Culture wars

Culture wars
Author: Jeffrey W. Donnithorne
Publisher:
Total Pages: 13
Release: 2013
Genre: Aerial reconnaissance, American
ISBN:

Creating Military Power

Creating Military Power
Author: Risa Brooks
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2007-04-09
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 9780804768092

Creating Military Power examines how societies, cultures, political structures, and the global environment affect countries' military organizations. Unlike most analyses of countries' military power, which focus on material and basic resources—such as the size of populations, technological and industrial base, and GNP—this volume takes a more expansive view. The study's overarching argument is that states' global environments and the particularities of their cultures, social structures, and political institutions often affect how they organize and prepare for war, and ultimately impact their effectiveness in battle. The creation of military power is only partially dependent on states' basic material and human assets. Wealth, technology, and human capital certainly matter for a country's ability to create military power, but equally important are the ways a state uses those resources, and this often depends on the political and social environment in which military activity takes place.

Armed Servants

Armed Servants
Author: Peter Feaver
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 410
Release: 2009-07
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780674036772

How do civilians control the military? In the wake of September 11, the renewed presence of national security in everyday life has made this question all the more pressing. In this book, Peter Feaver proposes an ambitious new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the armed servants of the nation-state. Military obedience is not automatic but depends on strategic calculations of whether civilians will catch and punish misbehavior. This model challenges Samuel Huntington's professionalism-based model of civil-military relations, and provides an innovative way of making sense of the U.S. Cold War and post-Cold War experience--especially the distinctively stormy civil-military relations of the Clinton era. In the decade after the Cold War ended, civilians and the military had a variety of run-ins over whether and how to use military force. These episodes, as interpreted by agency theory, contradict the conventional wisdom that civil-military relations matter only if there is risk of a coup. On the contrary, military professionalism does not by itself ensure unchallenged civilian authority. As Feaver argues, agency theory offers the best foundation for thinking about relations between military and civilian leaders, now and in the future.

American Civil-Military Relations

American Civil-Military Relations
Author: Suzanne C. Nielsen
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2009-10-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801895057

American Civil-Military Relations offers the first comprehensive assessment of the subject since the publication of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. Using this seminal work as a point of departure, experts in the fields of political science, history, and sociology ask what has been learned and what more needs to be investigated in the relationship between civilian and military sectors in the 21st century. Leading scholars—such as Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, James Burk, Michael Desch, Peter Feaver, Richard Kohn, Williamson Murray, and David Segal—discuss key issues, including: • changes in officer education since the end of the Cold War • shifting conceptions of military expertise in response to evolving operational and strategic requirements • increased military involvement in high-level politics • the domestic and international contexts of U.S. civil-military relations. The first section of the book provides contrasting perspectives of American civil-military relations within the last five decades. The next section addresses Huntington’s conception of societal and functional imperatives and their influence on the civil-military relationship. Following sections examine relationships between military and civilian leaders and describe the norms and practices that should guide those interactions. What is clear from the essays in this volume is that the line between civil and military expertise and responsibility is not that sharply drawn, and perhaps given the increasing complexity of international security issues, it should not be. When forming national security policy, the editors conclude, civilian and military leaders need to maintain a respectful and engaged dialogue. Essential reading for those interested in civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and national security policy.

Civil–Military Entanglements

Civil–Military Entanglements
Author: Birgitte Refslund Sørensen
Publisher: Berghahn Books
Total Pages: 294
Release: 2019-07-16
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1789201969

Military-civilian encounters are multiple and diverse in our times. Contributors to this volume demonstrate how military and civilian domains are constituted through entanglements undermining the classic civil-military binary and manifest themselves in unexpected places and manners. Moreover, the essays trace out the ripples, reverberations and resonations of civil-military entanglements in areas not usually associated with such ties, but which are nevertheless real and significant for an understanding of the roles war, violence and the military play in shaping contemporary societies and the everyday life of its citizens.

Four Guardians

Four Guardians
Author: Jeffrey W. Donnithorne
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
Total Pages: 287
Release: 2021-02-02
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1421439921

Exploring the profound differences between what the military services believe—and how they uniquely serve the nation. When the US military confronts pressing security challenges, the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps often react differently as they advise and execute civilian defense policies. Conventional wisdom holds that these dynamics tend to reflect a competition for prestige, influence, and dollars. Such interservice rivalries, however, are only a fraction of the real story. In Four Guardians, Jeffrey W. Donnithorne argues that the services act instead as principled agents, interpreting policies in ways that reflect their unique cultures and patterns of belief. Chapter-length portraits of each service highlight the influence of operational environment ("nature") and political history ("nurture") in shaping each service's cultural worldview. The book also offers two important case studies of civil-military policymaking: one, the little-known story of the creation of the Rapid Deployment Joint Task Force in the early 1980s; the other, the four-year political battle that led to the passage of the Goldwater-Nichols Act in 1986. Donnithorne uses these cases to demonstrate the principled agent framework in action while amply revealing the four services as distinctly different political actors. Combining crisp insight and empirical depth with engaging military history, Four Guardians provides practical utility for civil-military scholars, national security practitioners, and interested citizens alike. This timely work brings a new appreciation for the American military, the complex dynamics of civilian control, and the principled ways in which the four guardian services defend their nation.

Understanding the U.S. Military

Understanding the U.S. Military
Author: Katherine Carroll
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2022-08-11
Genre: History
ISBN: 1000630544

This book offers an accessible introduction to the U.S. military as an institution and provides insights into the military’s structure and norms. Designed for undergraduate students, the book offers an interdisciplinary overview of America’s armed forces through three critical lenses. First, it introduces the military’s constitutional and historical context. Second, it presents concise factual information chosen for its relevance to the military’s structures, procedures, norms, and varied activities. Finally, it intersperses these facts with debates, theories, and questions to spark student interest, class discussion, and further research. The text is written for the beginner but covers complex topics such as force structure and the defense budget. With contributions informed by both scholarly approaches and long military careers, the book will prepare students for further studies in international relations, civil-military relations, or U.S. foreign policy. It also encourages critical thinking, elucidating an institution that undergraduates and other civilians too often perceive as both baffling and above reproach. This book will be of much interest to students of the U.S. military, civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and public policy.

The Evolution of the US Air Force

The Evolution of the US Air Force
Author: Israel Guy
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2024-08-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1040111513

This book looks at the history of the US Air Force through the lens of its (lack of) preparedness for major wars, which is shown to be a result of its organizational culture. The U.S. Air Force is probably the most powerful military force in history, both in its destructive firepower and in its ability to project it globally. Yet, despite its unparalleled power, the Air Force entered its first three pivotal conflicts – World War II, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War – unprepared. But surprisingly, it was remarkably well prepared for its fourth major war: the Gulf War of 1991. Could there be an underlying trait or characteristic, which influenced the Air Force between the wars, that historically caused the US Air Force to be unprepared for war or prepared for the wrong type of war? Surprisingly, there is such a factor which was quite prominent in the Air Force’s complex identity – its organizational culture. Besides providing a historical description of the Air Force, this book demonstrates clearly how its organizational culture evolved and how it caused the US Air Force to be prepared for the wrong war. It also shows that when the organizational culture changed, the Air Force changed its focus and arrived prepared for the following war: the 1991 Gulf War. This book will be of interest to students of air power, strategic studies, US public policy, and security studies in general.