March 18, 2019

WOTR Podcast: Civil-Military Relations Gone Wild?

By Loren DeJonge Schulman, Steven Foster, Alice Hunt Friend and Ryan Evans

Debates over civil-military relations have reached a fever pitch since the 2016 presidential campaign and the beginning of the Trump administration. Many have focused on the top-down questions: What role should retired generals play in our political system? What are the consequences of having so many former military leaders at the upper-most ranks of a presidential administration? Should we be worried about the state of civilian leadership in the Pentagon? But to put those in their right context, it is important to look at civil-military relations from the bottom-up. How are ethics taught to our soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines? What is the state of the profession of arms? What does it really mean for the American people to honor their troops? In this episode, we tackle many of these questions from the top-down and the bottom-up with a terrific panel of experts: Loren DeJonge Schulman of the Center for a New American Security, Alice Hunt Friend of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and Steven Foster of the U.S. Army and one of the contributors to Redefining the Modern Military: The Intersection of Profession and Ethics.

Listen to the full conversation on War on the Rocks.

More from CNAS

View All Reports View All Articles & Multimedia