Q&A: Bruce Thornton on Cage Fight: Civilian and Democratic Pressures on Military Conflict and Foreign Policy
Rachel Moltz
Tue, 05/16/2023 – 12:25
In this Q&A, research fellow Bruce S. Thornton describes Cage Fight, a new book he edited from the Hoover Institution Press, which features contributions from military historians who provide case studies on how the demands of democracy come into conflict with military execution.
Throughout the interview, Thornton cites various historical examples of such conflict that the book’s contributors cite, from ancient Athens, the Civil War, the Cold War, and American interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
Thornton underscores that there is an inherent paradox in democracy: when people are allowed to be free, it opens the possibility of popular dissent and the ability for people to protest the governing institutions that were originally intended to protect that freedom.
Will you talk about the origins of this book?
Bruce Thornton: Cage Fight is the product of Hoover’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group, chaired by Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson. It is the second volume (the first was Disruptive Strategies, edited by Research Fellow David Berkey) that has arisen from the conversations we have in our annual workshop and from the …read more
Source:: Hoover Institution
