Military Review English Edition March-April 2016 | Page 134

MISSION CREEP: The Militarization of U.S.
Foreign Policy?
Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray, eds., Georgetown
University Press, Washington, DC, 2014, 303 pages

I

n the chapter “An Introduction to Mission Creep,”
editors Gordon Adams and Shoon Murray assert
that since the end of World War II, leaders of the
U.S. government have “brought about a growing institutional imbalance at the heart of the foreign policy
and national security policy process. This imbalance,
many of the chapters in this book suggest, could be said
to be gradually ‘militarizing’ American statecraft and
global engagement.” To examine this statement, Adams
and Murray have collected contributions from a
diverse group of authors—some with academic credentials, others with experience in government, and a few
with both attributes.
The author of each chapter investigates factors that
have led leaders of the government to rely increasingly
on the military rather than the Department of State
(DOS) to represent the Nation in its interactions with
leaders of other nations and their governments. For
example, Gordon Adams, who has both academic and
government credentials, claims the ɔ