Soldiers, Civilians, and Scholars: Making Sense of the Relationship Between Civil-Military Relations and Foreign Policy

Scholars have long appreciated a variety of ways in which relations between civilian political leaders and military commanders, military forces, and military doctrines can affect foreign policy choices and behavior. Only recently, however, have scholars attempted to think about these in general theoretical terms, and for the most part they have focused their attention on civil-military relations in the United States, and primarily in the context of the cold war. The question arises whether insights from existing work on civil-military relations can help us understand international relations in the Asia-Pacific region in a post-cold war context in which the "war on terror,” nation building, and problems of nonproliferation dominate states’ foreign-policy agendas. This article and the one following seek to address these issues.