How do civilians control the military? In the wake of September 11, the renewed presence of national security in everyday life has made this question all the more pressing. In this book, Peter Feaver proposes an ambitious new theory that treats civil-military relations as a principal-agent relationship, with the civilian executive monitoring the actions of military agents, the "armed servants" of the nation-state. Military obedience is not automatic but depends on strategic calculations of...

Cyber weapons and the possibility of cyber conflict—including interference in foreign political campaigns, industrial sabotage, attacks on infrastructure, and combined military campaigns—require policymakers, scholars, and citizens to rethink twenty-first-century warfare. Yet because cyber capabilities are so new and continually developing, there is little agreement about how they will be deployed, how effective they can be, and how they can be managed.Written by leading scholars, ...

A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations. What explains the high levels of public confidence in the US military and does high confidence matter? In Thanks for Your Service, the eminent civil-military relations scholar Peter D. Feaver addresses this question and focuses on what it means for the military. Proprietary survey data show that confidence is partly based on public be...

I WISH I’D KNOWN THAT IN COLLEGEYour time as an undergrad has the potential to be incredibly fun, rewarding, and life changing in ways you may not yet even imagine–that is, if you play your cards right and take full advantage of what your university has to offer. Sadly, very few students ever learn the secret handshake of how to make the most of their college years. Until now.For undergrads (and parents) hoping their tuition will pay off, G...

America's debate over whether and how to invade Iraq clustered into civilian versus military camps. Top military officials appeared reluctant to use force, the most hawkish voices in government were civilians who had not served in uniform, and everyone was worried that the American public would not tolerate casualties in war. This book shows that this civilian-military argument--which has characterized earlier debates over Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo--is typical, not exceptional. Indeed, t...

A definitive study on the decades-long run of high public confidence in the military and why it may rest on some shaky foundations.What explains the high levels of public confidence in the US military and does high confidence matter? In Thanks for Your Service, the eminent civil-military relations scholar Peter D. Feaver addresses this question and focuses on what it means for the military. Proprietary survey data show that confidence is partly based on pu...

Hand-Off details the Bush administration’s national security and foreign policy as described at the time in then-classified Transition Memoranda prepared by the National Security Council experts who advised President Bush. Thirty of these Transition Memoranda, newly declassified and here made public for the first time, provide a detailed, comprehensive, and first-hand look at the foreign policy the Bush administration turned over to President Obama. In a postscript to each memorandum, thes...

In August 2016, the Aspen Strategy Group examined how to reform America’s national security decision-making process. The papers in this volume provide practical solutions to repair the key functions of Washington’s executive departments, agencies, and advisory bodies responsible for shaping U.S. foreign policy and national security.

There is a widening divide between the data, tools, and knowledge that international relations scholars produce and what policy practitioners find relevant for their work. In this first-of-its-kind conversation, leading academics and practitioners reflect on the nature and size of the theory-practice divide. They find the gap varies by issue area and over time.The essays in this volume use data gathered by the Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project over a fifte...

When the "don't ask, don't tell" policy emerged as a political compromise under Bill Clinton in 1993, it only ended up worsening the destructive gay ban that had been on the books since World War II. Drawing on more than a decade of research and hundreds of interviews, Nathaniel Frank exposes the military's policy toward gays and lesbians as damaging and demonstrates that "don't ask, don't tell" must be replaced with an outright reversal of the gay ban.Frank is one of the nation's l...

What role do think tanks play in shaping public policy and public discourse in the United States?In The Fifth Estate: Think Tanks, Public Policy, and Governance, James G. McGann illustrates how policymakers have come to value the independent analysis and advice provided by think tanks and why it has become one of the defining characteristics of the American political system. Drawing on case studies in both foreign and domestic policy, McGann clarifies the correlat...

Results from the book lay the groundwork for the systematic analysis of an understudied form of civilian abuse. The book will also be useful to policymakers and organizations seeking to understand and to mitigate the horrors of wartime rape.Rape is common during wartime, but even within the context of the same war, some armed groups perpetrate rape on a massive scale while others never do. In Rape during Civil War Dara Kay Cohen examines v...