 Over the past three decades, civilian control of the U.S. military has “quietly but steadily degraded,” Risa Brooks, Jim Golby, and Heidi Urben write in a new essay. “Today, presidents worry about military opposition to their policies and must reckon with an institution that selectively implements executive guidance. Too often, unelected military leaders limit or engineer civilians’ options so that generals can run wars as they see fit.”
“Resetting this broken relationship is a tall order,” but the country’s democratic traditions and national security both depend on it. “Without robust civilian oversight of the military, the United States will not remain a democracy or a global power for long.”
Read more from Foreign Affairs on civil-military relations and U.S. foreign policy:
“The Overmilitarization of American Foreign Policy” by Robert M. Gates “Sleepwalking Into World War III” by Carrie A. Lee “Trump, the Generals, and the Corrosion of Civil-Military Relations” by Max Boot “The Pentagon’s Transparency Problem” by Loren DeJonge Schulman and Alice Friend
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