War Fighting and Support to the Nation: An Identity Crisis in America's Military Mission
Abstract
There was a time when the men and women who joined the American military services knew what they were all about. Fighting, and winning, America's wars. The size of the military grew and shrunk depending on the relative peacefulness of the world and the perceived or actual threat to America's security. In between periods of deployment and conflict, the job of the military was to take whatever resources were allotted to them by Congress and train in preparation to fight the next war. During times of actual conflict like that experienced during the Civil War, both World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, the American public focused its full attention on the details of how its sons and daughters performed their war fighting mission. During times of relative peace, the military services were generally treated with benign neglect by the public they prepared to serve. If the military was thought of at all, it was usually to question why so much tax money was needed to support a military with no obvious mission. After World War II and the Korean Conflict, the threat of communist aggression and America's determination to resist that aggression, led to what became known as the Cold War. Unlike other inter-war periods, the Cold War necessitated that the United States maintain a relatively large military force, even without a state of general conflict, even during the Vietnam War.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 23, 1998
- Accession Number
- ADA344870
Entities
People
- Joseph A. Russelburg
Organizations
- United States Army War College