Order and Leadership

Abstract

This thesis focuses on United States civil-military relations during the first decade of the twenty-first century. It examines interactions between principal-level civilian and top-tier military leadership during three strategic decision-making moments. Each case involves examples of subjective civilian control. The author's goal is to investigate and then categorize the processes that were used, assessing how variables influenced the nature of subjective control. Qualitative process tracing is the primary methodology. The author focuses on available sources from myriad avenues including but not limited to journalism, memoirs, primary documents, and social science literature. Case study analysis identifies numerous variables. Presidential leadership and process organization were found to be the most influential, spanning from engaged to "delegatory" and orderly to ad-hoc, respectively. Correlations are identified between the variables. Then, theories from established literature are reviewed and applied when possible. Research finds that subjective civil-military relations became increasingly moderate and theoretically "pure" over each case, chronologically. The author uses his analysis to create new typologies of subjective civil-military control, focusing on the relationships between presidential leadership and process organization. The resulting typologies are intended to assist political scientists' identification and categorization of varying civil-military relationships on the subjective end of Huntington's spectrum.