<P> In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate . Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body . A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive, will not long be safe companions to liberty . The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home . Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended . Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people . </P> <P> The United States Constitution placed considerable limitations on the legislature . Coming from a tradition of legislative superiority in government, many were concerned that the proposed Constitution would place so many limitations on the legislature that it would become impossible for such a body to prevent an executive from starting a war . Hamilton argued in Federalist No. 26 that it would be equally as bad for a legislature to be unfettered by any other agency and that restraints would actually be more likely to preserve liberty . James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, continued Hamilton's argument that distributing powers among the various branches of government would prevent any one group from gaining so much power as to become unassailable . In Federalist No. 48, however, Madison warned that while the separation of powers is important, the departments must not be so far separated as to have no ability to control the others . </P> <P> Finally, in Federalist No. 51, Madison argued that to create a government that relied primarily on the good nature of the incumbent to ensure proper government was folly . Institutions must be in place to check incompetent or malevolent leaders . Most importantly, no single branch of government ought to have control over any single aspect of governing . Thus, all three branches of government must have some control over the military, and the system of checks and balances maintained among the other branches would serve to help control the military . </P> <P> Hamilton and Madison thus had two major concerns: (1) the detrimental effect on liberty and democracy of a large standing army and (2) the ability of an unchecked legislature or executive to take the country to war precipitously . These concerns drove American military policy for the first century and a half of the country's existence . While armed forces were built up during wartime, the pattern after every war up to and including World War II was to demobilize quickly and return to something approaching pre-war force levels . However, with the advent of the Cold War in the 1950s, the need to create and maintain a sizable peacetime military force engendered new concerns of militarism and about how such a large force would affect civil--military relations in the United States . </P>

How is civilian control of the military guaranteed in the united states
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