Read the Chapter – Thomas Donnelly’s contribution to Warriors and Citizens: American Views of Our Military, edited by Kori Schake and Jim Mattis (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 2016). Are we, as Michele Flournoy, former undersecretary of defense for policy, asserts, living “in an Eliot Cohen world” when it comes to civil-military relations? Although it has sworn allegiance to energetic civilian oversight of military affairs, in behavior the US defense establishment is a creature in a Samuel Huntington world, endorsing a rigid distinction between military and civilian spheres of control. In other words, what we have today is a de facto embrace of Huntington’s “objective control” model.
Former Defense Undersecretary for Policy Michele Flournoy, CEO of the Center for a New American Security, participates in a panel discussion at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
