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http://revista.ieee.es/index.php/ieee 238 Journal of the Spanish Institute for Strategic Studies Núm. 9 / 2017 the civilians parochial interests that do not serve the general ones of the citizens. Any deviation from this rule is effective- and adequately self-policed. The application of the model to the cases of the United Kingdom and Greece yields interesting information about their respective patterns (Table I). This is hardly surprising: the armed forces of the United Kingdom can exhibit an impeccable record of respect to civil supremacy, while the short history of modern Greece is punctuated by several cases of military intervention in politics, the last one as recent as 1967-1974. In the field of management of human resources, the analysis of the British CMR pattern shows how the government, probably because of the high level of trust it deposits on the subordination of the armed forces, exercises a loose control over professional decisions. For sure, the civilians hold the key to those decisions and retain the authority to veto, reverse or modify them, but they use it only in extraordinary circumstances. Examples like the rather informal decision taken by PM Blair’s Chief of Staff to appoint General Sir Richard Dannatt as Chief of the General Staff (CGS) without even consulting the Prime Minister15 would indicate how comfortable the politicians feel in the United Kingdom about the attachment of their soldiers to the principles of democratic CMR. The field of professional military education (PME) in the United Kingdom shows a significant level of permeability between the military and the civilian education systems. The PME curriculum for officers ensures frequent and intense contact with civilians –both students and faculty-, and offers a blend of military and civilian subjects, as well as civilian titles, which promote mutual knowledge and understanding and facilitate the integration into the civilian labor market of those not willing to further their career in the armed forces. Procurement and acquisitions (P&A) and military justice are two areas where recent changes have modified the CMR pattern, in this case reducing the margin of military autonomy. On the first one, the Ministry of Defense introduced in 2011 a comprehensive reform of the P&A procedures to adopt a more business-like approach that should make the system more efficient. The reform came at the expense of the military, which has seen reduced its capacity to influence the decisions on equipment taken at the political level, establishing a more clear separation between the customer and the supplier. In the case of military justice, the transformation has been operated in the two ways of civilianization and juridification.16 While the former is little more than an adaptation to civilian procedures with negligible consequences for the existing CMR 15  INGHAM, Sarah, The Military Covenant. Its Impact on Civil-Military Relations in Britain, (Burlington, VT: Ashgate Publishing Company, 2014), p. 123. 16  RUBIN, G.R., “United Kingdom Military Law: Autonomy, Civilianisation, Juridification,” The Modern Law Review, Vol. 65, No. 1 (January 2002), p. 37.

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