It's completely foreign to the US or the Anglo-Saxon world in general. The military as the final guarantor of state security is a continental European thing (and removing this has been the goal of many army reforms in Europe since the end of WW2).
The US thinks it is the check for Europe but this offers no check for the leader of a superpower such as the US.
(It's apparently a flaggable offense to believe a legitimate republic is measured by making sense even if making sense goes against Anglo Saxon sensibilities since Cromwell.. I guess we can call time of death on the city on a hill.)