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In Dwight D. Eisenhower's last speech as president, on January 17, 1961, he warned America about the \"military-industrial complex,\" a mutual dependency between the nation's industrial base and its military structure that had developed during World War II. After the conflict ended, the nation did not abandon its wartime economy but rather the opposite. Military spending has steadily increased, giving rise to one of the key ideas that continues to shape our country's political landscape. In this book, published to coincide with the fiftieth anniversary of Eisenhower's farewell address, journalist James Ledbetter shows how the government, military contractors, and the nation's overall economy have become inseparable. Some of the effects are beneficial, such as cell phones, GPS systems, the Internet, and the Hubble Space Telescope, all of which emerged from technologies first developed for the military. But the military-industrial complex has also provoked agonizing questions. Does our massive military establishment-bigger than those of the next ten largest combined-really make us safer? How much of our perception of security threats is driven by the profit-making motives of military contractors? To what extent is our foreign policy influenced by contractors' financial interests? Ledbetter uncovers the surprising origins and the even more surprising afterlife of the military-industrial complex, an idea that arose as early as the 1930s, and shows how it gained traction during World War II, the Cold War, and the Vietnam era and continues even today.

The U.S. military has historically believed itself to be the institution best suited to develop the character, spiritual values, and patriotism of American youth. InStrategy for Survival,Lori Bogle investigates how the armed forces assigned itself the role of guardian and interpreter of national values and why it sought to create \"ideologically sound Americans capable of defeating communism and assuring the victory of democracy at home and abroad.\" Bogle shows that a tendency by some in the armed forces to diffuse their view of America's civil religion among the general population predated tension with the Soviet Union. Bogle traces this trend from the Progressive Era though the early Cold War, when the Truman and Eisenhower administrations took seriously the battle of ideologies of that era and formulated plans that promised not only to meet the armed forces' manpower needs but also to prepare the American public morally and spiritually for confrontation with the evils of communism. Both Truman's plan for Universal Military Training and Eisenhower's psychological warfare programs promoted an evangelical democracy and sought to inculcate a secular civil-military religion in the general public. During the early 1960s, joint military-civilian anticommunist conferences, organized by the authority of the Department of Defense, were exploited by ultra-conservative civilians advancing their own political and religious agendas. Bogle's analysis suggests that cooperation among evangelicals, the military, and government was considered both necessary and normal. The Boy Scouts pushed a narrow vision of American democracy, and Joe McCarthy's chauvinism was less an aberration than a particularly noxious manifestation of a widespread attitude. To combat communism, American society and its armed forces embraced brainwashing-narrow moral education that attacked everyone and everything not consonant with their view of the world and how it ought to be ordered. Exposure of this alliance ultimately dissolved it. However, the cult of toughness and the blinkered view of reality that characterized the armed forces and American society during the Cold War are still valued by many, and are thus still worthy of consideration.

When Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the United States in 1860, he came into office with practically no experience in military strategy and tactics.Consequently, at the start of the Civil War, he depended on leading military men to teach him how to manage warfare.

Truman and MacArthur offers an objective and comprehensive account of the very public confrontation between a sitting president and a well-known general over the military's role in the conduct of foreign policy. In November 1950, with the army of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea mostly destroyed, Chinese military forces crossed the Yalu River. They routed the combined United Nations forces and pushed them on a long retreat down the Korean peninsula. Hoping to strike a decisive blow that would collapse the Chinese communist regime in Beijing, General Douglas MacArthur, the commander of the Far East Theater, pressed the administration of President Harry S. Truman for authorization to launch an invasion of China across the Taiwan straits. Truman refused; MacArthur began to argue his case in the press, a challenge to the tradition of civilian control of the military. He moved his protest into the partisan political arena by supporting the Republican opposition to Truman in Congress. This violated the President's fundamental tenet that war and warriors should be kept separate from politicians and electioneering. On April 11, 1951 he finally removed MacArthur from command. Viewing these events through the eyes of the participants, this book explores partisan politics in Washington and addresses the issues of the political power of military officers in an administration too weak to carry national policy on its own accord. It also discusses America's relations with European allies and its position toward Formosa (Taiwan), the long-standing root of the dispute between Truman and MacArthur.

