Kori Schake's new book, The State and the Soldier, argues that the U.S. military has never posed a threat to civilian governance, despite the founders' fears about standing armies. She defines healthy civil-military relations through two tests: whether a president can fire military leaders with impunity, and whether the military will carry out policies it disagrees with. In her telling, the military's loyalty to the Constitution and subordination to both the president and Congress have held firm across American history.
Schake's evidence includes early "bad examples" that never became precedents. The senior officer James Wilkinson joined an 1804 conspiracy to overthrow the government; Gen. Ulysses Grant resisted President Andrew Johnson's orders; and several Civil War generals campaigned for president while on active duty. The author notes that norms and the meaning of active duty were different then, and that these cases were exceptions. More importantly, she argues, civilian leaders frequently let such behavior go unpunished, so the military's own professionalism—not civilian enforcement—explains the absence of a coup or similar threat.
The book closes with a warning: the military's status as the most trusted public institution, and the popularity of individual military leaders, could itself create new risks to civilian control. The review suggests that Schake's history raises a question her framework does not fully answer—what obligations civilian leaders have to ensure the military never becomes a threat.