ABSTRACT
Introduction The state of civil-military relations in the United States resurfaced as a notable focus of concern in the 1990s. In the early years of the decade, many saw a potential crisis brewing in civilian control (see Kohn, 1994; Weigley, 1993; and Bacevich, 1998). Some observers attributed this to the fact that President Bill Clinton’s administration, which suffered from a lack of credibility in military affairs, came into office at the same time that the Joint Chiefs had a popular and activist chairman in the person of General Colin Powell (Cohen, 1995). Another factor that some saw at work was the new authority of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986 (Luttwak, 1994). However, consensus about the scale of the problem was never reached, with some arguing that claims of a crisis were exaggerated (see Kohn, 1994, 29; Avant, 1998; and Burk, 1998). Even during the Clinton administration, at least one observer saw the balance being restored during the tenures of successive chairmen of the Joint Staff (see Goldstein, 2000).
