Dan Halutz is the first chief of staff to step down in the wake of public pressure. David Elazar retired after the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but that was in response to the recommendation of the Agranat Commission to the government, and not because of public pressure, which was directed at the time at the political leadership rather than the army. Moreover, Halutz's behavior since the end of the war has been guided by the principle that the army must reestablish the public's confidence in it, which is why it was flooded with investigations and the exposure of their findings to the public. Now the chief of staff has resigned, not because the political leadership pushed him to do so, but because he has internalized the fact that public confidence in him was at a nadir, making it difficult for him to function, and causing an erosion of confidence in him within the organization as well.

Ostensibly, therefore, the democratic principle of civil monitoring of the army has won out, since it was the erosion of public confidence in the chief of staff that led to his retirement. But that is not the case. The resignation of the chief of staff actually symbolizes the weakness of civilian monitoring.

The fact that the chief of staff is subordinate to the government requires, among other things, that the political leadership serve to mediate between the public and the military command. A direct dialogue between the military command and the public, one that bypasses the political leadership, does not accord with the principle of political monitoring of the army, particularly when this dialogue is designed to enlist public support for a viewpoint that is politically controversial. A direct dialogue means that the army is sliding over into the area of formulating policy rather than merely implementing it, and involving itself in political controversy and political bargaining.

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Moreover, a dialogue of this kind is liable to empower the army vis-a-vis the politicians, by turning the former into an interpreter of sorts of the public will. It makes no difference if in practice the army carries out the orders of the political leadership in the final analysis, since these orders are a product of the balance of power between the sides.

Therefore, the elected political leadership is supposed to serve as the sole interpreter of the public will, when it comes to translating this will - as vague as it may be - into instructions to the army, including on the personal level. The chief of staff relies on the confidence of the political leadership rather than directly on public confidence, and this political backing is the source of his ability to function. Although it is true that when military service is mandatory, the army is in need of increased public confidence, this confidence must be directed at the army as an institution, and at the government institutions that run it, and should be translated into decisions on the personal level only to the extent that the politicians make these decisions.

The "market economy discourse" that has become dominant since the 1980s has caused the "civilian-consumer" to see the army as a provider of a service, that is, security, whereas the civilian functions as a consumer as well as a service provider, since it is he who provides the army with its human and material resources. The civilians-consumers-suppliers therefore demand an accounting from the army about the quality and price of its service. The pressures to increase transparency in the administration of the defense establishment, in the guise of increasing the media penetration of the army, were an indication of that. The second Lebanon war signaled an additional stage in this penetration, in which the criticism spread even to the roots of the army's professional conduct.

Under circumstances of declining legitimacy, the senior military command is compelled to conduct a direct dialogue with its "clients" as a way of fighting for resources and legitimacy in a competitive environment. In light of the waning of traditional party politics, this dialogue is being conducted directly with the public even above the heads of the politicians, as has been customary among the chiefs of staff since Mota (Mordechai) Gur. They considered themselves trustees of the public rather than of the government, and they were therefore dubbed, in a critical tone, "political chiefs of staff." The dialogue with the public caused the leaders of the army to reveal to it even its unprocessed viewpoint, at first hand, rather than continuing to be satisfied with the mediation of the politicians.

The public criticism of the army after the war, which has now led to the resignation of Halutz, has been responsible for a further weakening of the mechanisms of mediation between the public and the top army brass, and signals another stage in the process by which the chief of staff and the generals are becoming public figures. In the absence of any activity on the part of the political leadership either in enforcing its authority over the army or in representing its interests in the public arena, and in light of the fact that the government refrained from initiating a change in the army leadership in the wake of the war, but also from giving its full backing to the organization, the chief of staff stood alone on the front of dialogue with the public, and failed.

Turning the chief of staff and the generals into public figures not only shifts the balance of power between them and the politicians, in favor of the army officers. It could also reinforce the lack of clarity that already characterizes the army of the "market society" - a blurring of lines between the proper implementation of the demands of the military profession on the one hand, and marketing needs on the other. An army that is fighting for its public status with weak political mediation tends to emphasize belligerent achievements in order to justify its resources and thus to strengthen public confidence. Such an army is hard to restrain. The need for a rehabilitation of political control over the army is therefore one of the lessons of Halutz's resignation.

The writer teaches in the department of public policy at Ben Gurion University of the Negev