Warriors & Citizens ─ American Views of Our Military

A diverse group of contributors offer different perspectives on whether or not the different experiences of our military and the broader society amounts to a gap”and if the American public is losing connection to its military. They analyze extensive polling information to identify those gaps between civilian and military attitudes on issues central to the military profession and the professionalism of our military, determine which if any of these gaps are problematic for sustaining the traditionally strong bonds between the American military and its broader public, analyze whether any problematic gaps are amenable to remediation by policy means, and assess potential solutions. The contributors also explore public disengagement and the effect of high levels of public support for the military combined with very low levels of trust in elected political leadersboth recurring themes in their research. And they reflect on whether American society is becoming so divorced from the requirements for success on the battlefield that not only will we fail to comprehend our military, but we also will be unwilling to endure a military so constituted to protect us. Contributors: Rosa Brooks, Matthew Colford,Thomas Donnelly, Peter Feaver, Jim Golby, Jim Hake, Tod Lindberg, Mackubin Thomas Owens, Cody Poplin, Nadia Schadlow, A. J. Sugarman, Lindsay Cohn Warrior, Benjamin Wittes

General Jim Mattis, the Davies Family Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Hoover Institution, is an expert on national security issues, especially strategy, innovation, the effective use of military force, and the Middle East. He heads a project on the gap between civil and military perspectives and is writing a book on leadership. Before coming to Hoover, Jim was the commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM). While commanding CENTCOM from 2010 to 2013, he was responsible for military operations involving more than 200,000 US soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines in Afghanistan, Iraq, and eighteen other countries in the Middle East and south-central Asia. General Mattis commanded at multiple levels in his forty-two-year career as a Marine. As a lieutenant, he served as a rifle and weapons platoon commander in the Third Marine Division. As a captain, he commanded a rifle company and a weapons company in the First Marine Brigade. As a major, he commanded Recruiting Station Portland, Oregon. As a lieutenant colonel, he commanded the First Battalion, Seventh Marines, one of Task Force Ripper's assault battalions in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. As a colonel, he commanded the Seventh Marines (Reinforced). On becoming a brigadier general, he commanded first the First Marine Expeditionary Brigade and then Task Force 58, during Operation Enduring Freedom in southern Afghanistan. As a major general, he commanded the First Marine Division during the initial attack and subsequent stability operations in Operation Iraqi Freedom. He also served as a recruiter, commanded the Marine Corps Combat Development Command, and was the executive secretary to Secretaries of Defense William Cohen and William Perry and the senior military assistant to Deputy Secretary of Defense Rudy De Leon. In his first tour as a lieutenant general, Mattis commanded the Marine Corps Combat Development Command. Subsequently, he commanded the I Marine Expeditionary Force and served as the commander of US Marine Forces Central Command. From 2007 to 2009, he served as both NATO's Supreme Allied Commander for Transformation and Commander of the United States Joint Forces Command (USJFCOM). A native of the Pacific Northwest, Jim graduated from Central Washington State University in 1972. He is also a graduate of the Amphibious Warfare School, Marine Corps Command and Staff College, and the National War College. He has been frequently satirized on the military humor site Duffelblog.com. During the 2008 presidential election, she was senior policy adviser to the McCain-Palin campaign, responsible for policy development and outreach in the areas of foreign and defense policy. From 2007 to 2008 she was the deputy director for policy planning in the state department. In addition to staff management, she worked on resourcing and organizational effectiveness issues, including a study of what it would take to transform” the state department so as to enable integrated political, economic, and military strategies. During President Bush's first term, she was the director for Defense Strategy and Requirements on the National Security Council. She was responsible for interagency coordination for long-term defense planning and coalition maintenance issues. Projects Schake contributed to include conceptualizing and budgeting for continued transformation of defense practices; the most significant realignment of US military forces and bases around the world since 1950; creating NATO's Allied Command Transformation and the NATO Response Force; and recruiting and retaining coalition partners for operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. She has held the Distinguished Chair of International Security Studies at West Point, and also served in the faculties of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, the University of Maryland’s School of Public Affairs, and the National Defense University. She is on the board