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Today the U.S. military is more nimble, mobile, and focused on rapid responses against smaller powers than ever before. One could argue that the Gulf War and the postwar standoff with Saddam Hussein hastened needed military transformation and strategic reassessments in the post-Cold War era. But the preoccupation with Iraq also mired the United States in the Middle East and led to a bloody occupation. What will American strategy look like after U.S. troops leave Iraq? Iraq and the Evolution of American Strategy examines the ways in which the Gulf War, the WMD standoff, the Iraq War, and the ongoing occupation have driven broader changes in U.S. national security policy and military strategy. Steven Metz answers three overarching questions: 1. How did the conflict with Iraq drive and shape broader changes in national security and military strategy? 2. Did policymakers and military leaders interpret the conflict correctly and make the most effective responses? 3. What does this process tell us about the process of change in America's national security and military strategy and in the evolution of its strategic culture? Metz concludes that the United States has a long-standing, continuing problem "developing sound assumptions when the opponent operates within a different psychological and cultural framework." He sees a pattern of misjudgments about Saddam and Iraq based on Western cultural and historical bias and a pervasive faith in the superiority of America's worldview and institutions. This myopia contributed to America being caught off guard by Saddam's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, then underestimating his longevity, and finally miscalculating the likelihood of a stable and democratic Iraq after he was toppled. With lessons for all readers concerned about America's role in the world, Dr. Metz's important new work will especially appeal to scholars and students of strategy and international security studies, as well as to military professionals and DOD civilians. With a foreword by Colin S. Gray.
This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.
The Cold War was a crucial conflict in American history. At stake was whether the world would be dominated by the forces of totalitarianism led by the Soviet Union, or inspired by the principles of economic and political freedom embodied in the United States. The Cold War established America as the leader of the free world and a global superpower. It shaped U.S. military strategy, economic policy, and domestic politics for nearly 50 years. In A Brief History of the Cold War, distinguished scholars Lee Edwards and Elizabeth Edwards Spalding recount the pivotal events of this protracted struggle and explain the strategies that eventually led to victory for freedom. They analyze the development and implementation of containment, détente, and finally President Reagan's philosophy: "they lose, we win." The Cold War teaches important lessons about statecraft and America's indispensable role in the world.
This book demonstrates that under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and through the mechanism of his National Security Council staff, the United States developed and executed a comprehensive grand strategy, involving the coordinated use of the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power, and that grand strategy led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it refutes three orthodoxies: that Reagan and his administration deserve little credit for the end of the Cold War, with most of credit going to Mikhail Gorbachev; that Reagan’s management of the National Security Council staff was singularly inept; and that the United States is incapable of generating and implementing a grand strategy that employs all the instruments of national power and coordinates the work of all executive agencies. The Reagan years were hardly a time of interagency concord, but the National Security Council staff managed the successful implementation of its program nonetheless.
General Maxwell Taylor served at the nerve centers of US military policy and Cold War strategy and experienced firsthand the wars in Korea and Vietnam, as well as crises in Berlin and Cuba. Along the way he became an adversary of President Dwight D. Eisenhower's nuclear deterrence strategy and a champion of President John F. Kennedy's shift toward Flexible Response. Taylor also remained a public critic of defense policy and civil-military relations into the 1980s and was one of the most influential American soldiers, strategists, and diplomats. However, many historians describe him as a politicized, dishonest manipulator whose actions deeply affected the national security establishment and had lasting effects on civil-military relations in the United States. In Maxwell Taylor's Cold War: From Berlin to Vietnam, author Ingo Trauschweizer traces the career of General Taylor, a Kennedy White House insider and architect of American strategy in Vietnam. Working with newly accessible and rarely used primary sources, including the Taylor Papers and government records from the Cold War crisis, Trauschweizer describes and analyzes this polarizing figure in American history. The major themes of Taylor's career, how to prepare the armed forces for global threats and localized conflicts and how to devise sound strategy and policy for a full spectrum of threats, remain timely and the concerns he raised about the nature of the national security apparatus have not been resolved.
