The Constitution and the Soldier
Every member of the US Armed Forces takes an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But as the Annenberg survey (Annenberg 2024, Annenberg 2023 ) reports, many Americans have…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 1: Huntington and the Balance of Forces
When I entered West Point in 1977, we were told the military profession was a calling and something far more than a job. But even then, the forces that would become the social justice movement were already at work.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 2: The Nutcracker
This piece builds on Part 1 of the series. It morphs the balancing scale in Part 1 into a nutcracker based on the increasing Societal Imperative pressures and complex security environment that place a premium on the Functional Imperative.…
The Bureaucratization of the Military, Part 3: Corporateness and Bureaucracy
Part 1 of this series introduced Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State and discussed careerism and jobs. Part 2 discussed the declining trust the public has in the military and introduced the nutcracker using Huntington’s two imperative: functional and…
