Civ-Mil in the MCU

Civilian Control of Super-heroes: Applying What We Know from Civil-Military Relations, for edited volume on The Politics of the Marvel Cinematic Universe

This paper applies concepts from the subfield of civil-military relations to address a central question in the Marvel Cinematic Universe: how do governments control the super-powered?  Who guards the guardians is a basic question with no set or easy answers.  This chapter addresses two ways to think about how countries control their militaries—the best analog to the problem of controlling superheroes.  These concepts make clear how difficult it is to control those who tend to have enhanced abilities.  I then apply the alternative approaches to civil-military relations to two mechanisms designed to control those with super-powers: S.H.I.E.L.D and the Sokavia Accords.  Focusing mostly on the Avengers movies, we see that the former mechanism provides very loose control with greater trust and the latter has much tighter control with much less trust on either side.  The paper concludes with some suggestions for finessing discretion and improving oversight.

Military Politics in Multinational Ops

Forthcoming

Civ-Mil in NATO Ops

Forthcoming