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Decisions about when, where, and why to commit the United States to
the use of force, and how to conduct warfare and ultimately end it,
are hotly debated not only contemporaneously but also for decades
afterward. We are engaged in such a debate today, quite often
without a solid grounding in the country's experience of war, both
political and military. This book, by a political scientist and a
career military officer and historian, is premised on the view that
we cannot afford that kind of innocence. Updated and revised with
new chapters on the Afghan and Iraq wars, the book systematically
examines twelve U.S. wars from the revolution to the present day.
For each conflict the authors review underlying issues and events;
political objectives; military objectives and strategy; political
considerations; military technology and technique; military
conduct, and 'the better state of the peace', that is, the ultimate
disposition of the original political goals.
Decisions about when, where, and why to commit the United States to
the use of force, and how to conduct warfare and ultimately end it,
are hotly debated not only contemporaneously but also for decades
afterward. We are engaged in such a debate today, quite often
without a solid grounding in the country's experience of war, both
political and military. This book, by a political scientist and a
career military officer and historian, is premised on the view that
we cannot afford that kind of innocence. Updated and revised with
new chapters on the Afghan and Iraq wars, the book systematically
examines twelve U.S. wars from the revolution to the present day.
For each conflict the authors review underlying issues and events;
political objectives; military objectives and strategy; political
considerations; military technology and technique; military
conduct, and 'the better state of the peace', that is, the ultimate
disposition of the original political goals.
First Published in 2015. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor &
Francis, an Informa company.
Some readers may wonder at the title of this volume. It was
inspired, in a somewhat roundabout way, by Air Force chief of staff
T. Michael Moseley, who struggled mightily during his tenure to, in
his words, "recapitalize the fleet" of aging USAF aircraft during a
period of significant budget constraints. In a world of rapid
change and confounding problems that threaten all of mankind,
intellectual recapitalization of the Air Force has become critical
to survival and success and is at least equal in importance to the
recapitalization of the aircraft fleet. One article, "The Essence
of Aerospace Power: A New Perspective from a Century of
Experience," had been heavily edited to meet the space limitations
of the journal in which it was published. The essays and speeches
are grouped into four broad subject areas, within which they are
arranged chronologically. Part 1, Considering the
Past-Contemplating the Future, examines some classical military
themes and their relationship to modern military problems and the
use of modern airpower. Airpower is a child of technological
development, and Airmen are in love with their high-tech gadgetry.
Technological fascination is not limited to Airmen, of course, but
Airmen have raised that fascination to the status of a fetish,
often to the exclusion of fundamental military thinking that could
profitably inform them about the employment of airpower above the
tactical level. The essays in part 1 address these issues. All were
written and published during the 1980s. Part 2, The End of the Cold
War, looks at problems that were a consequence of this historical
development. Although cause for much joy and relief, the fall of
the Berlin Wall, the self-liberation of the former Soviet empire,
and the dissolution of the Soviet Union also caused great angst in
the US military. It was almost immediately clear to those with any
insight that as the new millennium (in one sense of that word) was
about to begin, the old millennium (in another sense of that word)
had not yet departed. Local and regional politico-military
struggles long suppressed by the Cold War superpowers raised their
ugly heads as the stability of the Cold War gave way to the near
chaos of the post-Cold War. Faced with an enormous amount of
uncertainty, the US military had to reevaluate its size,
composition, and essential missions, all of which fostered spirited
debate within and among the services. The essays and speeches in
part 2 illustrate these concerns from an Airman's point of view and
are representative of the kinds of jockeying for position (and
funding) that went on between the services. These essays and
speeches were all written between 1990 and 1993. The demise of our
arch adversary, the upheaval of the Cold War regime, and the
uncertainty that ensued prompted fierce competition for what all
assumed would be drastically reduced military budgets. To make the
case for maintaining a strong air arm in the post-Cold War era, it
was prudent to begin thinking about the fundamentals of airpower,
its impact during the twentieth century, and its potential to make
important contributions during the post-Cold War era. Thus the
essays in part 3, The Nature and Impact of Airpower, reexamine
these issues and attempt to identify what airpower is really all
about and what makes it so fundamentally different from land and
sea power. These essays, written between 1988 and 2002, examine the
impact of airpower and how it influenced national and military
strategy since it came of age in the middle of the twentieth
century. Finally, the essays and speech selected for part 4,
Educating Airmen, reflect the primary focus of the author's career
for 30 years and the fundamental reason for writing every essay in
this volume as well as every other essay, monograph, and book he's
written.
