Crisis, Agency, and Law in US Civil-Military Relations

This book develops a responsible and practical method for evaluating the success, failure, or "crisis" of American civil-military relations among its political and uniformed elite. The author's premise is that currently there is no objectively fair way for the public at large or the strategic-level elites to assess whether the critical and often obscured relationships between Generals, Admirals, and Statesmen function as they ought to under the US constitutional system. By treating these relationships-in form and practice-as part of a wider principal (civilian)-agency (military) dynamic, the book tracks the "duties"-care, competence, diligence, confidentiality, scope of responsibility-and perceived shortcomings in the interactions between US civilian political authorities and their military advisors in both peacetime and in war.

Autorentext
Major Dan Maurer is a combat veteran, former engineer officer, and has practiced military law as a prosecutor in courts-martial, as an appellate counsel, and in leadership positions within the Army Judge Advocate General's Corps. He is a contributing author at the United States Military Academy's Modern War Institute.

Inhalt

1. Introduction
2. The Opening Statement
3. The Case-in-Chief: What the Law Does (Not) Say
4. The Expert Witnesses: A Cross-Examination
   5. The Expert Witnesses: Fingerprints of Agency
5. The Rebuttal Witnesses: From Agency to Norms to Diagnosis
6. Exhibit A: Scope of Responsibility and Authority
7. Boundaries, or A Poverty of Useful and Unambiguous Authority?
8. Exhibit B: When Fidelity and Frankness Conflict
9. Exhibit C: Amending the Goldwater-Nichols Act
10. Exhibit D: The Future Fallacy, A Civ-Mil Dialogue
11. Closing Argument