Deterrence as a strategic concept evolved during the Cold War. During that period, deterrence strategy was aimed mainly at preventing aggression against the United States and its close allies by the hostile Communist power centers--the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and its allies, Communist China and North Korea. In particular, the strategy was devised to prevent aggression involving nuclear attack by the USSR or China. Since the end of the Cold War, the risk of war among the major powers has subsided to the lowest point in modern history. Still, the changing nature of the threats to American and allied security interests has stimulated a considerable broadening of the deterrence concept. Post-Cold War Conflict Deterrence examines the meaning of deterrence in this new environment and identifies key elements of a post-Cold War deterrence strategy and the critical issues in devising such a strategy. It further examines the significance of these findings for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps. Quantitative and qualitative measures to support judgments about the potential success or failure of deterrence are identified. Such measures will bear on the suitability of the naval forces to meet the deterrence objectives. The capabilities of U.S. naval forces that especially bear on the deterrence objectives also are examined. Finally, the book examines the utility of models, games, and simulations as decision aids in improving the naval forces' understanding of situations in which deterrence must be used and in improving the potential success of deterrence actions.
The Cold War did not culminate in World War III as so many in the 1950s and 1960s feared, yet it spawned a host of military engagements that affected millions of lives. This book is the first comprehensive, multinational overview of military affairs during the early Cold War, beginning with conflicts during World War II in Warsaw, Athens, and Saigon and ending with the Cuban Missile Crisis. A major theme of this account is the relationship between government policy and military preparedness and strategy. Author Jonathan M. House tells of generals engaging in policy confrontations with their governments’ political leaders—among them Anthony Eden, Nikita Khrushchev, and John F. Kennedy—many of whom made military decisions that hamstrung their own political goals. In the pressure-cooker atmosphere of atomic preparedness, politicians as well as soldiers seemed instinctively to prefer military solutions to political problems. And national security policies had military implications that took on a life of their own. The invasion of South Korea convinced European policy makers that effective deterrence and containment required building up and maintaining credible forces. Desire to strengthen the North Atlantic alliance militarily accelerated the rearmament of West Germany and the drive for its sovereignty. In addition to examining the major confrontations, nuclear and conventional, between Washington, Moscow, and Beijing—including the crises over Berlin and Formosa—House traces often overlooked military operations against the insurgencies of the era, such as French efforts in Indochina and Algeria and British struggles in Malaya, Kenya, Cyprus, and Aden. Now, more than fifty years after the events House describes, understanding the origins and trajectory of the Cold War is as important as ever. By the late 1950s, the United States had sent forces to Vietnam and the Middle East, setting the stage for future conflicts in both regions. House’s account of the complex relationship between diplomacy and military action directly relates to the insurgencies, counterinsurgencies, and confrontations that now occupy our attention across the globe.
This illustrated book that includes tables, charts, and maps primarily discusses the role of USAREUR (US Army Europe) in rearming and training the new German Army which was perhaps the Army's single greatest contribution toward maintaining security in Western Europe. Likewise, the relationship between American soldiers and their French and West German hosts evolved over time and is a critical element in telling the story of the US Army in Europe.
Study of the Cold War all too often shows us the war that wasn’t fought. The reality, of course, is that many “hot” conflicts did occur, some with the great powers' weapons and approval, others without. It is this reality, and this period of quasi-war and semiconflict, that Jonathan M. House plumbs in A Military History of the Cold War, 1962–1991, a complex case study in the Clausewitzian relationship between policy and military force during a time of global upheaval and political realignment. This volume opens a new perspective on three fraught decades of Cold War history, revealing how the realities of time, distance, resources, and military culture often constrained and diverted the inclinations or policies of world leaders. In addition to the Vietnam War and nuclear confrontations between the USSR and the United States, this period saw dozens of regional wars and insurgencies fought throughout Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Cuba, Pakistan, Indonesia, Israel, Egypt, and South Africa pursued their own goals in ways that drew the superpowers into regional disputes. Even clashes ostensibly unrelated to the politics of East-West confrontation, such as the Nigerian-Biafran conflict, the Falklands/Malvinas War, and the Indonesian occupation of East Timor, involved armed forces, weapons, and tactics developed for the larger conflict and thus come under House’s scrutiny. His study also takes up nontraditional or specialized aspects of the period, including weapons of mass destruction, civil-military relations, civil defense, and control of domestic disorders. The result is a single, integrated survey and analysis of a complex period in geopolitical history, which fills a significant gap in our knowledge of the organization, logistics, operations, and tactics involved in conflict throughout the Cold War.