The Role of Defense Budgets in Civil-Military Relations
Abstract
Despite a long tradition of political stability in the U.S. civil- military relationship, the debate between the U.S. military establishment and elected officials has been described by many analysts, policymakers and military official as troubled, contentious and mistrustful. Stepping away from the internal vagaries of the U.S. political process, however, one is struck by how relatively cooperative the civil-military relationship has actually been over time, when compared to such relationships in other countries. This paper highlights one key ingredient in this basically stable civil-military relationship in the United States: consideration of the annual budget of the Department of Defense (DoD) and its projected five-year fiscal plan for national defense. Though there are many other dimensions of the relationship between the U.S. military and civilian leadership, virtually all of them are played out through the defense budget. The defense budget is a mechanism for setting priorities between the administration and the military services and among the services themselves. Defense policies are reflected in the budget, which provides the resources to implement those policies. Hardware choices are only possible with budgetary funding. Troops are trained and exercised, bases built and sustained, and ships sailed with the resources provided in the defense budget. The underlying message of this primer is that debate and compromise in the development of the annual defense budget can encourage long-term stability and a broad degree of consensus on defense policy, the roles of civilian and military leaders, and their expectations of each other. Through this process, the military services express their preferences and civilian leaders in the executive branch exercise their authority
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Apr 01, 1992
- Accession Number
- ADA271135
Entities
People
- Gordon Adams