The First World War marked a key turning point in America's involvement on the global stage. Isolationism fell, and America joined the ranks of the Great Powers. Civil-Military relations faced new challenges as a result. Ford examines the multitude of changes that stemmed from America's first major overseas coalition war, including the new selective service process; mass mobilization of public opinion; training diverse soldiers; civil liberties, anti-war sentiment and conscientious objectors; segregation and warfare; Americans under British or French command. Post war issues of significance, such as the Red Scare and retraining during demobilization are also covered. Both the federal government and the military were expanding rapidly both in terms of size and in terms of power during this time. The new group of citizen-soldiers, diverse in terms of class, religion, ethnicity, regional identity, education, and ideology, would provide training challenges. New government-military-business relationships would experience failures and successes. Delicate relationships with allies would translate into diplomatic considerations and battlefield command concerns.

This collection of essays presented at a conference at West Point by leading political thinkers, including David Alan Rosenberg, Richard D. Challener, Lloyd C. Gardner, and Martin J. Sherwin, explores the national security policies developed by the Truman and Eisenhower administrations (1945-1960) in response to the threat of Soviet expansionism. Stressing that fear motivated the makers of Cold War policy, the contributors discuss such topics as the objections raised by Democrats to nuclear security strategy, Eisenhower's disputes with Army and Navy leaders, and the evolution of Cold War policy into today's global security policy.

Intro -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- ONE: Tracking the Unwarranted Influence -- TWO: Intellectual Origins -- THREE: War, Peace, and Eisenhower -- FOUR: Eisenhower's Contentious Second Term -- FIVE: The Speech -- SIX: Interpretations and Embellishments -- SEVEN: In Full Fury -- EIGHT: \"Eisenhower Must Be Rolling Over in His Grave\" -- APPENDIX: Eisenhower's Farewell Address -- Notes -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Y.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, the United States Army became the principal agent of American foreign policy. The army designed, implemented, and administered the occupations of the defeated Axis powers Germany and Japan, as well as many other nations. Generals such as Lucius Clay in Germany, Douglas MacArthur in Japan, Mark Clark in Austria, and John Hodge in Korea presided over these territories as proconsuls. At the beginning of the Cold War, more than 300 million people lived under some form of U.S. military authority. The army's influence on nation-building at the time was profound, but most scholarship on foreign policy during this period concentrates on diplomacy at the highest levels of civilian government rather than the armed forces' governance at the local level. InArmy Diplomacy, Hudson explains how U.S. Army policies in the occupied nations represented the culmination of more than a century of military doctrine. Focusing on Germany, Austria, and Korea, Hudson's analysis reveals that while the post--World War II American occupations are often remembered as overwhelming successes, the actual results were mixed. His study draws on military sociology and institutional analysis as well as international relations theory to demonstrate how \"bottom-up\" decisions not only inform but also create higher-level policy. As the debate over post-conflict occupations continues, this fascinating work offers a valuable perspective on an important yet underexplored facet of Cold War history.

From the Korean War to the current conflict in Iraq, Paying the Human Costs of War examines the ways in which the American public decides whether to support the use of military force. Contrary to the conventional view, the authors demonstrate that the public does not respond reflexively and solely to the number of casualties in a conflict. Instead, the book argues that the public makes reasoned and reasonable cost-benefit calculations for their continued support of a war based on the justifications for it and the likelihood it will succeed, along with the costs that have been suffered in casualties. Of these factors, the book finds that the most important consideration for the public is the expectation of success. If the public believes that a mission will succeed, the public will support it even if the costs are high. When the public does not expect the mission to succeed, even small costs will cause the withdrawal of support. Providing a wealth of new evidence about American attitudes toward military conflict, Paying the Human Costs of War offers insights into a controversial, timely, and ongoing national discussion.