The US Warfare History - Essay Example

Order Number: #U2649648201 (dd mm yy ______________ ____________________________ Requirement: Complete two of the following three essay questions (check the two you are answering): ____ Question 1. Select one of the below theorists/strategists and state your position as to whether the works of this theorist remain relevant or are no longer useful. Defend your position by examining the major tenets of this theorist and how these tenets are or are not applicable to current and future operational environments. Sun Tzu Clausewitz Jomini ____ Question 2. Shelby Foote once said,” to understand the character of the United States, one must understand the American Civil War.” Similarly, some have suggested that to understand how the United States fights wars today, one must understand how we fought WWII. Do you agree with this second statement and if so why? If not, why not? Provide appropriate examples from the readings. ____ Question 3. Explain and relate the changes in warfare (from the U.S. perspective) since the end of the Cold War (1989). Do you think the nature of war has changed? CCE Academic Integrity Policy: All submitted work must be the student’s own. Knowingly or unknowingly submitting another person’s work without properly citing the source is plagiarism. By submitting this paper, you acknowledge that you understand and adhere to the CDET Academic Integrity Policy, and the work you are turning in is your original work. Begin requirement on the next page (The format is preset: 1” margins, double-spaced, Time New Roman font.) Question 2 Shelby Foote once said,” to understand the character of the United States, one must understand the American Civil War.” Similarly, some have suggested that to understand how the United States fights wars today, one must understand how we fought WWII. Do you agree with this second statement and if so why, if not why not? Provide appropriate examples from you readings. One can safely say that in the run up to the Second World War, the United Sates had increasingly being a hardliner as far as getting involved in the war was concerned. As it turned out however, this war, coupled with the Great Depression, was to be the most important event to the United States in the twentieth century—the war served as an end to the depression itself. While at a global scale major economies across the world were severely ruined by the war, the United States, whether by accident or by design, used the war to propel its previously ailing economy to unprecedented heights. To understand how the United States fights wars today, one must understand how it fought in World War II. Without doubt, one of the defining factors of the United States military conquest in the Second World War was its employ of coalitions. Despite its reluctance, the United States was being continuously drawn into the war by forces of events. Prior to the war in 1941, US president Franklin Roosevelt had met his British counterpart, Prime Minister Winston Churchill where they formulated their general approach on democratic aims which was to be a foundation of their military alliance. Increasingly strained relations with Germany, China, Indonesia and the eventual attack of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese without warning prompted Roosevelt to declare war on Japan on 8th December in 1941. Three days later when Germany declared war on the US, America must have calculated that the only winning formula was through joining others. In this light, America joined hands with Britain, France and Russia to counter the axis of power—Italy, Germany and Japan (Norton 703). In the contemporary world, the United States is the leader of the National Atlantic Treaty Organization. Although this organization features more than 20 members, the United States has in the recent past sought the support of some of its close allies among them France, Britain, and Italy to attack foreign nations. United States attack on Iraq, for example, had the military and diplomatic backing of among others, the United Kingdom, Italy, and France. Although some of the NATO members remained reluctant throughout the operation, the United States took advantage of the diplomatic and military support of these few members to attack and subsequently take Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Since then, similar approaches have been employed to combat Taliban—a radical Muslim outfit—in Afghanistan (Norton 706). In the very recent past—between February and August 2011—US, France and Britain combined forces to take out Muammar Gadhafi from his sit of power in Libya. From an evaluation of the American approach in the Second World War, one draws another critical observation—Americans can employ any advancement in technology to win its war. To illustrate this, one should revisit the issue of bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In disregard of the enemy lives it would cost, the devastating implications it would leave on the enemy land then and later in the future, President Truman of the United States found it prudent to bomb Japan with nuclear—a first in the world. Although his argument was saving the lives of would-be foot soldiers and a quick fix to the unending war, Americans demonstrated at the time that they could employ any technology in their possession to win a war. True, America has a conviction that the military element of its national power can be employed to solve even the grimmest of the global crises. This argument in particular is furthered by the Afghanistan, Libya, and Iraq cases (Jones 431). To