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As chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) since 2019, General Mark Milley has been the primary military advisor to the president and is often the public face of the armed forces. The chairman role became especially public in June 2020 during the George Floyd protests, as General Milley was photographed with President Trump in Lafayette Square just after protestors had been forcibly cleared out of the area. The images provoked an immediate wave of criticism from lawmakers and several senior former military officials who said they risked dragging the traditionally apolitical military into a contentious domestic political debate. Milley found it necessary to offer a public apology.

In Managing the Military, Professor Sharon Weiner explores the evolution of the institution of the JCS and illuminates the chairman’s interactions with the president and secretary of defense since the end of the Cold War, shedding new light on civil-military relations in the United States. Using detailed case studies of debates over defense budgets since the end of the Cold War, Professor Weiner analyzes the power of the chairman and examines when and how the JCS chairman opposes civilian defense policy preferences. She shows that, under the right conditions, the chairman can be a policy entrepreneur, challenging the goals of the White House and lobbying for the military’s interests. However, the extent of the chairman’s political clout is constrained by the preferences of the service chiefs who head the branches of the military. Blending empirical detail and theoretical contributions, Managing the Military offers a compelling account of the circumstances under which the power of the JCS chairman is maximized.

Managing the Military was published in 2022 by Columbia University Press. For more information, click .