Air Force Academy to fight 'insidious threat gathering from within' by focusing on constitutional oath education

Administrators at the United States' military academies have called for a greater focus on the Constitution when educating new recruits and to move away from politics, the Daily Caller reports.

Military educators penned a commentary piece in the publication War on the Rocks to promote the idea of a new, oath-based focus in Air Force Academy education.

Among the authors were Dr. Marybeth Ulrich, a professor of government at the U.S. Army War College, and Dr. Lynne Chandler Garcia, an associate professor at the U.S. Air Force Academy.

With the Air Force Academy's "Oath Project," administrators said they could combat trends of politicization and partisanship in the armed forces by focusing on the oath to uphold the Constitution, which all military members take upon enlisting.

"Our mission is to cultivate a program to institutionalize, educate, and train all cadets on the Oath of Commissioning and civil-military relations norms to foster a deeper understanding of military service in a democracy," the project's mission statement reads.

According to the educators, the Oath Project should be coupled with what they call an equally important "democracy ethos." This refers to a 2022 document that identified a lack of trust civilians have in the Air Force, deeming it to be too politicized. It also noted a severe threat from domestic politics coupled with a lack of civic understanding.

"The threats stemming from great power competition and from losing our technology-based advantages are accompanied, however, by another, more insidious threat gathering from within the American domestic political system," the document stated.

"This new menace is rooted in a decline in civic understanding in society at large, complacent citizenship, and insufficient development of a professional military ethos steeped in democratic civil-military relations," the ethos added.

At the Air Force Academy, only five lessons are devoted to constitutional foundations and civilian control of the military, the authors noted.

They insisted that a civil-military relations course teaching themes of political science, history, law, and leadership is sorely needed at military academies. Admitting that a reformed curriculum will take years to achieve, the professors said that the Oath Project is providing at least some of the hands-on experience cadets need in the interim.

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