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Contents
INTRODUCTION
1. A Dangerous New World, 1607–1689
2. The Colonial Wars, 1689–1763
3. The American Revolution, 1763–1783
4. Preserving the New Republic’s Independence, 1783–1815
5. The Armed Forces and National Expansion, 1815–1860
6. The Civil War, 1861–1862
7. The Civil War, 1863–1865
8. From Postwar Demobilization Toward Great Power Status, 1865–1898
9. The Birth of an American Empire, 1898–1902
10. Building the Military Forces of a World Power, 1899–1917
11. The United States Fights in the “War to End All Wars,” 1917–1918
12. Military Policy Between the Two World Wars, 1919–1939
13. The United States and World War II: From the Edge of Defeat to the Edge of Victory, 1939–1943
14. The United States and World War II: The Road to Victory, 1943–1945
15. Cold War and Hot War: The United States Enters the Age of Nuclear Deterrence and Collective Security, 1945–1953
16. Waging Cold War: American Defense Policy for Extended Deterrence and Containment, 1953–1965
17. In Dubious Battle: Vietnam, 1961–1967
18. The Lost War: Vietnam, 1968–1975
19. The Common Defense and the End of the Cold War, 1976–1993
20. World Disorder New and Old, 1993–2001
21. Wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, 2001–2011
Photographs
APPENDICES
Appendix A. Participation and Losses, Major Wars, 1775–2012
Appendix B. The Armed Forces and National Expansion
Appendix C. The Armed Forces of the Cold War and After
Appendix D. U.S. Troops Stationed Abroad
Appendix E. American Military and Diplomatic Deaths, Terrorist and Military Actions, 1980–2000
INDEX
The Chapter Bibliographies and General Bibliography can be accessed online at the Free Press author pages: http://www.SimonandSchuster.com, and Professor Feis’s webpage at Buena Vista University: http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html
Acknowledgments
Writing the acknowledgments for a book that is thirty years old and now takes new life in a third edition is more challenging than writing the book. It does not become easier when the book has three authors. As the senior author, I have usurped the role of writing these acknowledgments in order to avoid pronoun confusion. Peter Maslowski and William B. Feis are blameless for any oversights or insensitivities our readers may spy.
This book had its start in my first exposure to a class in American military history taught by my adviser, the late Harry L. Coles, at The Ohio State University. Harry assigned us Walter Millis’s Arms and Men (1956). Given the choices in 1963, the book was the right one for a course that stressed civil-military relations and the political and social influences on strategy. Having just finished three years as a Marine infantry officer, I didn’t want to read a textbook written for ROTC cadets about leadership and patriotism, the general focus of the other potential texts. On the other hand, Millis had little feel for how military organizations work (or don’t), and his grasp of operational problems lacked expertise. Harry agreed—and said I should try to do better some day. That day came sooner than he and I anticipated.
I had the good fortune to return to The Ohio State University in 1969 after teaching at the University of Missouri-Columbia for three years. Harry Coles had become department chair, and I inherited his one-quarter (ten-week) course on American military history, from Jamestown to the nuclear age. I had used Millis at Missouri and did not like it for a semester course. I liked it even less on the quarter system. On the other hand, I also inherited a stellar group of graduate students, among them Calvin Christman, Robert Daugherty, J. Frederick Shiner, and Peter Maslowski. Peter and I shared several interests, among them bird-watching and basketball. Peter finished his dissertation despite my mentoring, went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, taught American military history, and agreed with me that the book choices still left much to be desired. By now we had a new candidate, Russell F. Weigley’s The American Way of War (1973); but Russ, I thought, worked too hard to make military history (often just army history) fit his criticism of American strategy in Vietnam. Through the 1970s, as Peter and I taught and wrote other books, we talked about writing our own text. Peter took the initiative in opening negotiations with the Free Press, and soon we had a contract and a chance to write, not just gripe.
NO GENERAL HISTORY of American military policy could exist without the contributions of the two generations of scholars whose books, essays, and articles provide the foundation for this book. Our debt to them, acknowledged in the online chapter and general bibliographies (http://www.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html and the Free Press author pages at http://www.SimonandSchuster.com) is complete. We hope they recognize their contributions among our breezy assertions and breathtaking generalizations. We are indebted to our colleagues who volunteered their considerable talent and precious time to critique our individual chapters. Peter, the author of Chapters 1 through 9 for the first two editions, appreciated the advice of Dr. Douglas E. Leach, Dr. Don Higginbotham, Dr. Charles Royster, Dr. Richard H. Kohn, Dr. Craig L. Symonds, Dr. Francis Paul Prucha, Dr. K. Jack Bauer, Dr. Archer Jones, Dr. Frank E. Vandiver, Dr. James A. Rawley, Dr. John Y. Simon, Dr. James M. McPherson, Dr. Robert M. Utley, Dr. Benjamin Franklin Cooling III, Dr. Graham A. Cosmas, and Dr. David F. Trask, all experts on the American military experience from the colonial period to the twentieth century. Dr. Patrice M. Berger of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln history department, Lawrence J. Baack (a former history professor), and Ms. Barbara Rader also provided Peter with evaluations from perspectives professional but unspecialized in U.S. history. Peter asked his mother, Edna H. Maslowski, to read portions of several chapters to check his literary English in the first edition.
