Post WWII United States Military Strategy

American Way of War

Many people point to an American way of war. The author of this report will explore whether there is any content or credence to that statement. There are some common themes and trends when it comes to American wars and how they are fought. There has also been a lot of variance, even from war to war and in the same arenas. The class for which this essay is being completed focuses on the United States and its military history from 1945 to the present. Even with that tight of a window, the evolution and shifts that have happened in terms of how American has and has not fought wars has been massive. While some themes and trends regarding Americans and war have not changed all that much, many of the tactics, what is deemed acceptable, what is not deemed acceptable and so forth have changed a lot.

Analysis

When looking at the way that America has fought war from 1945 to the present, there are not that many wars that stand out but the ones that do are plenty enough in terms of showing differences and shifts. Those wars would be the tail end of World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War and the litany of conflagrations (not wars in the technical sense) in the Middle East from the late 1970's (the Shah in Iran) to the present. The author of this report will summarize each military situation one-by-one and point out what shifts there were, what has changed after/since then and so forth.

The author of this report thought it a "must" to include the tail-end of the second World War for obvious reasons ... the use nuclear bombs in Japan. There is much myth and fact surrounding what happened both before and after those bombs were dropped. However, what is commonly agreed to be true is that the United States was in the process of developing the bombs and they concurrently wanted to avoid a protracted war with the Japanese. Indeed, the Japanese were very aggressive and unyielding in the way they fought. To be sure, the will of an enemy is quite sturdy when pilots are willing to kill themselves to help their side, that being a reference to kamikaze pilots. With that being said, President Truman came to the conclusion that a strike on Hiroshima and Nagasaki would be a way to "shock" the Japanese into surrender. It did do that but many people, to this very day, question whether it was the right thing to do in the long run. Truman was ostensibly trying to avoid a large amount of United States military casualties or, even worse, more attacks on the United States on par with what happened Pearl Harbor or worse. Regardless of how someone thinks about the subject, it is notable that no strike like those two atomic bombs has happened since. Many attribute this to mutually assured destruction and/or the people that would use the bombs (e.g. terrorists) not having access to them [footnoteRef:1]. [1: Pyle, Kenneth B. 2015. "Hiroshima and the Historians: History as Relative Truth." Asia-Pacific Review 22, no. 2: 14-27. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

Korea is unique mostly because of Soviet involvement in the area and what it caused. Just as there was a major shift in the second World War due to a shift of the Soviets from being aligned with the Axis powers to being loosely aligned with the Allies. The fight between the Soviets and the Japanese that occurred near the end of World War II helped set the stage and Korea ended up dividing before the decade was over. There was initially some hesitation when it came to the United Nations and/or the United State being involved due to the fact that Soviet and/or Chinese reactions to such involvement could absolutely lead to another World War and one had just ended a few years ago. However, the United States and the United Nations did become involved and there were several years of war. What eventually came was a stalemate and an armistice that culminated into a division of Korea between North and South Korea. The divided Korea persists to this day. Also, the Korean War is still technically in progress given that the war never officially ended. There has been some talk about this being resolved since then but the current leadership of King Jong Un makes any realistic deals to end the war and/or the division of Korea extremely unlikely. It has gotten to the point that Un threatens nuclear strikes when something as simple as sanctions are announced. The fact that Un has nuclear weapons, albeit almost certainly very crude and very short-range, has kept things at a stalemate that is much the same as the stalemate that led to the end of hostilities in the 1950's [footnoteRef:2]. [2: Campbell, Joel R. 2014. "The Wrong War: The Soviets and the Korean War, 1945-1953." International Social Science Review 88, no. 3: 1-29. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

