Recent years have presented unique challenges to civil-military (civ-mil) relations in the United States. And then the global pandemic hit. Much of the press attention has been on high visibility debates such as whether to use the Defense Production Act to enlist civilian companies to manufacture needed medical equipment or whether to deploy medical ships to key hot spots around the country. But the bigger civ-mil issues are much deeper: how to balance readiness for warfighting vs. pandemic response (the issue raised by the USS Theodore Roosevelt); how to be responsive without usurping roles best left to civilian institutions; how to help policymakers think about the long-term when urgent short-term needs are dominating the country’s attention. We will dig into these issues and address other concerns as raised in Q&A.
Please RSVP and our office will send you an email with the briefing’s call information closer to the date of the event.
Our panelists include:
General Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Duke University Rubenstein Fellow, Duke G’84
Peter Feaver, Director of the Duke Program in American Grand Strategy and Professor of Political Science