The American Military - A Narrative History

by Brad D. Lookingbill

  Because the New Look threatened massive retaliation, the U.S. attempted to maintain nuclear superiority over all rivals. Charles E. Wilson, the Secretary of Defense, said that it provided “more bang for the buck.” Receiving the lion's share of appropriations, the Air Force increased the intercontinental capabilities of SAC by procuring long-range bombers for around-the-clock delivery of ordnance. Though facing cuts to shipbuilding programs, the Navy soon concentrated on nuclear-powered submarines as invulnerable launch platforms for Polaris missiles. Since the defense budget divided along service rather than functional lines, political sniping over allocations reinforced inter-service rivalries.

  Unsatisfied with the leftovers in the defense budget, the Army brass voiced concerns about the New Look. After becoming the Army Chief of Staff in 1955, General Maxwell D. Taylor foresaw a durable role for conventional forces as another deterrent to communist aggression. Accordingly, basic combat units gave the U.S. a reasonable option, if warranted, that complemented the grand strategy. The Army perfected tactical assets that included a 280-mm gun known as “Atomic Annie” as well as a radar-controlled antiaircraft rocket named Nike. In addition, they trained Special Forces to operate in unconventional battlefields. The plea for a “flexible response” resonated with intellectuals, who doubted the logic of mutually assured destruction.

  Faced with scenarios of massive destruction, the Army began to reorganize its elements for both nuclear and nonnuclear combat. The “triangular” infantry and airborne divisions of 17,000 soldiers, which constituted the standard formation of the Army in Korea, no longer seemed appropriate for combat operations in the Cold War. Instead, the new “pentomic” divisions placed 13,500 soldiers into units of five battle groups capable of nimble yet quick action. Fighting from a circular battle position, divisional troops maneuvered with the fire support of artillery and missile units. They concentrated or dispersed based upon changes in enemy dispositions. Exploiting gaps created by a nuclear blast, they moved effectively in any direction with fast ground and air transportation, reliable communications, and better logistics. Thanks to the steady supply of manpower through conscription, the force structure adapted to fighting in complex environments.

  The complex environment of French Indochina gave rise to the “domino theory,” that is, the belief that the fall of one regime to communism would inevitably topple others. In what was known as the Third World, developing countries contemplated alignment with models for either centralized economic planning or free market capitalism. The dominos in Southeast Asia might fall in any direction and thus threaten American interests stretching from Japan to the Philippines and from India to Southwest Asia. According to exponents of the Cold War, communists conspired to take over French colonies.

  During 1954, the French government begged the U.S. to intervene in Vietnam. Admiral Arthur Radford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, recommended air strikes against communist guerrillas at Dien Ben Phu. In fact, Operation Vulture outlined the possible advantages of atomic warfare in an effort to rescue French forces from certain defeat. The dire situation prompted Dulles to posit that the U.S. needed to “go to the brink.” Recalling the lessons of his predecessor in Korea, however, the president refused to take military action without an authorization from Congress. He sent funds to assist France, but their troops lost decisively in Vietnam. “No one could be more bitterly opposed to ever getting the United States involved in a hot war in that region than I am,” Eisenhower announced.

  After Communist China began shelling the Nationalist-held islands of Quemoy and Matsu in the Taiwan Strait, Eisenhower sought a congressional resolution to protect Taiwan. In 1955, he received a sweeping authorization to wage war. In another example of brinkmanship, the administration ordered the Navy to escort Taiwanese ships and sent an Army–Marine task force to the islands. At the urging of the Kremlin, Peking avoided escalating the conflict.

  With the waning of British power in the Middle East, the Kremlin attempted to gain influence among Arab nationalists in Egypt and Syria. During the Suez crisis of 1956, Eisenhower placed U.S. forces around the world on full alert. The next year, he pledged military and economic assistance to defend any Middle Eastern nation threatened by the aggressiveness of international communism. Congress endorsed the Eisenhower Doctrine, which sanctioned the use of force in the oil-rich region. The Sixth Fleet along with Army and Marine units deployed briefly, but all sides backed away from the brink.

  Linking civil rights to the Cold War, Eisenhower stood at the brink again on September 25, 1957. The commander-in-chief sent elements of the 101st Airborne Division to Little Rock, Arkansas. Armed with bayonets against a howling mob, 1,000 paratroopers protected nine African American students entering Central High School. Across the Third World, people of color took note of the freedom struggle within the U.S.

  The Arms Race

  In late 1957, the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite heightened American fears of a nuclear attack. With U.S. missile development ostensibly lagging, Congress responded by creating the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA. Moreover, the National Defense Education Act established federal grants for training in mathematics and science. Teaming with the Canadian government, the U.S. created the Distant Early Warning, or DEW, which provided a radar system across northern Canada and Alaska. Consequently, the Sputnik crisis spurred the Pentagon to seek increases in defense spending.

  With the Pentagon worried that space-age technology threatened to make SAC wings obsolete, programs for surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles received additional funding. The Atlas, Vanguard, and Titan programs focused on the development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. Even though the press exaggerated the capabilities of the Soviet arsenal, America's missile programs appeared in disarray by comparison.