The war that changed everything for the United States was Vietnam. While wars since then have had their own outcomes and effects, Vietnam was a game changer. In a nutshell, the circumstances were similar to the Korean War in many ways. The Chinese were in the mix and so were the Soviets. What made Vietnam very different is that there was another nasty stalemate and a lot of Americans were getting killed. Beyond that, there were some very nasty atrocities going on with both sides, either alleged or proven. However, the biggest shift came from the people and politicians back home. There was a paradigm shift where the people of the United States rose up and protested the involvement of the United State in the country of Vietnam. Further, they demanded an end to that war. This led to immense pressure on Congress and the President. What ended up happening is that politicians and so forth got into the mix when it came to what happened on the military fronts and this led to more and more problems. Eventually, the United States basically gave up and forces were withdrawn. Many say that the United States could have won that war if the military people had been running things and there was not pressure brought to bear from home on what was done and why. Whether that is true or not, the ending of hostilities in Vietnam is really the best example of the United States losing a war. Something else very interesting about the Vietnam War is that no official declaration of war ever happened with Vietnam unless one counts the authorization of Congress to intervene. World War II had declarations that were official including against Japan, Italy, Germany and a few others. The United Nations authorized the war with Korea. However, only Congress made such a pronouncement in writing for the Vietnam war. From a declaration of war standpoint when it came to the United Nations or the United States Presidency, there was no war in Vietnam [footnoteRef:3]. [3: Joseph, Paul. 2015. "Resister: A Story of Protest and Prison during the Vietnam War Hardhats, Hippies, and Hawks: The Vietnam Antiwar Movement as Myth and Memory." Peace & Change 40, no. 2: 272-276. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

However, the author would point out that the conflicts that happened between the Korean War and Vietnam also did not go well, at least for the most part. There was an insurgency in Lebanon in 1958 that involved the occupation of Beirut. However, forces from the United States eventually withdrew. In 1961, John F Kennedy got a little proverbial egg on his face when an attempted assassination of Fidel Castro went awry. This was just one significant event of the Cold War. Another was the Simba Rebellion, which involved Congo. That rebellion was defeated as well [footnoteRef:4]. [4: Willmetts, Simon. 2015. "The Burgeoning Fissures of Dissent: Allen Dulles and the Selling of the CIA in the Aftermath of the Bay of Pigs." History 100, no. 340: 167-188. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

Vietnam, of course, happened in the late 1960's and early 1970's. The Cold War and some other minor battles/wars (all unofficial) continued to happen from the 1970's to the present. From the 1970's to the 1990's, most of the wars centered on the Cold War to at least some degree. This continued until the Soviet Union fell in the early 1990's [footnoteRef:5]. Starting in 1978, the Cold War spats started to get a little better and were typified by proxy wars/battles in areas that were controlled or influenced by the Soviet Union, Cuba and other Communist of Communist-favoring countries. In 1978, the United States and a few other countries helped out Congo yet again and there was an eventual victory [footnoteRef:6]. There was another flare-up in Lebanon from 1982 to 1984 that involved the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO and Syria getting into it with Italy, the UK, France and the United States. This was also a victory for the United States as the PLO eventually had to withdraw [footnoteRef:7]. Another victory occurred in Grenada in 1983 when there was a military dictatorship in place in that country. The United States, Jamaica and Barbados took up against the dictatorship of Grenada [footnoteRef:8]. The dictatorship was eventually deposed and there was a return to the prior government which was Constitution-based. A non-Cold War event that happened was the deposing of Manuel Noriega, which occurred in 1989 and 1990 [footnoteRef:9]. The United States briefly intervened in Somalia from 1992 to 1995 in the midst of their Civil War. However, the events that were depicted in the movie Blackhawk Down and a few other setbacks not to mention the United Nations saying the job had been completed (even though the Civil War rages to this very day) led to a withdrawal [footnoteRef:10]. The United States also got involved in the Bosnian/Kosovo conflagrations of the 1990's, and with very mixed results [footnoteRef:11]. However, there was a victory in 1995 when Haiti, much like Panama, was assisted in terms of getting the ostensible rightful leader restored in the form of Jean-Bertrand Aristide [footnoteRef:12]. [5: Shriver, Richard H. 1993. "The fall of communism in the former Soviet Union." Vital Speeches Of The Day 59, no. 14: 424. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [6: Ludden, Jennifer. 1998. "Congo rebellion echoes past-with crucial differences." Christian Science Monitor, August 12. 8. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [7: Siklawi, Rami. 2012. "THE DYNAMICS OF THE AMAL MOVEMENT IN LEBANON 1975-90." Arab Studies Quarterly 34, no. 1: 4-26. Literary Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [8: Gan, Barry L. 2005. "Pressed into War." Peace Review 17, no. 4: 341. TOPICsearch, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [9: 2011. "MANUEL NORIEGA 1989-1990: Chasing Pure Evil." MHQ: Quarterly Journal Of Military History 24, no. 1: 28. MasterFILE Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [10: Bariagaber, Assefaw. 1996. "The United Nations and Somalia." Journal Of Asian & African Studies (Brill) 31, no. 3/4: 162. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [11: Belloni, Roberto, and Francesco Strazzari. 2014. "Corruption in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo: a deal among friends." Third World Quarterly 35, no. 5: 855-871. Business Source Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [12: Munro, Martin. 2013. "Whose and Which Haiti? Western Intellectuals and the Aristide Question." Paragraph 36, no. 3: 408-424. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

