Joint. The term is used ubiquitously in the U.S. Department of Defense. Joint operations, joint professional military education, joint mindedness, joint staff, etc.—at a certain point in a professional’s career, you can’t go an hour without hearing a joint-associated term. A product of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, jointness has been a much-discussed topic ever since its creation. Sharon Weiner is in the studio to present her thoughts on jointness, specifically the Joint Chiefs of Staff and civil-military relations. She joins host Carrie Lee in this first of a multi-part special series supporting the U.S. Army War College’s Civil-Military Relations Center.
Budget politics has become very volatile. And I would say that the notion that you need a budget to keep the government moving has become a secondary consideration to using the budget process to extract other gains on other political issues.
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Sharon K. Weiner is associate professor in the School of International Service, American University, and a visiting researcher with the program on Science and Global Security, Princeton University. She is the author of Managing the Military: The Joint Chiefs of Staff and Civil-Military Relations (Columbia University Press, 2022). Besides civil-military relations, her research includes the theory, practice, and social construction of deterrence as well as crisis decision making.
Carrie A. Lee is an associate professor at the U.S. Army War College, where she serves as the chair of the Department of National Security and Strategy and director of the USAWC Center on Civil-Military Relations. She received her Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and a B.S. from MIT.
The views expressed in this presentation are those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Army War College, U.S. Army, or Department of Defense.
Photo Description: U.S. Air Force Gen. Charles Q. Brown, Jr. attends the Armed Forces Hail in his honor as the 21st Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at Joint Base Myer – Henderson Hall, VA., September 29, 2023. The ceremony, hosted by Secretary of Defense Lloyd J. Austin III, marked Gen. Brown’s swearing in as Chairman and was attended by President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Vice President Kamala Harris, and other distinguished guests.
Photo Credit: DOD Photo by Benjamin Applebaum