  The Army, Navy, and Air Force maintained separate plans for nuclear attack, which prompted the Eisenhower administration to request a single integrated operational plan called SIOP-62. It outlined a preemptive nuclear attack if an early warning system detected an imminent strike by an adversary. Identifying over 1,000 targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Warsaw Pact nations, it anticipated the delivery of 3,200 nuclear devices by the American military. The mighty warheads potentially would kill hundreds of millions in the blink of an eye. When reviewing a top-secret draft in 1957, Eisenhower recalled that it “frightened the devil out of me.”

  As the decade closed, Eisenhower agreed to a Paris summit with British and French leaders that included Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet premier. While touring the U.S., Khrushchev endorsed the notion of “peaceful coexistence.” In addition to advocating “Atoms for Peace” and “Open Skies,” Eisenhower offered to talk about a ban against atmospheric and water testing of nuclear arms. Suddenly, another rocket interrupted their summit plans. On May 1, 1960, the Soviets fired a missile to down a CIA U-2 spy plane and captured the pilot, Francis Gary Powers. Khrushchev denounced the violation of Soviet airspace and left the summit early, although the Kremlin later exchanged Powers for a captured communist spy. Embarrassed by the U-2 incident, Eisenhower admitted to authorizing high-altitude surveillance but refused to halt the CIA's intelligence-gathering activities.

  In a farewell address to the nation, Eisenhower reflected upon the issues of peace, prosperity, and power. The former soldier noted that the Cold War “absorbs our very beings,” which compelled the “conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry.” A combination of interests not only provided national security but also generated civilian jobs. Nevertheless, he urged Americans to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.” Unable to achieve disarmament, he retired from public service with “a definite sense of disappointment.”

  During the presidential election cycle of 1960, Americans debated the perceived disparities in the respective armaments of the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Democrats nominated Massach
usetts Senator John F. Kennedy, who called for a concerted effort to close a “missile gap” with communist rivals. After winning the election, Kennedy learned from the CIA that the “missile gap” was nothing more than a fiction of the Cold War. With soaring rhetoric about “a long twilight struggle,” his inaugural address trumpeted the importance of national defense in the “hour of maximum danger.”

  The Kennedy administration sought to depart from the all-or-nothing approach to the Cold War by underscoring a “flexible response.” As the Kremlin continued to support “wars of national liberation” around the globe, the Pentagon attempted to gear up for the full range of emerging threats. Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara endorsed a nuclear “triad” that included SAC, ICBMs, and Polaris missiles, but he also created “Strike Command” to mesh the Army's mobile forces with the Air Force's tactical and airlift capabilities. However, a CIA operation at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba turned into a fiasco. The president refused to provide air support to anti-communist forces, which discredited the U.S. and emboldened the Soviets.

  During 1961, Kennedy and Khrushchev met at the Vienna Conference. The Soviet premier informed the “youngster” that he would move on his own to resolve the Berlin impasse. He threatened to end American access to West Berlin, located nearly 100 miles within East Germany. By August, the Soviets began erecting the Berlin Wall to prevent refugees from escaping to freedom. Kennedy activated several National Guard and Reserve units and ordered more than 40,000 additional troops to Europe. U.S. armored divisions prepared to defend the Fulda Gap. The Berlin crisis intensified, but Khrushchev decided against war at the time.

  Once the Berlin crisis abated, the Soviets moved next to bolster Fidel Castro in Cuba. Khrushchev dispatched military advisors, air defenses, and ballistic missiles to the island. Photographs from U.S. surveillance planes revealed the missile launchers on October 14, 1962, although the presence of offensive weapons only 90 miles off the Florida coast violated no law or treaty. Unwilling to accept the direct threat to national security, the Kennedy administration decided to remove the missile sites from Cuba.

  After the National Security Council narrowed the military options to either an air strike or a naval blockade, Kennedy chose the latter. Though constituting an act of war, the commander-in-chief described it as a “quarantine” of Cuba. He also put SAC bombers on a 15-minute alert, while fighter squadrons and anti-aircraft batteries deployed to Florida. Moreover, submarines armed with Polaris missiles moved within range of the Soviet Union. With the approval of the Organization of American States, or OAS, the Navy's Second Fleet began enforcing the “quarantine” on October 24. Castro cabled Moscow and demanded an immediate nuclear strike. As five Soviet ships steamed toward the U.S. line in the water, Khrushchev imagined “the abyss of a world nuclear-missile war.”

  In the end, a last-minute compromise averted war. The Kremlin removed the missiles from Cuba, while the Kennedy administration promised not to invade the island. Though not part of a back-channel deal, the American military later removed outmoded Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The U.S. and the Soviet Union proceeded to negotiate the Limited Test-Ban Treaty, which pushed all nuclear testing underground. As the Cuban missile crisis faded from memory, the mushroom-shaped cloud eventually became a visual cliché of the arms race.