This leads to the current arc of battles and they all involve the Middle East. This actually started just before the Panama intervention. From 1987 to 1988, the United States picked the side they wanted to lose in the Iran-Iraq war, and that was Iran. The war itself lasted from 1980 to 1988 but the United States was only directly involved during the latter part of that spat. The involvement of the United States was largely encouraged by Saddam Hussein. He ordered the bombing of oil resources on Kharg Island and a few other areas. Hussein's motivation was to get the Iranians to react in an overt way, up to and including the closing of the Strait of Hormuz. He figured that the United States would get involved if that occurred and he eventually turned out to be right. The United States bombed more than five hundred commercial vessels that were involved in the transportation of oil and similar materials. This lasted until the end of the Iraq-Iran war in 1988 [footnoteRef:13]. [13: Keiser, Gordon W. 2008. "Tanker War: America's First Conflict with Iran, 1987-1988." U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 134, no. 8: 76-77. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

However, things shifted quite quickly in 1990 when Hussein invaded Kuwait. The very man that the United States was implicitly supporting in the prior fight with Iran had just invaded their small and oil-rich neighbor. The United Nations leaped into action and Saddam was eventually beat back into Iraq. Once that occurred, the proverbial dogs were called off as the main goal was just to get Kuwait liberated and freed. Further, Iraq was sanctioned by the United Nations [footnoteRef:14]. Yet another paradigm shift came in 2001 when the United States was attacked on September 11th, 2001. A total of four jumbo jets were hijacked. Two of them crashed into the World Trade Center in New York City, one into each tower. Another jet crashed into the Pentagon in Washington DC. The fourth jet was apparently bound for Washington DC as well but was brought down in a field in Pennsylvania, ostensibly due to passengers fighting back against the hijackers and bringing down the jet in an unpopulated area. It was known immediately that the attacks were brought about by a state-less terrorist group called Al Qaeda. The fact that the group is/was stateless is no small thing as many fights and breakouts since then in the Middle East have involved similar armies of people that are not tied to a specific country [footnoteRef:15]. [14: Bin Abdel Aziz, Fahd. 1990. "Iraq invasion of Kuwait." Vital Speeches Of The Day 56, no. 22: 675. History Reference Center, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).] [15: Husslage, Bart, Peter Borm, Twan Burg, Herbert Hamers, and Roy Lindelauf. 2015. "Ranking terrorists in networks: A sensitivity analysis of Al Qaeda's 9/11 attack." Social Networks 42, 1. Regional Business News, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]

Even with the stateless nature of Al Qaeda, it was decided by the United States that the Taliban regime in Afghanistan was allowing Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden to operate with freedom and impunity. As such, the United States, again only with the authorization of Congress and the decision of the President, invaded Afghanistan with the mission of deposing the Taliban government and destroying the operational framework of Al Qaeda. The country is now led by an elected, albeit fragile, government. The deposing of the government was rather quick and brutal but the insurgency, which has come from many sources, continues to this very day. About two years after the deposing of the Taliban in Afghanistan, President George W. Bush decided that Iraq had skirted weapons of mass destruction (WMD) inspections and compliance long enough. Similar to Afghanistan, Iraq's leadership was taken out in short order but the militants in the area made things after that a very hard slog. Much like Afghanistan, Iraq formed a new government. Also just like Afghanistan, they are not all that able to support themselves and still require a great amount of international assistance. Saddam was eventually found hiding out and was later executed for this actions against the Shia and Kurds during his leadership in Iraq. It should be noted that the Afghanistan and Iraq actions both had coalitions of countries but the United Nations was not involved in either spat and they disapproved of the Iraq action in particular [footnoteRef:16]. [16: Linda, Miller. 2008. "The U.S. and the Middle East Since 9/11: Theory and Practice." Conference Papers -- International Studies Association 1. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed March 9, 2016).]