Janice H. Laurence

Becoming Brass: Issues in the Testing, Recruiting, and Selection of American Military Officers

They run the largest enterprise in the United States and the most lethal military establishment in the world. They spend more than 31 percent of the federal budget, and their purchasing decisions can make or break the economies of whole regions. In the nuclear age, they literally hold the fate of the earth in their hands—for despite the tradition of civilian control and an elaborate system of safeguards, they can begin a nuclear war without any real interference from the nation’s elected officials. They are America’s military elite—the 299,000 officers of the army, the navy, the air force and marines, the mind and soul of the vast machine that is the chief guardian of the nation and the democracies of the West.1