COL. SMITH: Doc, you've said and written about military culture -- what do you mean by this and how is it related to what might be called the "general" American culture?

DR. DEVILBISS: Well, I think the military culture really refers to specific values and attitudes and behaviors and assumptions that surround the military, are an important part of military life, and I think it's a part of American culture. Our armed forces reflect the general ethos or spirit and values of the American culture. But perhaps in a more sharper, refined, or definitive way. So when we're talking about the military culture, what we're really talking about is that spirit -- perhaps we might call it a "warrior spirit" -- that's embedded in the military, a part of the military, and that represents the United States to the world.

Now, just exactly what that warrior spirit is has undergone some redefinition, and we can also talk about that a little later, if you'd like.

COL. SMITH: Well, when you start talking about the warrior culture you really are talking in a sense a little bit of different intensity in each of the services. Now, why is that?

DR. DEVILBISS: They manifest, I think, this warrior spirit in different ways. And that also itself is in the process of evolution, I think. I think now today, in late 20th century going into 21st century, you see much more of a peacekeeping, peacemaking, nation-building spirit that embodies the warrior spirit, rather than the dominance and conquest mentality that characterized the warrior spirit perhaps earlier in this nation's history. But I think each of the services manifest that core element in distinctly different ways.

COL. SMITH: Gender relations seem to have usurped race as the most prominent sociological issue in the military today. Why is this issue so prominent?

DR. DEVILBISS: Well, I think it's one that the military hasn't dealt with in a while, or at least hasn't dealt with in a fashion that it needed to deal with it, and the issue really has been around a long time, it's just coming to the surface, I think, now. Norms and values in the society overall are changing, and the military, as a reflection of the society, reflects that change and evolution in values. So it's not that questions of gender integration haven't been around for a long time, they've been around as long, of course, as women have been in the military. It's just that the form that they take nowadays is different. For example, during World War II no one thought about putting -- placing women in combatant roles. That was just not thought about in the United States or very much as a last resort, possibly. It just wasn't in the culture to think of utilizing women in those kinds of roles. Nowadays, we see women in more quasi-military roles as police patrol officers, as firefighters, more women who can and do use lethal force, so these questions have arisen as part of the cultural context. But they've been around for a long time.

COL. SMITH: Well, it's interesting that -- and again, though, it's because of -- they were forced to it, I suppose, the military was in the forefront of racial integration, whereas they seem, if I understand you correctly, to be lagging the rest of society in gender integration.

DR. DEVILBISS: Well, I think when -- and this gets back to the ethos of the military. When you think of the term "warrior," probably the first thing that comes to your mind is not a woman. And certainly not a woman with children. But in sort of the national mentality or way of thinking, the first thing that would come to mind would be a man. I think that one of the reasons that race, as a question involving the military, came at the time that it did was, of course, that in the nation what was happening at that time was also there were a lot of racial issues going on, and President Truman signed an executive order that racially integrated the armed forces. We have had no president or chief -- chief of staff or commanding officer, head of the armed forces, to sign an executive order to gender integrate the military that way. So I think that the questions are a little bit different. The race issue, you still -- even if you are a non-white male, you're still a male. So I think it plays out itself a little bit differently.

COL. SMITH: Traditionally, women and children have not been regarded as combatants.

DR. DEVILBISS: That's right.

COL. SMITH: With regard to children, the assumption recently has been overturned, particularly in Africa. Does the experience of U.S. women in the Gulf War overturn the presumption in our military about women as combatants and, if so, what does this portend for the future?

DR. DEVILBISS: I think that it helps us as a nation to have a better and more clear and more accurate idea of what women are actually doing in the armed forces and how they are in very central or core roles in addition to being in support roles. So it really puts the lie to the popular perception that women are only in peripheral roles in the armed forces. Anybody can be a combatant. And if you have a situation like you had in the American Revolution, where you've had documented instances of women and children in armed, combative roles. Any time you have something like that that's called a national emergency, everybody helps out in any way that they can. This notion of exclusion of some people for certain kinds of use of deadly force or for being in combat roles, excluding certain people from that is a luxury that a nation that is not at a point of being tote -- having a total involvement in a war, if you can select out some people to be combatants, you're going to select out -- you're going to have the luxury of selecting out certain types of groups to perform that role and certain types not to perform that role. If you don't have that luxury, then everybody performs the role.

And yes, I think it does help to shift the paradigm from women are in support roles, auxiliary roles, periphery roles, I think it does help to have the popular imagination, anyway, to really bring that home that women are actually performing direct combat functions.

COL. SMITH: Fraternization is an issue which is different today than it has been traditionally over the centuries. Would you comment on the modern-day problem of fraternization in the services?

DR. DEVILBISS: Well, I think you have to set this in the context of the military in terms of what Irving Golfin (phonetic) called a "total institution." Total institutions are institutions in which your whole life is lived, you're fed there, you're clothed there, you're educated there, you work there, you have no other outside life or no other basis of comparison. You're totally immersed in the particular institution.

The military, in many ways, being a total institution, has then total control over its members and exactly what it is that they do. And if it wants to impose a very strict code of sexual behavior upon them, then, being the total institution that it is, it can do that and it can enforce the kinds of codes of conduct that it wants from its members. If the members don't go along with these sorts of things, the ultimate sanction, of course, as in any total institution, is exclusion from the institution. And if you want to be a part of it, then you accept its code of behavior.

