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Jess Blankshain Profile picture
Jess Blankshain
@jblankshain
Associate professor, mom, triathlete, dog person. US foreign policy, civil-military relations, & bureaucratic politics. Personal views only.
Dec 10, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
First reaction to this was frustration. I feel like I've been explaining until I'm blue in the face. BUT I've been a @jdickerson fan for years. Maybe we civ-mil scholars can do a better job going back to first principles when we talk outside our bubble?
We care about civilian control in the US because without it we're not a democracy. If the military is running the show, they're governing, not our elected leaders. The military is accountable to the elected government, which is accountable to the people.
Dec 8, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
I feel like I'm just joining the chorus on civ-mil twitter right now, but I wrote about concerns with appointing a recently retired general as SecDef back in 2017, and I think those concerns have only deepened with time.
tnsr.org/roundtable/pol… This new piece from @jimgolby makes a strong case against normalizing retired GOFOs as SecDef. nytimes.com/2020/12/07/opi…
Nov 2, 2019 • 14 tweets • 4 min read
#NatSec twitter is all abuzz about the operational reserve component and its implications for civil-military relations. I happen to have done some recent work on the subject (with @lindsaypcohn and the twitterless Doug Kriner) so it's time for a thread! #AcademicFridayNight We were puzzled by the seeming reversal from the Vietnam-era to today in terms of politicians' perceptions of the political costs associated with different manpower systems. Then, a draft was perceived as less politically costly than deploying reservists and members of the Guard.