ABSTRACT
In a country with a military as large and powerful as America’s, fears of a crisis in civilmilitary relations should be cause for concern. The nation’s liberty and democratic character depend on having a disciplined, effective, and obedient military, one focused on external threats, not on domestic politics. In most of the rest of the world, studies of civil-military relations tend to focus on the threat of coups and juntas. The persistent question with regard to American civil-military relations is different – a matter of negotiating and renegotiating the boundaries between military expertise and civilian oversight, within an overall framework of assured civilian supremacy. The perpetual challenge is to create institutions and organizational precedents that maximize the contributions of a highly educated, experienced, and professional US officer corps, while ensuring that civilians, often ignorant of military detail, retain meaningful control over whether and how US military power is exercised.
