Formed soon after Pearl Harbor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were officially responsible only for the nation's military forces. Analysing the wartime rise of military influence in US foreign policy, Mark Stoler focuses on the evolution of and debates over US and Allied global strategy.

Formed soon after Pearl Harbor, the Joint Chiefs of Staff were officially responsible only for the nation's military forces. Their functions grew to encompass a host of foreign policy concerns during World War II, however, when the military voice assumed an unprecedented importance. Analysing the wartime rise of military influence in US foreign policy, Mark Stoler focuses on the evolution of and debates over US and Allied global strategy. In the process, he examines military fears regarding America's major allies - Great Britain and the Soviet Union - and how those fears affected President Franklin D. Roosevelt's policies, interservice and civil-military relations, military-academic relations, and post-war national security policy.