  Conclusion

  World War III did not happen, but anti-communist and communist nations engaged in a long and bitter contest to win the future. Even as the U.S. managed the armed forces for peacetime, the strategy of containment required that they assume a greater role in shoring up allies around the globe. The Korean peninsula at mid-century became a key flashpoint, where Americans fought for three years in a war without parallel. Imposing defense cuts in the aftermath, the federal government promised a New Look to military might. Nuclear arms that turned a hostile country into a radioactive desert seemed less expensive than maintaining conventional forces. The Army, which found it difficult to match the innovations of the Air Force and the Navy, promised a “flexible response” to a fluid state of international affairs. What Eisenhower dubbed the “military-industrial complex” generally met the challenges of the Cold War.

  More often than not, the American military perceived the Cold War through a shadowy world that seemed remote from the realities of a combat zone. While coming to terms with the possibility of a nuclear holocaust, the Pentagon formulated strategic concepts with analogies about Munich and metaphors about dominos. An either-or mentality obscured the extent to which the U.S. fell short of its own rhetoric about freedom. At the same time, the dictatorship of Stalin evinced an authoritarian, paranoid, and narcissistic style that fueled distrust about the “iron curtain.” Beginning in 1945, the Kremlin sought to enhance the security of the Soviet Union by depriving other nations of any opportunity to seek their own. The crumbling of European empires multiplied the disagreements between the superpowers. In the words of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the creators of the atomic age, the U.S. and the Soviet Union behaved like “two scorpions in a bottle.”

  Throughout the atomic age, the U.S. committed assets to stop an aggressive rival from threatening freedom around the globe. The defensive barrier of the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans no longer shielded North America from the terrors of jets, missiles, and satellites. Men and women in uniform strove to contain adversaries not only in Europe but also in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. By the early 1960s, the Army, Navy, and Air Force prepared to fight “two and a half wars” simultaneously. While providing direct and indirect aid to foreign governments, the military establishment planned for the long haul. The tools for national security included a tremendous arsenal that protected the country from any foe and safeguarded the interests of the American people. American warriors readied for action but found few precedents for the battles of the Cold War.

  Looking for inspiration in the past, the Cold War generation remembered the battles of their forefathers. While military personnel placed a premium on massive firepower, only a handful of soldiers, sailors, or airmen witnessed first-hand the damage of an atomic blast. The remoteness of war, moreover, left civil society ambivalent about the meaning of popular catchphrases such as “sound patriotism” and “strong defense.” In 1962, the federal government formed a special committee chaired by Earl Warren, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, to create a National Military Museum for educating the public. Projecting a cost of $40 million, the committee recommended locating several exhibits for tourists along the Potomac River. Under the auspices of the Smithsonian Institution, the grounds near the U.S. capital would include an airfield, ships, silos, bunkers, and trenches. Before the plans were shelved, critics of a military-friendly mall denounced it as a “Disneyland of destruction.”

  Essential Questions

  1 What caused the outbreak of the Cold War?

  2 In what ways was the armed conflict in Korea limited?

  3 Why did the American military shift from a New Look to a “flexible response”?

  Suggested Readings

  Aliano, Richard A. American Defense Policy from Eisenhower to Kennedy. Athens: Ohio University Press, 1975.

  Bacevich, Andrew J. The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam. Washington D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1986.

  Crane, Conrad C. American Airpower Strategy in Korea, 1950–1953. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000.

  Dobbs, Michael. One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War. New York: Vintage, 2008.

  Gaddis, John Lewis. We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.

  Halberstam, David. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War. New York: Hyperion, 2007.

  Hastings, Max. The Korean War. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987.

  Hoopes, Townsend, and Douglas Brinkley. Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1992.

  Huebner, Andrew J. The Warr
ior Image: Soldiers in American Culture from the Second World War to the Vietnam Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2008.

  Kaplan, Fred. The Wizards of Armageddon. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1983.

  Mershon, Sherie, and Steven Schlossman. Foxholes and Color Lines: Desegregating the U.S. Armed Forces. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.

  Miller, David. The Cold War: A Military History. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.

  Monahan, Evelyn, and Rosemary Neidel-Greenlee. A Few Good Women: America's Military Women from World War I to the Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. New York: Knopf, 2010.

  Newhouse, John. War and Peace in the Nuclear Age. New York: Knopf, 1989.

  Pearlman, Michael D. Truman and MacArthur: Policy, Politics, and the Hunger for Honor and Renown. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

  Sherry, Michael S. In the Shadow of War: The United States since the 1930s. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

  Strueck, William. The Korean War: An International History. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995.

  14

  The Tragedy of Vietnam (1964–1975)

  Introduction

  When officially taking command of more than a half-million Americans in Vietnam, General Creighton W. Abrams refused to waste time or money on a ceremony. On June 10, 1968, the man affectionately called “General Abe” entered his office, lit a cigar, and began the morning. Noticing the plush furniture that General William C. Westmoreland, his predecessor, left behind, he wanted to get rid of it all.