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The end of the Cold War has coincided with a deterioration in the relationship between civilian authority and the military institution in the United States. While there is no "crisis" in U.S. post-Cold War civil-military relations,l it seems clear that the United States is now experiencing a weakening in civilian control of the military, at least compared with the Cold War period.2 This development is surprising. During the Cold War, the United States was a model of military subordination to civilian authority, and many assumed that this pattern would persist.3 For example, two retired generals maintain that nothing has really changed.4 "Since coming to this job this past year," observed former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General John Shalikashvili, "I'd say the relationship between the military and the President has only improved.... "5 Many active-duty officers I have spoken with share these sentiments,6 and at least some civilian analysts agree.7
Unfortunately, existing theory is an uncertain guide for us here. The most rigorous theoretical statements of how international factors might affect civilian control of the military are contradictory. Much of the literature on civil-military relations shares Harold Lasswell's basic premise that the military should be harder to control in a challenging international threat environment but easier to control in a relatively benign international environment? "Only the iron heel of protracted military crisis can subdue civilian influences and pass `all power to the general."'9 The end of the Cold War, according to this logic, should make it more, rather than less, likely that civilians will maintain firm control of the U.S. military. Conversely, Stanislaw Andreski has argued that an increasing external threat should improve civilian control of the military:
The devil finds work for idle hands: the soldiers who have no wars to fight or prepare for will be tempted to interfere in politics. Taking a long-term view, it seems that there is an inverse connection between strenuous warfare and pretorianism.10
Following Andreski, a few analysts suggested that changes in the international system are ultimately the cause of the post-Cold War problems.ll But even Samuel Huntington, the dean of American civil-military relations scholars,l2 does not fully develop an argument as to how international variables affect civil-military relations. In some places he seems to take...