Choosing Your Battles:
American Civil-Military Relations and the Use of Force
Peter D. Feaver & Christopher Gelpi
With a new afterword by the authors

Paperback | 2005 | $36.95 | £27.95 | ISBN: 9780691124278
248 pp. | 6 x 9 | 11 line illus. 31 tables.
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eBook | ISBN: 9781400841455 |
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Reviews | Table of Contents
Chapter 1 [HTML] or [PDF]

America's debate over whether and how to invade Iraq clustered into civilian versus military camps. Top military officials appeared reluctant to use force, the most hawkish voices in government were civilians who had not served in uniform, and everyone was worried that the American public would not tolerate casualties in war. This book shows that this civilian-military argument--which has characterized earlier debates over Bosnia, Somalia, and Kosovo--is typical, not exceptional. Indeed, the underlying pattern has shaped U.S. foreign policy at least since 1816. The new afterword by Peter Feaver and Christopher Gelpi traces these themes through the first two years of the current Iraq war, showing how civil-military debates and concerns about sensitivity to casualties continue to shape American foreign policy in profound ways.

Reviews:

"[A] highly statistical but thankfully lucid study. . . . [The authors] find that non-veteran civilian elites are more likely to advocate the use of force than either military elites or civilian leaders with military experience. . . . The pattern holds historically. The authors consider a total of 111 instances from 1816 to 1992."--Chronicle of Higher Education

"Feaver and Gelpi offer important insights into the character of civil-military relations in the U.S. and into its effects on the nature of U.S. foreign policy. . . . [A]n important work whose findings have wide-ranging policy implications."--Spencer D. Bakich, Virginia Quarterly Review

"Feaver and Gelpi's intriguing and well-executed study provides a welcome contribution to scholarship in this area. In it, the authors address a subset of provocative issues within the broader study of American civil-military relations."--Risa A. Brooks, Review of Politics

Endorsements:

"One of those rare works of political science that speaks directly and aptly to an issue of policy. Feaver and Gelpi show that the conventional wisdom about attitudes to military engagement and casualties is, and has been, wrong. More importantly, they explain why. One of the most important contributions to the literature on civil-military relations in years."--Eliot Cohen, author of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime

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Table of Contents:

LIST OF FIGURES AND TABLES vii
PREFACE xi
CHAPTER ONE
Introduction 1
CHAPTER TWO
The Civil-Military Opinion Gap over the Use of Force 21
CHAPTER THREE
The Impact of Elite Veterans on American Decisions
to Use Force 64
CHAPTER FOUR
Casualty Sensitivity and Civil-Military Relations 95
CHAPTER FIVE
Exploring the Determinants of Casualty Sensitivity 149
CHAPTER SIX
Conclusion 184
REFERENCES 215
NAME INDEX 229
SUBJECT INDEX 233

This book has been translated into:

• Chinese (Complex)

Other Princeton books authored or coauthored by Christopher Gelpi:

• Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts. [Paperback]
• The Power of Legitimacy: Assessing the Role of Norms in Crisis Bargaining. [Paperback]

Another Princeton book authored or coauthored by Peter D. Feaver:

• Paying the Human Costs of War: American Public Opinion and Casualties in Military Conflicts. [Paperback]

Subject Area:

• Political Science And International Relations

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