Summary
1. Introduction
2. Fear of Standing Armies: Colonial and Revolutionary Eras
3. The Constitution and Civilian Control
4. The Age of Free Security: The 19th Century
5. The Civil War
6. Into the 20th Century: Continuity in Civilian Control
7. Expensive Security: The Two World Wars
8. The Cold War
9. New Civil-Military Institutions
10. Korea and Vietnam
11. Congress and the War Powers Act
12. Recent Developments
13. Conclusion

* An effective democracy requires civilian control of the military.

* Civilian control of the military exemplifies the principle that military force is not an end in itself but a means that the civil authority can use to bring about certain political objectives.

* Civilian control means that tactical decisions regarding military operations in the field must serve the political and strategic goals established by the civil authority.

* The officers and enlisted personnel of the U.S. armed services accept the principle of civilian control as a requirement of military professionalism.

* Reflecting views prevalent in the colonial period, the Constitution of the United States ensures effective civilian control of the military.

* The American public accepts military personnel for political office only if they retire from active military duty.

* The president is commander in chief of the armed forces, and civilians head the U.S. Department of Defense and the individual service branches.

* In World Wars I and II, civilian officials were in charge of marshalling the resources needed to conduct successful combat operations.

* In the Cold War period, civilians ensured the development and maintenance of the forces necessary to deter the Soviet threat.

* In the post-Cold War period, civilian officials will continue to head the defense conversion effort.

* Congress makes fiscal appropriations for the support of the armed forces and uses its power of investigation to ensure the military's ultimate accountability to the public will.

* The Uniform Code of Military Justice applies civilian principles to military investigations and trials.

* Civilian courts--the U.S. Court of Military Appeals and ultimately the U.S. Supreme Court--have the authority to review military judicial actions.

* U.S. society abhors restrictions on civilian rights in time of war and moves to make restitution should such violations of constitutional rights occur.

* The United States eschews large standing armies and hastens to demobilize or reduce its armed forces as soon as military emergencies or threats are dispelled.

About the author:

Author and historian David F. Trask has an unusually varied career of distinguished service in both academia and government. Since 1981, he has been the chief historian of the U.S. Army Center of Military History; for the five previous years, he was the historian at the U.S. Department of State. Trask has also been a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval War College,the University of Maryland and Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before joining the federal government, Trask was a professor atthe State University of New York at Stony Brook for 13 years. He is the author of several books and articles on U.S. military history including The War with Spain in 1898 (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1981) and Victory without Peace: American Foreign Relations During the Twentieth Century (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 1968). He is currently the Director of the American Committee on the History of the Second World War.

United States Information Agency April 1993