This new textbook seeks to explain how US defense and national security policy is formulated and conducted. The focus is on the role of the President, Congress, political partisans, defense industries, lobbies, science, the media, and interest groups, including the military itself, in shaping policies. It examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the President and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The book shows how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy, and warns against the introduction of centralising reforms. In emphasizing the process of defense policy-making, rather than just the outcomes of that process, this book signals a departure from the style of many existing textbooks.
This textbook provides an accessible overview of US defense politics for upper-level students. This new edition has been fully updated and revised, with a new chapter on intelligence and new material on unmanned drones, women in the military, the Tea Party, and other key issues. Analyzing the ways in which the United States prepares for war, the authors demonstrate how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy and warn against over-emphasis on planning, centralization, and technocracy. Emphasizing the process of defense policy-making rather than just the outcomes of that process, US Defense Politics departs from the traditional style of many existing textbooks. Designed to help students understand the practical side of American national security policy, the book examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the President and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The textbook will be essential reading for students of US defense politics, US national security policy and homeland security, and highly recommended for students of US foreign policy, US public policy and public administration.
Irrational security -- After the Cold War : from buildup to bottom-up -- What comes down must go up : Clinton and the politics of military spending -- From ambition to empire : Bush and military policy before and after 9/11 -- Hidden in plain sight : the Bush military buildup -- Paying the price : from Bush to Obama.
This book provides an accessible overview of US defense politics for upper-level students. This new edition has been fully updated and revised, with a new chapter on veterans and new material on topics such as cyberwarfare and lobbying. Analyzing the ways in which the United States prepares for war, the authors demonstrate how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy and warn against over-emphasis on planning, centralization, and technocracy. Emphasizing the process of defense policy-making rather than just the outcomes of that process, US Defense Politics departs from the traditional style of many other textbooks. Designed to help students understand the practical side of American national security policy, the book examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the president and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The third edition will be essential reading for students of US defense politics, national security policy, and homeland security, and highly recommended for students of US foreign policy, public policy, and public administration.
A vital text for understanding the twenty-first-century battlefield and the shifting force structure, this book prepares students to think critically about the rapidly changing world they'll inherit. American Defense Policy, first published in 1965 under the leadership of Brent Scowcroft, has been a mainstay in courses on political science, international relations, military affairs, and American national security for more than 50 years. This updated and thoroughly revised ninth edition, which contains about 30% all-new content, considers questions of continuity and change in America's defense policy in the face of a global climate beset by geopolitical tensions, rapid technological change, and terrorist violence. The book is organized into three parts. Part I examines the theories and strategies that shape America's approach to security policy. Part II dives inside the defense policy process, exploring the evolution of contemporary civil-military relations, the changing character of the profession of arms, and the issues and debates in the budgeting, organizing, and equipping process. Part III examines how purpose and process translate into American defense policy. This invaluable and prudent text remains a classic introduction to the vital security issues the United States has faced throughout its history. It breaks new ground as a thoughtful and comprehensive starting point to understand American defense policy and its role in the world today. Contributors: Gordon Adams, John R. Allen, Will Atkins, Deborah D. Avant, Michael Barnett, Sally Baron, Jeff J.S. Black, Jessica Blankshain, Hal Brands, Ben Buchanan, Dale C. Copeland, Everett Carl Dolman, Jeffrey Donnithorne, Daniel W. Drezner, Colin Dueck, Eric Edelman, Martha Finnemore, Lawrence Freedman, Francis Fukuyama, Michael D. Gambone, Lynne Chandler Garcia, Bishop Garrison, Erik Gartzke, Mauro Gilli, Robert Gilpin, T.X. Hammes, Michael C. Horowitz, G. John Ikenberry, Bruce D. Jones, Tim Kane, Cheryl A. Kearney, David Kilcullen, Michael P. Kreuzer, Miriam Krieger, Seth Lazar, Keir A. Lieber, Conway Lin, Jon R. Lindsay, Austin Long, Joseph S. Lupa Jr., Megan H. MacKenzie, Mike J. Mazarr, Senator John McCain, Daniel H. McCauley, Michael E. McInerney, Christopher D. Miller, James N. Miller, John A. Nagl, Henry R. Nau, Renée de Nevers, Joseph S. Nye Jr., Michael E. O'Hanlon, Mancur Olson Jr., Sue Payton, Daryl G. Press, Thomas Rid, John Riley, David Sacko, Brandon D. Smith, James M. Smith, Don M. Snider, Sir Hew Strachan, Michael Wesley, Richard Zeckhauser
This book provides an accessible overview of US defense politics for upper-level students. This new edition has been fully updated and revised, with a new chapter on veterans and new material on topics such as cyberwarfare and lobbying. Analyzing the ways in which the United States prepares for war, the authors demonstrate how political and organizational interests determine US defense policy and warn against over-emphasis on planning, centralization, and technocracy. Emphasizing the process of defense policy-making rather than just the outcomes of that process, US Defense Politics departs from the traditional style of many other textbooks. Designed to help students understand the practical side of American national security policy, the book examines the following key themes: US grand strategy; who joins America's military; how and why weapons are bought; the management of defense; public attitudes toward the military and casualties; the roles of the president and the Congress in controlling the military; the effects of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror on security policy, homeland security, government reorganizations, and intra- and inter-service relations. The third edition will be essential reading for students of US defense politics, national security policy, and homeland security, and highly recommended for students of US foreign policy, public policy, and public administration.
