The Military in the Post-Vietnam ERA: A Search for Relevance
Abstract
From April 1917 to September 1945, the American military establishment evolved into a contradiction in the American polity. After August 1945 the contradiction had become an aberration as well. It was an aberration because it possessed (though it did not know quite what to do with ) a destructive apparatus that threatened the planned extinction of mankind, and it was a contradiction because it endeavored to perpetate and indeed to secure the gap between American ideals and American political practice which it as an institution had come to represent. Ironically, it simultaneously became the instrument of force of the sole nation on earth capable of guaranteeing--with any degree of certitude--the protection and continuation of human freedom and dignity as both a creed and a way of life. How this difficult and paradoxical circumstance can be defined, analyzed, dealt with and accommodated within the American military establishment itself, is the subject of this brief work.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- May 10, 1982
- Accession Number
- ADA119702
Entities
People
- Lawrence B. Wilkerson
Organizations
- Naval War College