Civilian Control and Civil-Military Gaps in the United States, Japan, and China

Abstract

Three questions loom large in the study of civil-military relations, and are fruitfully asked of the United States, Japan, and China. What accounts for the subordination of the military to political authority? To what extent is the military reflective of societal values? How do civilian and military leaders think about and manage the central function of the military, namely the use of force? We find that despite the very different record of civil-military relations across these three cases, models and conceptual tools originally developed to explain American civil-military relations do have analytical leverage over the Japanese and Chinese cases. These tools, however, must be modified to adjust to the cultural and historical context of each case, and lead to different conclusions about prevailing civil-military relations in each setting.