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2. Highland Falls is America
- Author:
- George Fust
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
- Abstract:
- In 1957 Samuel Huntington published a highly influential book called the Soldier and the State. In the last paragraph he famously wrote “Highland Falls [represents] the American spirit at its most commonplace…today America can learn more from West Point than West Point from America.” This passage was controversial at the time and even cost Huntington tenure at Harvard. The book would go on to influence generations of civil-military relations scholars. While the sentiment may have been accurate in the 1950s, today’s Highland Falls represents everything America should be.
- Topic:
- Military Affairs, Bureaucracy, and Civil-Military Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
3. Civ-mil in Danger? Blame the pundits, not the academies.
- Author:
- George Fust
- Publication Date:
- 08-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
- Abstract:
- I teach civil-military relations at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. While searching for readings for an elective course taught in the spring semester, I came across a 2010 article written in the L.A. Times, “An increasingly politicized military.” One passage stood out: “By all accounts, the curricula of the service academies and the war colleges give remarkably little attention to the central importance of civilian control. They do not systematically expose up-and-coming officers to intensive case studies and simulations designed to give them a sense of the principle’s real-world implications.” So where are we now? Nearly a decade later, those cadets have graduated and are now midcareer officers. Do civilians have less control over the military as a result of the claim that the military received poor instruction on proper civ-mil relations? Can curriculum “fix” broken civilmilitary relations?
- Topic:
- Political Theory, Military Affairs, and Civil-Military Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
4. An Alternative Perspective of Veteran Disapproval of Recent Wars: The Civil-Military Health of the Nation is Strong
- Author:
- George Fust
- Publication Date:
- 07-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Department of Social Sciences at West Point, United States Military Academy
- Abstract:
- A Pew Research Center report published on July 10 suggests that most veterans of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan believe these wars are “not worth fighting.” What are the implications of these findings? What can they reveal about the health of U.S. civil-military relations? Is it dangerous for the guardians to be opposed to the mission they are directed to accomplish?
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Health Care Policy, Veterans, and Civil-Military Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
5. Downsizing Defense in Development: Unpacking DOD’s Development Assistance
- Author:
- Sarah Rose
- Publication Date:
- 05-2019
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Global Development
- Abstract:
- The US Department of Defense (DOD) is not a development agency, but it does manage millions of dollars of development assistance. In the early 2000s, DOD took on a significantly expanded development role, prompting a number of concerns and creating a lingering perception of intensive US military involvement in development activities. In fact, lessons learned from this era drove a reconceptualization of the Pentagon’s role in development. Today, the military controls only a tiny portion of US development funds, most of which go toward health (mainly PEPFAR) and disaster relief activities. This paper provides a brief landscape analysis of DOD’s recent development aid-funded efforts, breaking down its engagement into six key thematic areas. It concludes with five considerations related to DOD’s role in development assistance: (1) DOD has comparative advantages that make it an important actor in US development policy; (2) civilian-military coordination is hard but critical for development policy coherence; (3) adequate resourcing of civilian agencies is critical for effective civilian-military division of labor; (4) increasing the flexibility of civilian agencies’ staffing, programming, and funding could complement the military’s rapid response capabilities; and (5) incomplete transparency and limited focus on results reduces accountability around DOD’s aid investments.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Development, Military Strategy, Bureaucracy, and Civil-Military Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States and North America
6. Soldiers, Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention
- Author:
- Stefano Recchia
- Publication Date:
- 06-2015
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- Security Studies
- Institution:
- Security Studies
- Abstract:
- Approval from the United Nations or NATO appears to have become a necessary condition for US humanitarian military intervention. Conventional explanations emphasizing the pull of legitimacy can- not fully account for this given that US policymakers vary consider- ably in their attachment to multilateralism. This article argues that America’s military leaders, who are consistently skeptical about humanitarian intervention and tend to emphasize its costs, play a central role in making multilateral approval necessary. As long as top-ranking generals express strong reservations about intervention and no clear threat to US national security exists, they can veto the use of force. In such circumstances, even heavyweight “humani- tarian hawks” among the civilian leadership, who initially may have wanted to bypass multilateral bodies to maximize US freedom of action, can be expected to recognize the need for UN or NATO approval—if only as a means of mollifying the generals by reas- suring them about the prospect of sustained multilateral burden sharing. Two case studies drawing on interviews with senior civil- ian and military officials illustrate and probe the plausibility of the argument.
- Topic:
- Security, NATO, Humanitarian Intervention, Multilateralism, and Civil-Military Relations
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and North America