Acronym/Abbreviation

The book’s recommendations all require some level of congressional intervention, a circumstance many readers may find curious, but Peters argues effectively that Congress, because of its legislative and budgetary authorities, is the only actor in the federal government that can compel the president and the Department of Defense to undertake the necessary reforms.

After devoting so much to the cause, it is hard to be objective about recent U.S. military operations. Reflection and self-criticism are difficult tasks for most people, and more difficult still for soldiers, Marines, sailors, and airmen who have spent many months away from their families and in harm’s way, seen their comrades killed and wounded, and suffered the privations of the...

Friends and colleagues from within the U.S. Department of Defense and RAND also provided invaluable commentary on the manuscript. In this regard, I am indebted to Dr. Edward Keating and Dr. Elvira Loredo at RAND, and to Dr. Benjamin Zycher, a RAND alumnus now at the American Enterprise Institute, for their insights and helpful suggestions. Dr. Keith...

How could this be? How is it that the U.S. military, self-described in 2001 as the “best trained, best equipped, and most capable in the world,”1 could be fought to a draw by the irregular warriors and tribal militias that opposed it? After all, before sequestration, the United States out-spent the next fourteen states on the planet in terms of military budgets....

Since Huntington, many scholars have weighed in on civil-military relations. Huntington’s emphasis on civilian control remains a prominent theme in this ongoing discussion, but there are others, too.2 Historian and former State Department official Dale Herspring’s work focuses on the amount of conflict present in civil-military relations, and the degree to which a...

campaign—A series of related major operations aimed at achieving strategic and operational objectives within a given time and space. See also campaign plan. (JP 5-0)

counter-insurgency—Comprehensive civilian and military efforts designed to simultaneously defeat and contain insurgency and address its root causes. Also called COIN. (JP 3-24)

This chapter presents lessons and insights from U.S. military experience in support of this claim.

The president, in his or her role as commander-in-chief, influences each of these problems profoundly. His or her decision-making and executive style are critical to civil-military relations, as are his or her expectations for the competence and abilities of his or her senior defense advisors. The president’s ability to explain what he or she wants from options for the use of military force...