Empire of Defense tells the story of how the United States turned war into defense. When the Truman administration dissolved the Department of War in 1947 and formed the Department of Defense, it marked not the end of conventional war but, Joseph Darda argues, the introduction of new racial criteria for who could wage it––for which countries and communities could claim self-defense. From the formation of the DOD to the long wars of the twenty-first century, the United States rebranded war as the defense of Western liberalism from first communism, then crime, authoritarianism, and terrorism. Officials learned to frame state violence against Asians, Black and brown people, Arabs, and Muslims as the safeguarding of human rights from illiberal beliefs and behaviors. Through government documents, news media, and the writing and art of Joseph Heller, June Jordan, Trinh T. Minh-ha, I. F. Stone, and others, Darda shows how defense remade and sustained a weakened color line with new racial categories (the communist, the criminal, the authoritarian, the terrorist) that cast the state’s ideological enemies outside the human of human rights. Amid the rise of anticolonial and antiracist movements the world over, defense secured the future of war and white dominance.
The Politics of Military Force examines the dynamics of discursive change that made participation in military operations possible against the background of German antimilitarist culture. Once considered a strict taboo, so-called out-of-area operations have now become widely considered by German policymakers to be without alternative. The book argues that an understanding of how certain policies are made possible (in this case, military operations abroad and force transformation), one needs to focus on processes of discursive change that result in different policy options appearing rational, appropriate, feasible, or even self-evident. Drawing on Essex School discourse theory, the book develops a theoretical framework to understand how discursive change works, and elaborates on how discursive change makes once unthinkable policy options not only acceptable but even without alternative. Based on a detailed discourse analysis of more than 25 years of German parliamentary debates, The Politics of Military Force provides an explanation for: (1) the emergence of a new hegemonic discourse in German security policy after the end of the Cold War (discursive change), (2) the rearticulation of German antimilitarism in the process (ideational change/norm erosion) and (3) the resulting making-possible of military operations and force transformation (policy change). In doing so, the book also demonstrates the added value of a poststructuralist approach compared to the naive realism and linear conceptions of norm change so prominent in the study of German foreign policy and International Relations more generally.
In a classic work, Samuel P. Huntington challenges most of the old assumptions and ideas on the role of the military in society. Stressing the value of the military outlook for American national policy, Huntington has performed the distinctive task of developing a general theory of civil–military relations and subjecting it to rigorous historical analysis. Part One presents the general theory of the "military profession," the "military mind," and civilian control. Huntington analyzes the rise of the military profession in western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and compares the civil–military relations of Germany and Japan between 1870 and 1945. Part Two describes the two environmental constants of American civil–military relations, our liberal values and our conservative constitution, and then analyzes the evolution of American civil–military relations from 1789 down to 1940, focusing upon the emergence of the American military profession and the impact upon it of intellectual and political currents. Huntington describes the revolution in American civil–military relations which took place during World War II when the military emerged from their shell, assumed the leadership of the war, and adopted the attitudes of a liberal society. Part Three continues with an analysis of the problems of American civil–military relations in the era of World War II and the Korean War: the political roles of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the difference in civil–military relations between the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, the role of Congress, and the organization and functioning of the Department of Defense. Huntington concludes that Americans should reassess their liberal values on the basis of a new understanding of the conservative realism of the professional military men.
