Focusing on top civilian and military advisors within the national security establishment, this significant book looks at four case studies with a focus on civil-military relations within the US Department of Defense. Destined to influence US strategic thinking, it should be added to the syllabus of courses in civil-military relations, strategic studies and military history.

Contents: The civil-military dynamic: a relationship adrift; Excesses and over-corrections in the US civil-military relations since the Second World War and the return of Donald Rumsfeld in 2001; The search for role models; Normative theory in civil-military relations during the Cold War: the objective control and subjective control models; The search for new normative theory in the post-Cold War era; A Madisonian approach for civil-military relations; Bibliography; Index.

Christopher P. Gibson was former Assistant Professor of American Politics with the Department of Social Sciences at the United States Military Academy at West Point, and is currently Hoover National Security Fellow at Stanford University, USA.