I wrote Chapters 10 through 17 of the first edition with the sound advice of a distinguished platoon of specialists in twentieth-century American military history: Dr. Timothy K. Nenninger, Dr. Dean C. Allard, Dr. Daniel R. Beaver, Dr. Donald Smythe, Dr. Forrest C. Pogue, Colonel J. F. Shiner, USAF, Dr. Gerald E. Wheeler, Dr. Williamson Murray, Mr. Kenneth H. Watman, Mr. Charles MacDonald, Dr. Ronald H. Spector, Dr. John L. Gaddis, Colonel Roy K. Flint, USA, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Borowski, USAF, Brigadier General Douglas Kinnard, USA (Ret.), Dr. David Alan Rosenberg, Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), Dr. George C. Herring, Dr. David S. Sorenson, and Dr. Joseph J. Kruzel. We also want to thank those members of the history departments of the U.S. Military Academy and the U.S. Air Force Academy who reviewed parts of the original manuscript.
From its inception, this study enjoyed the support of the Mershon Center for Education and Research in National Security at The Ohio State University, directed successively by Dr. Richard K. Snyder and Dr. Charles F. Hermann, when this book was first written. In addition, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln provided Peter with a Faculty Development Fellowship and Maude Hammond Fling Summer Fellowship in order to work on this book.
Mrs. Yvonne Holsinger and the staff of the graphic arts division of The Ohio State University’s Teaching Aids
Laboratory drew the maps that have graced this book for almost thirty years. In addition, Joyce Seltzer and Robert Harrington of the Free Press offered valuable suggestions on the original manuscript.
AFTER TEN YEARS, Peter and I agreed that For the Common Defense needed a fresh coat of learning and updating. We had suggestions for improvement from reviewers, from other historians who used the book in their classes, and from our students, never shy in commenting about their readings. Since our readers had not found whole sections of the book wrongheaded, we agreed that peer review of every word in every chapter need not slow our revision process. The only original addition was Chapter 18 and the Epilogue, which started with the end of the Vietnam War and carried the narrative through the Gulf War, which I wrote. Even though Peter did not have to rewrite Chapters 1 through 9, he sent these chapters or portions of them to Dr. Ira D. Gruber, Dr. Robert Wooster, Dr. Donald R. Hickey, and Dr. Brian Linn for review. As I recall, they liked the chapters very much. Since I had one new chapter that needed close review, I asked my colleague Dr. Williamson Murray to read it, and we turned to an uncommon graduate student, Jay Young, whose government service in the 1980s made him especially expert on the defense policy of the Reagan era. For the Gulf War, I relied upon Brigadier General Edwin H. Simmons, USMC (Ret.), director of the Marine Corps History and Museums Division and my former commanding officer when I headed the fighting historians of MTU DC-4. After my retirement from the USMCR in 1990, the dedicated reserves of DC-4 covered the Gulf War on the ground, and I saw their early drafts, as well as some operational summaries. To finish the review process, we asked Dr. Stephen E. Ambrose to read the whole manuscript and participate in a panel discussion of the book at the March 1993 meeting of the Southwestern Social Sciences Association in New Orleans. Steve read the entire manuscript with the highest standards of professional attentiveness and made recommendations I accepted without regret.
The last and most important participant in the second review process was a graduate student from Lincoln, Nebraska, named William B. Feis. Bill had taken large doses of For the Common Defense as an undergraduate history major and an MA graduate student, administered by his adviser, Professor Peter Maslowski. As my advisee and Civil War reenactor “pard,” Bill was unlucky enough to become a research assistant and copy editor on the second edition. He escaped the editorial trap only by completing his dissertation in 1997, fleeing to a faculty appointment at Buena Vista University in Iowa. Peter and I tracked his escape route and agreed that we would find more work for him someday.
When we persuaded the Free Press that a book in continued use in American classrooms should be revised again, Peter and I turned for help to Dr. Calvin Christman, another Ohio State graduate who had just retired from a distinguished teaching career at Cedar Valley Community College in Dallas, Texas, with graduate teaching experience at North Texas University. We asked Cal to work on the bibliographies and read any new material we wrote. His work had just begun when Cal learned he had cancer, which killed him on August 24, 2011. Fortunately, Bill Feis responded to our mild coercion and joined us as a full partner, happy with the opportunity to exact red-pencil revenge on his former advisers. Bill became the essential editor in making the third edition possible against tight deadlines. With the aid of his academic assistant Zoey Reisdorf, he also assembled the online bibliographies. We know we tried his legendary patience and that of his talented wife, Dr. Dixee Bartholomew-Feis, an accomplished teacher and published historian of the World War II Vietnamese-OSS collaboration. Bill took over assembling the final manuscript under demanding time and distance conditions that would have staggered anyone. In the fall of 2011, Bill lost his father and grandfather, but pressed on.
