Research Catalog

Title

The crisis within : America's military and the struggle between the overseas and guardian paradigms / Paula G. Thornhill.

Author

Thornhill, Paula G.

Publication

Santa Monica, Calif. : RAND Corporation, [2016]

Items in the Library & Off-site

Holdings

Details

Additional Authors

• Project Air Force (U.S.), sponsoring body.
• Rand Corporation, issuing body.

Description

ix, 62 pages; 23 cm

Summary

"Today's U.S. military is full of perplexing questions and issues. Individually, each can be explained, but collectively the explanations seem too complicated. This complexity makes the military difficult to comprehend even to those in uniform. This report is an attempt to understand this complexity and to start a conversation about how to better understand America's 21st-century military. To do that, a return to first principles is necessary, starting with how the nation understands 'the common defense' and the role that organized violence plays in providing for it. The nation's understanding of both the common defense and organized violence has changed dramatically in the years since 2001. The diversification in the employment of violence produced a profound paradigm shift that Thomas Kuhn's seminal work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, helps to identify and explain. America's senior civilian and military leaders must understand this shift in order to create the military the nation needs in the coming decades and to ensure that it is an institution the American people continue to trust"--Publisher's web site.

Subject

• Civil-military relations > United States
• United States > Military policy

Note

• "RR-1420-AF"--Cover page 4.
• "RAND Project Air Force"

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references (pages 55-62).

Processing Action (note)

• committed to retain

Contents

Prologue: the Colonel's crisis -- Introduction -- Organized violence : the military's unique responsibility -- Thomas Kuhn on problems, paradigms, anomalies, and paradigm shifts -- The common defense and the continental paradigm -- The common defense and the overseas paradigm -- The Second World War validates the overseas paradigm -- The overseas paradigm : accounting for the Second World War's anomalies -- The overseas paradigm : accounting for additional anomalies, 1950-1975 -- The overseas paradigm : conflicting signals, 1975-2001 -- Inconsistencies in the overseas paradigm : the post-9/11 era -- Crisis and the overseas paradigm -- Rise of the guardian paradigm? -- Possible implications of a paradigm change -- Epilogue: the Colonel's retirement speech.

ISBN

• 0833093002
• 9780833093004

OCLC

946058951

Owning Institutions

Harvard Library