I think that the military, not unlike other institutions in this society, has a very difficult time dealing with sexuality of any kind. It either obsesses on it or represses it. So it has to -- the military, as a total institution, feels that it has to then be very firm in its relationships, in specifying relationships between its members. Probably the root of the matter is a class distinction, however, and we get this, of course, from our British heritage here in the United States, where the officer corps was the gentry and the enlisted corps was not. And so there's a stream of thought that runs through several hundred years, even though that's not the situation in the United States and social, economic class statuses are more fluid, we still have this perception that officers are set apart or special, or that they have a special calling that enlisted members do not so that in that respect too the relationships between the officer and enlisted elements of the military are very tightly regulated.

But with the increasing number of women coming into the military you also have this aspect of sexuality coming in, so the most intimate type of relationship would then be a sexual relationship so the military, being a predominantly male-dominated and male-defined institution, when you have women coming in you have questions that surround that. By definition, the women bring these questions with them.

COL. SMITH: Your comment that the military is a total institution I find interesting. There is a danger, it seems to me, if you define the military and if it sees itself as a total institution that it becomes separated from the supporting culture, and the only redress against that, if I understand correctly, would be the civilians who control the military -- Congress and the president. Can you comment on that linkage and if that linkage is weakening today.

DR. DEVILBISS: I don't know if it's weakening. I think there is a more porous boundary perhaps is the way to put it, between civil and military relations in this country. Remember, we don't have conscription any more. We don't have a draft. So we have now at least a generation of young people who have grown up without the expectation of military service for men, and no military service for women, or at least that general expectation. So in that respect, you have a couple of things.

One is that you don't have a common grounding of experience for a whole generation of men any more, and the other is that you have these civil/military linkages that work into this new or this redefinition of what the military role is or what the warrior ethos is, because it is moving more --- more from a dominant conquest mentality over towards a peacemaking, peacekeeping, nation-building type of mentality, which are civil, diplomatic realms, okay? So you don't -- you don't just have a man with a weapon any more, or many men with weapons any more. You have ties to -- that are in some ways stronger to the larger society and the civilian interface because of, number one, civilian control, and number two, because you don't have conscription any more.

COL. SMITH: Let me just follow that same point. Congress makes the -- or defines the laws for the UCMJ (inaudible) Justice. And that regulates what can be punished and what is not punishable. If the military is a total institution, is set aside, it seems that Congress is the only entity which can keep the cultural values of the military somewhat in tune with those of the whole society.

DR. DEVILBISS: Well, to a certain extent that's correct, but it cannot only just be Congress, it could also be the executive branch or it could be the Supreme Court. You could have a challenge, for example, on the issue of a general(?) incorporation of women into the military. As I said, you could have an executive order, signed by the President of the United States, as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, that we would have gender integration on this day in the armed forces, and that would be it. No further pen and ink would be necessary in order to achieve that.

You could have a Supreme Court challenge to the utilization of women in the military, and some of these things actually have gone through the courts, issues surrounding women and utilization in the military to be appealed through that judicial route. So, actually, you would have a legislative route, you'd have a judicial route, and you'd have an executive level way into these kinds of issues, especially regarding women in the military, and to, as you say, keep the military in tune with the overall culture itself.

Another thing here too that's very important is that the military -- not just members of the military but the military itself has a self-concept. What it is, what it's expected to be, how it's supposed to act, and if you have -- if you live in a world where you don't have a cold war any more, or you don't have a hot war, then you're going to have different expectations of a military than if you lived under a defense mentality, defense mentality or a conqueror mentality. I think it's especially significant that the names of our departments have changed. Originally, it was the "War Department," you know. Then it was the "Department of Defense." Now it's still the Department of Defense, but it's living in a different kind of world and the military sees itself as making the world -- or keeping the world safe for democracy, and that may not be totally all that it needs to do.

COL. SMITH: In the past the media has carried numerous stories about past and present sexual relations of virtually all ranks in the services. In terms of consensual relations between the sexes, why does the military impose restrictions that do not exist in civilian life?

DR. DEVILBISS: Again, because the military can make any rules that it wants to over its members. It has that power. By law. And through enforcement and policy, it can make any rule that it wants. Again, you see this sort of idea that the military is held to a stricter standard or a higher standard of conduct than other occupations in society. In many ways I think -- or that -- or at least some of the research I've done leads me to think that that might be due, again, to the at least historical reality that at one time the military and the church were very closely aligned, and if you had a very strict moral code for your people in church occupations you would also have a very strict code for a warrior or crusader in a military occupation. So I think there's some vestiges of that, at least.

COL. SMITH: Although some of the warrior popes were not the best moral --

DR. DEVILBISS: No.

COL. SMITH: -- examples either.

DR. DEVILBISS: That's right.

COL. SMITH: Does the military treat, in your view, equally men and women who are involved in consensual sex, fraternization, or even adultery, when that becomes public knowledge? In other words, are punishments the same, are the procedures the same?

DR. DEVILBISS: That's a difficult question to comment on. I think on paper the procedures are the same. I think here, again, the values are a little bit different in the military, reflective of the dominant culture that in these kinds of transgressions that more punishment would accrue to the women. Again, one part of at least the traditional warrior ethos, especially the pillaging ethos, is to treat people and other objects as property or objects to be attained or conquered. So I think there's a different civilian standard for consensual sexual relationships between men and women, and I think that's probably at least the underlying value assumptions are carried over into the military, even though on paper the procedures may be the same. It's difficult for me to comment on without thinking about or citing actual cases and hearing the parties involved, though.

(End of Interview As Recorded)