In addition to using Bill’s wide knowledge as the foundation for the review of the third edition, we continued to seek student reaction to the book. I had a class of graduate students at the University of New Orleans critique the whole second revision in 2009, and they found several errors and gaps. The next summer I had a class at the University of Hawaii-Manoa do a chapter-by-chapter review as part of a class on American military history. One of this group, Manuel Ortega, proved especially careful in his analysis.
As I coped with two new chapters that dealt with the complex interventions in Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, I sought the advice of former students who had seen these distant wars at close range: Peter Mansoor, Mark Jacobson, Jay Young, and David Gray. I sought information on Iraqi missiles and their nemesis, the Patriot antimissile missile, from Bryon Greenwald, a career air-defense officer. Wick Murray provided me with the publications of the Iraqi Perspectives Project. Dr. Richard W. Stewart, chief historian of the U.S. Army Center of Military History, graciously provided the high-quality maps and sound advice.
Peter, Bill, and I are indebted to all those who contributed to this book, and we thank them for their role in its publication. Any errors or omissions are our burden and not theirs.
There are those whose influence deserves special mention. Peter and I were fortunate to have role models for perfection and perseverance in two World War II veterans, Technical Sergeant Karl H. Maslowski and Colonel John D. Millett, who remained interested in our writing until they died.
We are especially indebted to our wives. Peter’s wife, Linda Maslowski, has always been a source of patience and wise counsel. In my case, I had the good sense to marry Martha E. Farley, whom I met at Ohio State and married in 1980 before publication of the first edition. As a historian and teacher, Martha brought special insight to writing a book designed principally for university undergraduates. Her contribution as researcher, editor, and typist for the third edition was essential to the book’s completion. She also has been a full partner in our association with our colleagues in the International Commission of Military History, who have used this book abroad with their students and arranged to have it translated into Spanish, Japanese, and Chinese.
The challenge of defending the United States of America will not disappear, and all of us should try to understand the nation’s peculiar exercise of military power for the common good. As I write this, the nation is beginning celebrations (for lack of a better word) of the bicentennial of the War of 1812, the sesquicentennial of the War of the Rebellion (known in some areas as the War Between the States), the seventieth anniversary of American participation in World War II, and the sixtieth anniversary of the end of the Korean War. Will we celebrate the commitment of ground troops to Vietnam in 2015, the fiftieth anniversary of that perilous fight? I suspect so. One hopes that American students will think long and hard about this nation’s wars and that this book will help them deal with a past that will not go away.
Allan R. Millett
New Orleans, 2012
Introduction
Although we are pleased that the original 1984 edition and 1994 revised edition of For the Common Defense have stood the test of time so well, the ongoing important national defense issues of the last eighteen years and the superb scholarship in military history since 1994 warrant this third edition. We have been encouraged in our efforts by teachers who have continued to use the second edition, even though American military history took on new directions in the Balkans and Muslim world since its publication.
We have reviewed all of the text for currency and accuracy. Where we found errors of fact and printing, we have corrected them. We have made the most changes in areas where our own research interests have taken us in the last eighteen years. I rewrote the account of the Korean War to reflect fifteen years of research. The Vietnam War is now divided into two chapters written by Peter, a subject of his recent research. There are now two chapters on the end of the Cold War and the new wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, 2001–2011, the decade characterized by the George W. Bush administration as the “Global War on Terrorism.”
Readers will search in vain in this book for dramatic new interpretations or radical departures in intellectual approach. We are aware that others may take issue with our relu
ctance to add novel twists and unexpected turns to our narrative. We have not taken the easy road of alternative or counter-factual history. We have tried to maintain the distinction between “what if” and “what was,” although “so what” remains a matter of reasonable debate. We hope we have provided the right balance of fact and interpretation to make any discussion of American military history meaningful, whether the debate involves contemporary defense policy or some aspect of American history, such as race relations, in which military history provides relevant testimony.
Our bibliographic suggestions (http://web.bvu.edu/faculty/feis/ftcd/FTCD_Bib.html and the Free Press author pages at http://www.SimonandSchuster.com) require some explanation. Except in special cases, we have omitted journal articles, for several reasons. Many articles become books. Others are superseded by other books. The availability of journal contents on the internet makes finding an article by subject relatively easy. By stressing books, we have chosen works that are current, reliable, tested, and probably available at public and university libraries. We have leaned toward books that are in print. We have chosen to make selections on the principles of “If you were to read one book on . . . ,” although we know two or three books might be useful. We apologize to those authors who feel ignored or aggrieved, but modern technology has saved the works of the just and the unjust, so everyone now has electronic immortality, or at least their books do.
Writing military history is an ancient craft, but since classical times military historians have focused almost exclusively on battles and the conduct of war. After World War II, however, American historians began to treat military history in broad political, economic, social, and institutional terms. Although retaining some elements of the “old” military history, this book falls more clearly into the “new” military history genre of the post–World War II era. Battle connoisseurs will sniff a hint of gunpowder throughout the book, since it discusses the major campaigns in all of America’s wars. The details of military operations and the problems of combat leadership and tactics are limited to those developments and events that demonstrate the capabilities and limitations of the armed forces as they implement national policy. The primary purposes of this book are to analyze the development of military policy and to examine the characteristics of military policy as influenced by America’s international relations and domestic development.
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