Shaping American Military Capabilities after the Cold War

Shaping American Military Capabilities after the Cold War
Author: Richard Lacquement
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003-02-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 0313057230

For more than 40 years, U.S. defense policy and the design of military capabilities were driven by the threat to national security posed by the Soviet Union and its allies. As the Soviet Union collapsed, analysts wondered what effect this dramatic change would have upon defense policy and the military capabilities designed to support it. Strangely enough, this development would ultimately have little effect on our defense policy. Over a decade later, American forces are a smaller, but similar version of their Cold War predecessors. The author argues that, despite many suggestions for significant change, the bureaucratic inertia of comfortable military elites has dominated the defense policy debate and preserved the status quo with only minor exceptions. This inertia raises the danger that American military capabilities will be inadequate for future warfare in the information age. In addition, such legacy forces are inefficient and inappropriately designed for the demands of frequent and important antiterrorist and peace operations. Lacquement offers extensive analysis concerning the defense policymaking process from 1989 to 2001, including in particular the 2001 Quadrennial Defense Review. This important study also provides a set of targeted policy recommendations that can help solve the identified problems in preparing for future wars and in better training for peace operations.

Transforming Military Power since the Cold War

Transforming Military Power since the Cold War
Author: Theo Farrell
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 321
Release: 2013-10-17
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1107471494

This book provides an authoritative account of how the US, British, and French armies have transformed since the end of the Cold War. All three armies have sought to respond to changes in their strategic and socio-technological environments by developing more expeditionary capable and networked forces. Drawing on extensive archival research, hundreds of interviews, and unprecedented access to official documents, the authors examine both the process and the outcomes of army transformation, and ask how organizational interests, emerging ideas, and key entrepreneurial leaders interact in shaping the direction of military change. They also explore how programs of army transformation change over time, as new technologies moved from research to development, and as lessons from operations were absorbed. In framing these issues, they draw on military innovation scholarship and, in addressing them, produce findings with general relevance for the study of how militaries innovate.

Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy

Military Coercion and US Foreign Policy
Author: Melanie W. Sisson
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 218
Release: 2020-04-23
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1000056872

This book examines the use of military force as a coercive tool by the United States, using lessons drawn from the post-Cold War era (1991–2018). The volume reveals that despite its status as sole superpower during the post-Cold War period, US efforts to coerce other states failed as often as they succeeded. In the coming decades, the United States will face states that are more capable and creative, willing to challenge its interests and able to take advantage of missteps and vulnerabilities. By using lessons derived from in-depth case studies and statistical analysis of an original dataset of more than 100 coercive incidents in the post-Cold War era, this book generates insight into how the US military can be used to achieve policy goals. Specifically, it provides guidance about the ways in which, and the conditions under which, the US armed forces can work in concert with economic and diplomatic elements of US power to create effective coercive strategies. This book will be of interest to students of US national security, US foreign policy, strategic studies and International Relations in general.

Parameters

Parameters
Author:
Publisher:
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2017
Genre: Military art and science
ISBN:

US Military Innovation Since the Cold War

US Military Innovation Since the Cold War
Author: Harvey Sapolsky
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 219
Release: 2009-04-28
Genre: History
ISBN: 1135968683

explains how the US military transformation failed in the post-Cold war era Harvey Sapolsky is a leading defence scholar in the US will be of interest to students of strategic studies, defence studies, military studies, US politics and security studies in general

Drawdown

Drawdown
Author: Jason W. Warren
Publisher: NYU Press
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2016-10-18
Genre: History
ISBN: 1479875570

While traditionally, Americans view expensive military structure as a poor investment and a threat to liberty, they also require the employment of armed forces as a guarantee of that very freedom. Beginning with the wars of the English colonies, Americans typically increased their military capabilities at the beginning of conflicts only to decrease them at the apparent conclusion of hostilities. In [this book], a stellar team of military historians argue that the United States sometimes managed effective drawdowns, sowing the seeds of future victory. Yet at other times, the drawing down of military capabilities undermined our readiness and flexibility, leading to more costly wars and perhaps defeat. The political choice to reduce military capabilities is influenced by Anglo-American pecuniary deicions and traditional fears of government oppression, and it has been haphazard throughout American history. These two factors form the basic American "liberty dilemma," the vexed relationship between the nation and its military apparatuses from the founding of the first colonies through to present times. With the termination of large-scale operations in Iraq and the winnowing of forces in Afghanistan, the United states military once again faces a significant drawdown in standing force structure and capabilities. The political and military debate around how best to affect this force reduction lacks a proper historical perspective. This volume aspires to inform this dialogue. Not a traditional military history, Drawdown analyzes cultural attitudes, political decisions, and institutions surrounding the maintenance of armed forces. -- Back cover.

The Second Cold War

The Second Cold War
Author: Aaron Donaghy
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 405
Release: 2021-04-29
Genre: History
ISBN: 1108838030

The compelling account of the last great Cold War struggle between America and the Soviet Union that took place between 1977 and 1985.

American Civil-Military Relations

American Civil-Military Relations
Author: Suzanne C. Nielsen
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press+ORM
Total Pages: 649
Release: 2009-10-05
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0801895057

American Civil-Military Relations offers the first comprehensive assessment of the subject since the publication of Samuel P. Huntington’s The Soldier and the State. Using this seminal work as a point of departure, experts in the fields of political science, history, and sociology ask what has been learned and what more needs to be investigated in the relationship between civilian and military sectors in the 21st century. Leading scholars—such as Richard Betts, Risa Brooks, James Burk, Michael Desch, Peter Feaver, Richard Kohn, Williamson Murray, and David Segal—discuss key issues, including: • changes in officer education since the end of the Cold War • shifting conceptions of military expertise in response to evolving operational and strategic requirements • increased military involvement in high-level politics • the domestic and international contexts of U.S. civil-military relations. The first section of the book provides contrasting perspectives of American civil-military relations within the last five decades. The next section addresses Huntington’s conception of societal and functional imperatives and their influence on the civil-military relationship. Following sections examine relationships between military and civilian leaders and describe the norms and practices that should guide those interactions. What is clear from the essays in this volume is that the line between civil and military expertise and responsibility is not that sharply drawn, and perhaps given the increasing complexity of international security issues, it should not be. When forming national security policy, the editors conclude, civilian and military leaders need to maintain a respectful and engaged dialogue. Essential reading for those interested in civil-military relations, U.S. politics, and national security policy.

The Case Against Military Intervention

The Case Against Military Intervention
Author: Donald M. Snow
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 199
Release: 2015-07-16
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1317501772

Since World War II, military intervention in developing world internal conflicts (DWIC) has become the primary form of U.S. military activity, and these interventions have proven unsuccessful in places like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. This book argues such failure was entirely predictable, even inevitable, due both to the nature and dynamics of foreign military intrusion in the affairs of other countries and especially the DWICs that provide the major contemporary form of potential U.S. military in the foreseeable future. Basing its analysis in both human nature (the adverse reaction to prolonged outsider intrusion) and historical analogy, the book argues strongly why military intervention should be avoided as a national security option and the implications of such a policy decision for national security strategy and policy.