Americans have traditionally viewed war as an aberration in the
normal course of events. Although paying lip service to the
Clausewitzian dictum that war and politics are two parts of a
tightly knit whole, we have traditionally waged wars as great
crusades divorced from political realities. Thus we have been
nonplussed in the last half of the twentieth century by our
involvement in limited wars waged for limited objectives. America's
responsibilities as a superpower with worldwide interests forced
upon us the unpleasant notion of using our armed forces as
practical instruments of political policy. The reality of this
notion has been difficult for many Americans to understand and
accept. Col Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow have performed a
significant service by producing a volume that places the American
experience at war in its proper political context. Going further,
they have also placed the American experience in a technological
context and analyzed how political and technological factors
influenced the conduct of American wars. In addition, they have
combined all of these factors and analyzed their influences on the
outcomes of our wars, what Sir Basil Liddell Hart called "the
better state of peace," which is the fundamental objective of
warfare. One can find a number of military, political, and
technological histories that address the American experience at
war. However, I know of no other single volume that addresses all
of these aspects in such a concise and readable fashion. But
Eagle's Talons is much more than just a history of the American
experience. If gaining insights about where we are going requires
an understanding of where we have been, Colonel Drew and Dr. Snow
provide a key to understanding how and why the United States might
employ its military power in the future.
For more than 35 years a successful part of the post-World War II
collective security network was ANZUS a defense alliance between
Australia, New Zealand and the United States. The Alliance worked
well for many years. However, in the mid-1980's events cause the
alliance to revise in such a way that a return to its former state
became doubtful. Also, Australia and New Zealand wanted their
defense forces more self-reliant and increasingly focused own their
own region, The author has helped increase awareness in this volume
and he discusses many of the issues.
The author provides a reasoned, balanced, and very basic look at
low-intensity conflict from a military point of view.
Illustrates how US air power was not prepared for the conflict in
Vietnam because of its emphasis on strategic bombardment and how
the war's outcome may not have been any different even if the
military had been allowed to carry out its desired intensive
bombing campaign.
This new work defines national security strategy, its objectives,
the problems it confronts, and the influences that constrain and
facilitate its development and implementation in a post-Cold War,
post-9/11 environment. The authors note that making and
implementing national strategy centers on risk management and
present a model for assessing strategic risks and the process for
allocating limited resources to reduce them. The major threats
facing the United States now come from its unique status as "the
sole remaining superpower" against which no nation-state or other
entity can hope to compete through conventional means. The
alternative is what is now called asymmetrical or fourth generation
warfare. Drew and Snow discuss all these factors in detail and
bring them together by examining the continuing problems of making
strategy in a changed and changing world. Originally published in
2006.
In December 1942, barely a year after the United States had entered
World War II, the American military establishment was already
planning a postwar overseas base network. Although initially
designed to support an international police force, the plans
increasingly assumed a national character as the Grand Alliance
dissolved into the confrontations of the Cold War. Dr. Converse not
only illustrates how Army, Navy, and Air Force planners went about
their work but also analyzes the numerous factors influencing the
nature, extent, and location of the projected base system. These
included requirements for postwar US physical and economic
security, rapidly changing technology, interservice rivalries,
civil-military conflicts, and reactions by other nations to the
prospect of American bases near or on their soil.
This book is about national security strategy: what it is, what its
objectives are, what problems it seeks to solve or at least manage,
and what kinds of influences constrain and create opportunities for
the development and implementation of strategies. The heart of the
problem with which national security strategy deals is the series
of threats-normally military, but increasingly semi- or nonmilitary
in character-that the country must confront and somehow overcome or
contain. When the original version of this book1 was published in
1988, the set of threats facing the United States was reasonably
static-those problems associated with the Cold War confrontation
with a communist world led by the Soviet Union-even if there were
signs of change on the horizon. In the ensuing decade and a half,
that configuration of problems largely dissolved, along with the
concrete parameters within which we operated. In its place is a
much more diffuse, shifting, and controversial set of problems that
is simultaneously simple, compelling, and arguable. Making strategy
is no longer a simple, straightforward process, if it ever were.
The making and implementation of strategy at the national level is
largely an exercise in risk management and risk reduction. Risk, at
that level, is the difference between the threats posed to our
security by our adversaries and our capabilities to counter or
negate those threats. Assessing risk and resolving it has two
primary dimensions. The first is the assessment of risk itself:
what conditions represent threats to our security, and how serious
are those threats relative to one another and to our safety? The
answers to these questions are not mechanical and obvious but are
the result of subjective human assessments based on different
political and philosophical judgments about the world and our place
in it. The other dimension is the adequacy of resources to counter
the threats that we identify. In circumstances of plenty, where
there are adequate resources (manpower, materiel, perceived will,
etc.) to counter all threats, this is not a problem. In the real
world, each of these dimensions presents a real set of issues,
which we must acknowledge up front.
National security strategy is a vast subject involving a daunting
array of interrelated sublements woven in intricate, sometimes
vague, and ever-changing patterns. Its processes are often
irregular and confusing and are always based on difficult decisions
laden with serious risks. In short, it is, at the same time, a
subject of overwhelming importance to the fate of the United States
and civilization itself. The authors have done a considerable
service by drawing together many of the diverse threads of national
security into a coherent whole. They consider political and
military strategy elements as part of a larger decision making
process influenced by economic, technological, cultural and
historical factors. Air University Press. United States Air Force.
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