reflect on America’s military dominance over other nations, one can try to investigate the reasons behind its intervention in some of the above cases. When invading Iraq in 2003 for example, American president George Bush asserted that the Iraq leader was developing weapons of mass destruction. In the Afghanistan case, the underlying factor was fighting terrorism—purportedly organized and sponsored by the Taliban. In Libya, the US government accused its overthrown and massacred leader—Gadhafi—of attacking civilians. These claims, whether true or not, make one point clear—the US government is ready to intervene militarily in any global issue that it perceives as a security threat (Jones 429). Question 3 Explain and relate the changes in warfare (from the U.S. perspective) since the end of the Cold War (1989). Do you think the nature of war has changed? A comparison of the traditional forms and interpretation of war with recent examples sends one clear signal—United States warfare in the post-cold war era has taken new shape. In light of the wars it has been engaged in since the collapse of the Soviet in 1989, the contemporary United Sates military landscape, courtesy of Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), is no longer a display of ancient war phenomenon. The implication of military revolution affairs in the modern United States army was first demonstrated in its dramatic victory of the 1991 Gulf War. In this war, the United States military employed both superior doctrine and technology to record an almost painless victory. Without doubt, the 1991 United States engagement in Iraq demonstrated that its continued employ of refined military technology like space satellites and guided weapons among other forms of advanced technology would define the direction of future conflicts (Sheehan, 2007). William Cohen, the US former Secretary of Defense, had tried to shed light on the aspect of RMA. He explained that RMA was an opportunity seized by the US government to transform its military organization, equipment education, and training tactics in order to achieve significant military results in new ways. Since the end of the cold war, US military technological developments have served to ensure that its operations are conducted with unprecedented speed and accuracy. Furthermore, the fact that US military technology can ensure selective destruction provides substantial ground to believe that this aspect of its military has come to change the whole character of war. In its engagement in Iraq (2003), Serbia (1999), and Kuwait (1991), US forces made use of technology that was greatly superior to that of its opponents. A first in warfare, US forces used computing and space technology, an approach that allowed them to target weapon systems with exceptional precision (Sheehan, 2007). The intrigues of the US-led forces in Iraq that started on 2003 serve as evidence to the above arguments. Although this war was to quickly evolve into an insurgency involving guerilla and terrorists attacks on the US-led coalition forces and the Iraqi civilian population, the initial campaign by the coalition was swift and surprisingly successful. In the initial operation, the US forces exhibited a revolution in its military affairs by spearheading the shattering down of the Iraq armed forces through the use of its technologically advanced weapons and information systems. Indeed, for an operation officially launched on March 20 2003, then US president George W. Bush officially declared that that the major combat operation was over barely two months later—on May 2 two month (Sheehan, 2007). In addition to its innovative technological approach, the American forces employed a vital doctrine as well. The almost instant victory has partly been credited to the US forces maneuver-oriented operational doctrine that exhibited its superiority in the results—a swift and almost bloodless victory. This reinforced the perception that in the past-cold war environment, inhibitors to US use of force are few, if any. With memories of the Vietnam experience laid to rest, this Iraq war portrayed the United States post-cold war as swift, decisive, and affordable. In addition, the Iraq war underlined the all-important perception that the end of the cold war eliminated the threat of a conflict between two regions escalating into a nuclear one with another superpower (Sheehan, 2007). Although a common school of thought suggests that the US military use of sophisticated and to some extent informal military networks in Iraq provided the insurgents with a platform to carry out effective asymmetric warfare, it is very difficult for an individual to downplay the contemporary US military technological superiority. In conclusion, one can safely say that since the end of the cold war, the nature of wars conducted by the United States has changed in very fundamental ways. The RMA, in particular, has changed the pattern of United States warfare. Even more important, this approach has shifted the US warfare from the emotive sphere of nuclear weapons, making the invasion of a foreign state, as indicated elsewhere in this work, swifter, decisive, and affordable (Sheehan, 2007). Works Cited Jones, Erik . Europe today : a twenty-first century introduction. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2007. Print Norton, Beth Mary. A people & a nation : a history of the United States. Boston: Wadsworth Cengage, 2012. Print Sheehan, M. (2007, October 30). The changing character of war. Retrieved November 17, 2011, from http://www.oup.com/uk/orc/bin/9780199297771/baylis_ch12.pdf Read More