Overview

Focusing on top civilian and military advisors within the national security establishment, this significant book looks at four case studies with a focus on civil-military relations within the US Department of Defense. It investigates whether balanced approaches produce more effective policies and outcomes than dominating structures.

Key Concepts

The culmination of Gibson's treatise is the advancement of the Madisonian approach to civilian control of the military, a normative framework designed to replace Samuel Huntington's Objective Control model and also the Subjective Control model, initially practised by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and most recently by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Madisonian approach calls for changes in US law and new norms to guide the interactions of key participants who populate the civil-military nexus.

Implications

This book is destined to influence US strategic thinking and should be added to the syllabus of courses in civil-military relations, strategic studies, and military history. Given the struggling US policy in Iraq, the time is right for a critical review of US civil-military relations, and this book provides the departure point for analysis and a potential way forward.