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Cold War

The cold war affected the US military in several ways. One way that the cold war affected the US military was that it gave the United States grounds to expand its military. After the cold war, the US was determined to maintain a presence in the pacific and one way to achieve this was to recruit many people into the military to give it an advantage in the cold war. For instance, the Okinawa military base was also established to ensure that postwar Japan was kept on a leash. The US built a perimeter of defense in the Pacific. The defensive perimeter started in the Aleutians, then to the Philippines, going to Japan and eventually Okinawa with military personnel being deployed in these bases (Millet and Maslowski, ch. 19). Okinawa also offered very strategic bases for the United States. Under President Truman, the military was expanded dramatically after the cold war in Asia. This led to the establishment of frameworks for a military complex that continued to exist throughout the cold war. It was also in this period that high contrast troops were enlisted in the military, and this was a massive step towards social liberties.

The second way that the cold war in Asia affected the US is to eventually lead to the United States' involvement in the Vietnam war. At this time, the US Congress and the general public held the view that the military involvement in curbing the expansion of communism was justified. The US would supply equipment and economic aid but would not readily provide troops to Asian nation (Millet and Maslowski, ch. 19). The United States incurred high casualties of military personnel in the Vietnam war, with many soldiers dying while others getting permanent injuries. This led to the deployment of almost 500,000 military personnel at one time, but the US still failed in its mission to pacify Vietnam. Due to the failure, the American public questioned the practicality and morality of the war in Vietnam, eventually leading to the rise of the antiwar movement.

Work Cited

Millett, Allan R., and Peter Maslowski. For the Common Defense. E-book, Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Compare and contrast the discussion above to the discussion below.  What similarities and what differences did you notice?  What conclusions about military history can be drawn from this compare/contrast analysis?

Cold War's Affects on the US and its Military

How did the Cold War affect the United States military? There are many different ways to answer this question. "Making an electoral virtue of his foreign-policy innocence, President Jimmy Carter took office in 1977 convinced that he had a historic opportunity to curb the spread of nuclear weapons, prevent the loss of American lives in war, pursue detente with the Soviet Union, reduce defense spending, shift the burden of collective defense to America's allies, and expand the power of moral suasion by applying a 'human rights' to diplomacy" (Millett and Maslowski, Chapter 19).

For the United States, it brought in a new era of how the entire military, defense, and intelligence communities operated. The Cold War may not have been a direct war between powers in the same sense as the two World Wars, but its end brought a familiar retrenchment in defense spending and military structure. The Cold War's end also brought in huge amounts of change in military strategy and intelligence operations. It was the end of an age where enemies were singular, well-defined and limited to a particular region. 

President Carter also proposed the "two track" policy in December of 1979 "to peruse a European nuclear-weapons pact with Russia while deploying two new mobile theater nuclear weapons, the Pershing II intermediate range ballistic missile and the ground launched cruise missile (GLCM)" (Millett and Maslowski, Chapter 19). Following the two track policy, new concerns from the Russian's made themselves known, along with a "new purpose and alarm from the European peace movement, an alliance of people frightened of a nuclear Europe, religious pacifists, antinuclear romantics, anti-American appeasers" (Millett and Maslowski, Chapter 19). Following the setbacks, Carter admitted that his view of everything was flawed.

"The Reagan administration based its defense planning on the most demanding criterion: Preparedness of a sustained nuclear or nonnuclear war with the Soviet Union and its allies. Since the Russians could exercise military power on a global scale, the United States must be prepared to be equally capable, with a special emphasis on naval and air forces" (Millett and Maslowski, Chapter 19).   

With the collapse of the Soviet Union that followed the ending of the Cold War, the United States became the worlds leading superpower, both economically and within the military. "American military relations abroad and industrial health at home put finite limits on slashing defense procurement. By 1990, the US had replaced the Soviet Union as the principal arms merchant in the world. Measured in dollars, Middle Eastern nations were best customers" (Millett and Maslowski, Chapter 20). In 1990, the United States reached $20 billion in international arms sales, and by 1992, that number had multiplied to $32 billion.

To sum up everything that was stated, there were many different way that the United States military was affected. Most notably the fall of the Soviet Union and the US becoming the leading superpower because of the advancements that was made during war.

Works Cited

Millett, Allan and Maslowski, Peter. “Chapter 19/Coping with New Challenges.” For the Common Defense. E-Book, Simon & Schuster, 2012.

Millett, Allan and Maslowski, Peter. For the Common Defense. E-Book, Simon & Schuster, 2012.