Us Military Strategy In The 70s

The major defense policy issues facing the United States in the 1970s are examined by Morton H. Halperin. A revision of his earlier Contemporary Military Strategy, the book has been substantially up-dated and now includes discussion of the evolution of American policy through the first year of the Nixon administration. This book examines concepts and modes of analysis currently applied by American civilian strategists to policy-making, and used in academic analyses of international politics.

This paper focuses on the formulation of doctrine since World War II. In no comparable period in history have the dimensions of the battlefield been so altered by rapid technological changes. The need for the tactical doctrines of the Army to remain correspondingly abreast of these changes is thus more pressing than ever before. Future conflicts are not likely to develop in the leisurely fashions of the past where tactical doctrines could be refined on the battlefield itself. It is, therefore, imperative that we apprehend future problems with as much accuracy as possible. One means of doing so is to pay particular attention to the business of how the Army's doctrine has developed historically, with a view to improving methods of future development.

This book demonstrates that under the leadership of President Ronald Reagan and through the mechanism of his National Security Council staff, the United States developed and executed a comprehensive grand strategy, involving the coordinated use of the diplomatic, informational, military, and economic instruments of national power, and that grand strategy led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. In doing so, it refutes three orthodoxies: that Reagan and his administration deserve little credit for the end of the Cold War, with most of credit going to Mikhail Gorbachev; that Reagan’s management of the National Security Council staff was singularly inept; and that the United States is incapable of generating and implementing a grand strategy that employs all the instruments of national power and coordinates the work of all executive agencies. The Reagan years were hardly a time of interagency concord, but the National Security Council staff managed the successful implementation of its program nonetheless.

U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1970s: Selected Documents, edited by John Hattendorf, is the thirtieth in the Newport Paper monograph series and the second in a projected four volume set of authoritative documents on U.S. Navy strategy and strategic planning. The first volume in this series, U.S. Naval Strategy in the 1990s: Selected Documents, Newport Paper 27, also edited by Professor Hattendorf, appeared in September 2006. The current volume was originally intended to include documents relating to the development of the Navy's “Maritime Strategy” during the 1980s, but the bulk of relevant material has made it advisable to dedicate a separate volume to that period; this is due to appear shortly. A final volume will then cover documents from the 1950s and 1960s.When combined with Professor Hattendorf 's authoritative narrative of the genesis and development of the “Maritime Strategy,” The Evolution of the U.S. Navy's Maritime Strategy, 1977–1986, Newport Paper 19, these volumes will provide for the first time a comprehensive picture of the evolution of high-level U.S. Navy (and to some extent U.S. Marine Corps) strategic thinking over the half-century following the end of World War II. Many of the documents reprinted here were—and were intended to be—public statements. In all cases, however, these documents remain little known and mostly inaccessible, certainly outside the Navy itself. It is important to emphasize that they need to be read with careful attention to their historical and institutional contexts. They are in any case not always easy to interpret, and they differ substantially in the weight they carried at the time or later. For these reasons, we have felt it essential to present the documents accompanied by a general introductory essay that locates them in their appropriate contexts, as well as by brief commentaries on each providing additional pertinent information and attempting to assess their wider significances. This project, it is hoped, will contribute importantly not just to our understanding of our recent naval history but also to the serious study of military institutions, strategy, and planning more generally. Also, it is worth noting that this material is of more than merely historical interest. The U.S. Navy (with its sister sea services, the Marine Corps and the Coast Guard) is currently on the verge of completing a major review of its naval and maritime strategy in a new era of protracted low-intensity warfare and growing global economic interdependence. This exercise, whatever the immediate result may prove to be, has unquestionably served the valuable purpose of stimulating serious thought about fundamental strategic issues at many levels throughout the Navy. These volumes can be expected to be an important resource in a continuing process of strategic assessment and education as the Navy continues to adjust to a rapidly evolving security environment.

National secuirty strategy is a vast subject involving a daunting array of interrelated subelements woven in intricate, sometimes vague, and ever-changing patterns. Its processes are often irregular and confusing and are always based on difficult decisions laden with serious risks. In short, it is a subject understood by few and confusing to most. It is, at the same time, a subject of overwhelming importance to the fate of the United States and civilization itself. Col. Dennis M. Drew and Dr. Donald M. Snow have done a considerable service by drawing together many of the diverse threads of national security strategy into a coherent whole. They consider political and military strategy elements as part of a larger decisionmaking process influenced by economic, technological, cultural, and historical factors. I know of no other recent volume that addresses the entire national security milieu in such a logical manner and yet also manages to address current concerns so thoroughly. It is equally remarkable that they have addressed so many contentious problems in such an evenhanded manner. Although the title suggests that this is an introductory volume - and it is - I am convinced that experienced practitioners in the field of national security strategy would benefit greatly from a close examination of this excellent book. Sidney J. Wise Colonel, United States Air Force Commander, Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education

The U.S. Army Before Vietnam, 1953-1965, by Donald A. Carter, covers the period between the end of the Korean War and the initial deployment of ground combat troops to Vietnam. It describes the organizational and doctrinal changes the Army implemented as it attempted to digest the lessons of one conflict and to prepare the force for another. The pamphlet also discusses the service's efforts to maintain its position in national defense within the parameters of President Eisenhower's New Look strategic policy. A key issue for the Army was the question of how to prepare a force to operate on an atomic battlefield. In order to compete with the Air Force and the Navy for a diminishing defense budget, the Army had to show that it, too, was a modern, forward-thinking organization, prepared to integrate a new family of tactical atomic weapons into its organization and doctrine. The resulting experiment with the Pentomic division forced Army leaders to reexamine some of their most basic assumptions about future conflict. With the increasing influence of Communist China throughout Southeast Asia, the Army also began to pay greater attention toward counterinsurgency and guerilla warfare. President Kennedy's interest in a doctrine of flexible response and his concern for combatting Communist inspired insurrections prompted the Army to increase training in unconventional warfare and to highlight the capabilities of its developing special forces--the Green Berets. Related products: The U.S. Army's Transition to the All-Volunteer Force, 1968-1974 -Print Paperback format is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00536-1 United States Army in World War 2, Special Studies, Manhattan, the Army, and the Atomic Bomb-Print Clothbound format can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/008-029-00132-2 Building the Bombs: A History of the Nuclear Weapons Complex is available here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/products/sku/061-000-00968-0 Vietnam War resources collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/us-military-history/battles-wars/vietn... China product collection can be found here: https://bookstore.gpo.gov/catalog/international-foreign-affairs/asia/china

Tracing the use of air power in World War II and the Korean War, Mark Clodfelter explains how U. S. Air Force doctrine evolved through the American experience in these conventional wars only to be thwarted in the context of a limited guerrilla struggle in Vietnam. Although a faith in bombing's sheer destructive power led air commanders to believe that extensive air assaults could win the war at any time, the Vietnam experience instead showed how even intense aerial attacks may not achieve military or political objectives in a limited war. Based on findings from previously classified documents in presidential libraries and air force archives as well as on interviews with civilian and military decision makers, The Limits of Air Power argues that reliance on air campaigns as a primary instrument of warfare could not have produced lasting victory in Vietnam. This Bison Books edition includes a new chapter that provides a framework for evaluating air power effectiveness in future conflicts.