III that a successful takeover by the Jedi would have been the only way to save democracy in the Republic, and that what could have been an innocent civ-mil oversight mechanism (nominating a personal representative of the Chancellor to the Jedi Council) was actually part of the Chancellor’s mischievous ploy to become Emperor. While it could be argued that these examples may undermine viewer adherence to safeguards ensuring the civilian control of the military, it has to be noted that these specific plot developments rest to a large extent on the fact that the Jedi Order is essentially defined as an unwavering force for good (even though some individual Jedi members did become villains). This may limit the movies’ influence on audiences with regards to the topic of civil-military relations, since the Force and the Jedi do not seem to have awoken (yet!) in our own galaxy.