Reconsidering American Civil-Military Relations : The Military, Society, Politics, and Modern War

The United States professionalized military is subordinated to civilian control. This book looks at that relationship by considering how social media, changing means of warfare, deepening political divisions, and an increasingly unpredictable operational environment have affected the organization of what is conventionally assumed to be an apolitical profession. Through chapters written by respected civil-military relations scholars, military professionals, and policymakers, the book argues that modern means and methods of warfare, not to mention evolving norms on the use of force, are reshaping the contours of what it means to be "professional" and what healthy civil-military relations look like in practice.

This book explores contemporary civil-military relations in the United States. Much of the canonical literature on civil-military relations was either written during or references the Cold War, while other major research focuses on the post-Cold War era, or the first decade of the twenty-first century. A great deal has changed since then.This book considers the implications for civil-military relations of many of these changes. Specifically, it focuses on factors such as breakdowns in democratic and civil-military norms and conventions; intensifying partisanship and deepening political divisions in American society; as well as new technology and the evolving character of armed conflict. Chapters are organized around the principal actors in civil-military relations, and the book includes sections on the military, civilian leadership, and the public. It explores the roles and obligations of each. The book also examines how changes in contemporary armed conflict influence civil-military relations. Chapters in this section examine the cyber domain, grey zone operations, asymmetric warfare and emerging technology. The book thus brings the study of civil-military relations into the contemporary era, in which new geopolitical realities and the changing character of armed conflict combine with domestic political tensions to test, if not potentially redefine, those relations.