The History of American Military. Richard W. Stewart
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military establishment and thus an essential aspect. The changes in warfare over time are thus a legitimate focus for the student of military history. The American Army has been both a recipient of and a contributor to the fruits of the changes in warfare pioneered by the Western world. The United States was born in the eighteenth century, during the great age of European dynastic wars involving, generally, armies of professional, uniformed soldiers whose maneuvers and battles left the civilian masses of a nation-state largely unaffected. Until the latter part of that century, wars were relatively simple and restricted in area, forces, and objectives. This changed with the advent of the “nation in arms” during the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. Warfare became conflicts of mass armies of conscripts, motivated by revolutionary ideology. With the spread of the industrial revolution in the following century, warfare grew even more complex and exerted an ever-increasing influence on more elements of society. This new era in warfare coincided with the evolution of the United States as an independent nation. In the first half of the twentieth century the effects of large-scale wars became so pervasive that they were felt not only by the combatant nations but throughout the entire world, now seemingly grown more compact due to the advent of faster transportation and communications means. The outcome in those wars was no longer measured in terms of the preservation of national honor or the conquest of territory, familiar in eighteenth century warfare, but in terms of national survival. Thus, as warfare in the past two centuries broadened to involve more and more people and more and more of the energies and resources of society to fight it—or during the Cold War, to deter it—the definition was extended to encompass more activities.
Broadly defined, military history lies on the frontier between general history and military art and science. It deals with the confluence and interaction of military affairs with diplomatic, political, social, economic, and intellectual trends in society. To understand it therefore requires some knowledge of both general history and military art. In its American context it represents many interrelated facets. Certainly it involves wars—all kinds of wars. It may surprise Americans, who traditionally have regarded themselves as a peaceable and unmilitary people, to learn that the range of warfare in their national experience has been quite wide, and the incidence quite frequent.
Born in a revolution, a violent struggle often considered a prelude to modern ideological struggles, the United States has since endured a bitter Civil War, participated in numerous international wars, and has recently been thrust into a global war on terrorism. In American national experience, war itself has undergone considerable change and oscillation from one mode to another. The American Revolution was a limited war of the eighteenth century variety, although one fought on the backdrop of a “people’s war” between Tories and Patriots over the loyalty of each small village and town. The War of 1812, the Korean conflict of 1950–1953, and the Gulf War in 1991 were later models of limited conflict fought for specific, limited objectives short of the total destruction and occupation of the foes’ homelands. The American Civil War introduced the age of total war to which World Wars I and II added their bloody chapters. The Cold War involved mobilizing and militarizing huge segments of society never before affected by warfare. The current war on terrorism, with its potential for direct attacks on the American homeland and the pervasive (and invasive) security requirements for defending against such attacks, affects all aspects of American society. Over the centuries, war has cut deeper and deeper into the life of the nation.
After World War II, under the shadow of nuclear weapons that threaten all civilization with annihilation, warfare returned to earlier forms. Guerrilla wars, foreshadowed in American experience by the long-continuing Indian Wars and the Philippine Insurrection of 1899– 1902, returned as American forces became engaged in counter-insurgency warfare during the Vietnam War (1964–1973) and in support to various Central American nations, notably El Salvador, in the 1980s. Today, modern conflicts include operations that could be classified as “small wars” such as Operation Just Cause in Panama in 1989 and humanitarian and peacekeeping operations in Haiti, Somalia, and the former Yugoslavia. The line between war and peace, already blurred by nation-building operations and “police actions,” grew even more difficult to discern as the twentieth century drew to a close with the U.S. Army involved in dozens of small-scale operations around the world. The direct attack on America on September 11, 2001, featuring the use of terrorism to kill over 3,000 Americans at the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon, further changed the equation in ways still not fully known.
Wars used to be regarded as clearly definable exercises in violence when diplomacy failed and statesmen handed over to soldiers the burden of achieving victory. They were usually marked by formal ceremonies: a declaration at the beginning and a surrender and peace treaty at the end. Since World War II these formalities are no longer the fashion. War and peace have become blurred. Neither in Korea nor in Vietnam was war officially declared. The debate in Congress before the initiation of hostilities in the Gulf War led only to a congressional resolution of support, not a declaration of war.
Endings of military operations also are not clearly marked. No peace treaty followed the surrender of Germany in World War II or the truce in Korea in 1953. The Vietnam War ended with a treaty, but one the North Vietnamese promptly violated. Despite a decisive tactical victory for the United States, the confused political and diplomatic situation after the Gulf War continued to simmer, with United Nations resolutions and arms inspection programs in shambles and economic embargoes rapidly disappearing. The renewal of the war with Iraq in March 2003 resolved many of the problems of a still-dangerous regime at the cost of creating a host of others. While changes in the nature of warfare have affected the conduct of war and the role of the military and society in it, participation in organized violence in all its forms is still a vital component of military history that must be studied. Not only must the causes, conduct, and consequences of a war be analyzed, but as the line between war and peace becomes more indistinct, the periods between the wars require renewed interest from students of military history.
Besides war in the broad sense, there is another major facet that military history must address and that military historians of this generation have found more and more integral to their subject. That is the study of the military as an institution and a manifestation of state power. The way in which a state organizes for violence and the multifaceted effects of that effort are critical to understanding war and its impact on the society of which the military is often but a reflection. To apply force, societies organize armies. Reflecting the national culture and varying in their impact on it, armies are institutions, social entities in themselves. Some armies have close relations with the societies from which they are drawn; others are a class apart. For example, during much of U.S. history the Army was scattered in frontier posts and physically isolated from the rest of society. But in the period since World War II, civil-military relations have been close. As institutions, armies take form and character. Their institutional outlines are manifested in a number of ways, some overt, some subtle: organization and administration, system of training, mode of supply, planning for mobilization and the conduct of war, methods of fighting on the battlefield, weaponry and utilization of technology, system of command and control, selection of manpower and leaders, and relations with the civilian population and authorities. The whole host of policies, doctrines, customs, traditions, values, and practices that have grown up about armies is an important part of the institutional story. The impact of the selective service system (the draft) on many aspects of American life in this century is in itself a significant story. Its ending, for all intents and purposes, in 1973 and the creation of the all-volunteer Army has equal and far-reaching significance. Many elements of that significance are still not yet fully revealed.
The Army Seal
The Army Seal was used originally during the American Revolution to authenticate documents. It displayed the designation “War Office,” which was synonymous with Headquarters of the Army, and the Roman date MDCCLXXVIII (1778) the first time it was used. It remained unchanged until 1974, when the War Office banner was replaced with “Department of the Army” and the date was changed to 1775, the year in which the Army was established. The seal embodies the Army’s ideals of loyalty, vigilance, perseverance, truth, courage, zeal, fortitude, remembrance, determination, constancy, achievement, dignity, and honor.
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