Military Planning For The First Time During World War II

Over the course of history, the strategic environment has changed rapidly and is now more complex than ever before – it is currently characterized by unpredictability and disorder, and may yet manifest itself in the collapse of nuclear armed nations, destabilizing conflict in geo-politically vital regions, and humanitarian crises. A world of disparate actors – not all nation states – now exists. Unpredictable events will continue to cause strategic surprise. The widespread effects of past conflicts such as World War II, Vietnam and the Iraq war are still being felt and have created significant strategic repercussions. The failures of these conflicts are the result of our military and political leaders’ failure to quickly adapt to wartime conditions. This occurs because of a general refusal to commit to a military culture of learning that encourages serious debate, critical assessments of our military operations, and challenges to our doctrine in the face of emerging change. Additionally, leaders have struggled with the critical responsibility of forecasting and providing for a ready force, one that is well-resourced and prepared to conduct future operations. It is the responsibility of our military and political leaders to send our military to war with a ready force, and a strategy that will ultimately result in victory. But understanding war and warriors is critical if societies and governments are to make sound judgments concerning military policy.

The American “way of war” can be seen politically through the evolution of military policy as political perspectives changed. Post-World War II reveals primary and consistent policies that lead American military policymakers to avoid major international conflict. Coined the Cold War, Americans began waging war

Throughout post-WWII history, the United States has taken on the role of the world’s police. They feel the obligation to ensure the spread of their ideals for selfish and self-righteous reasons. John Mueller and Odd Arne Westad share their arguments as to what the United States’ actions have produced during the Cold War in Eastern Europe, Korea, and Vietnam and during the post-9/11 period in the Afghanistan and Iraq. While some of their arguments are valid, others are flawed.

In the mid-1960s, Lyndon B. Johnson tacked his name onto a long list of U.S. presidents presiding over conflict in Vietnam. More so than his predecessors, however, President Johnson’s involvement was arguably more significant, because he was the first U.S. president to commit the United States to a ground war in Vietnam. His escalation of the war in early-1965 came as a surprise to many, considering his pledge to deescalate the conflict during the 1964 election campaign against Republican Barry Goldwater. However, in analyzing declassified executive documents, the Johnson Administration had, by the summer of 1964, decided that escalation in Vietnam was the only course of action which could feasibly end the conflict and establish stability in the region. Following President Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, Johnson felt it necessary to continue his predecessor’s legacy in Vietnam, although his reasons for doing so were less refined than were Kennedy’s. Unconfident in foreign affairs, Johnson was assured in one thing: his alarmist views on the spread of communism. Spurred on by the criticism of his contemporary Republican opponents, Johnson took a hardline stance at the beginning of his presidency, declaring that he would do whatever necessary to stop the spread of communism in Southeast Asia. Furthermore, understanding that a withdrawal from Vietnam would undercut the legitimacy of U.S. foreign commitments, Johnson—albeit reluctantly—ignored the suggestions of political

The development of the allied military strategy in World War II (WWII) presented challenges for the U.S. and Great Britain as they worked together to defeat the Axis powers. First, this paper will review the environment at the time of WWII when Admiral Stark penned the “Plan Dog” memorandum and MAJ Wedemeyer’s War Defense Team put together the “Victory Plan”. Next, it will look at the advantages and disadvantages of coalition operations with supporting examples. Then, a review of two major meetings between U.S. and Great Britain will identify what strategic decisions were made and the effects they have on the war. Finally, this paper will explore the foundations of strategy (Clausewitz and Sun Tzu) by which the allied forces used and

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.

With this book, a major element of American history was analyzed. The Cold War is rampant with American foreign policy and influential in shaping the modern world. Strategies of Containment outlines American policy from the end of World War II until present day. Gaddis outlines the policies of presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon, including policies influenced by others such as George Kennan, John Dulles, and Henry Kissinger. The author, John Lewis Gaddis has written many books on the Cold War and is an avid researcher in the field. Some of his other works include: The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941-1947, The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold War, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War

Project will be documented and observed, such as the Las Cuevas War or the Korean Affair of 1871. Lastly, some separate conflicts within the C.O.W. will be combined, which represent a near-identical foreign policy. Particularly, all Native American conflicts will be combined and all wars in the Caribbean region following the Spanish-American War, which share the same purpose, will be referred to as the “Banana Wars”. However, distinctly important Native American wars will be mentioned, as well as Native American wars with significant foreign involvement. American armed conflicts have been divided into three periods for organizational purposes. Therefore, the following writing will attempt to observe American responsibility for the Cold War using war information, data, and patterns.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science and the co-director of the Program on International Security Policy at the University of Chicago, where he has taught since 1982. He graduated from West Point in 1970 and then served five years as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then started graduate school in political science at Cornell University in 1975. He received his Ph.D. in 1980. He spent the 1979-1980 academic year as a research fellow at the Brookings Institution, and was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Center for International Affairs from 1980 to 1982. During the 1998-1999 academic year, he was the Whitney H. Shepardson Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations

The world of foreign policy is like a multi-sided game of chess. Moves are made with varying degrees of calculation and skill, and nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything that happens affects the other players' sets of options and levels of risk. In analyzing historical events in international relations, it is incumbent upon the analyst to take into consideration the historical and regional context to what happened.

For over four decades the citizens of the United States focused their attention to the seemingly interminable tension that existed between American and the Soviet Union. Fear of the USSR and the communist regime tormented Americans, who poured their energy into promoting and safeguarding the democratic values they had always been accustomed to. As the Cold War steadily subsided, the United States and the Soviet Union came together to repair the damage they had inflicted on one another since the end of the Second World War. With the Cold War in the past, the field of International Relations shifted its focus to a multitude of new issues that were on the rise. Issues that were not necessarily relevant during the Cold War, but have dominated global politics in recent years, are defined under the concept of human security. In order to accurately assess the universal political system in a post Cold War world, a more expansive definition of security is required.

The term “Cold War” refers to the second half of the 20th century, usually from the end of the World War II until 1990, when the Soviet Union collapsed. Since the 1940s and 1950s the scholars have disagreed on the topic of the origins of the Cold War. There are several groups of historians and their interpretations are very different, sometimes even contradictory. The three main schools are the orthodox, the revisionist and the realist. The classification is not completely accurate because we can find several differences in theories of scholars within the same group and often the authors reevaluated their ideas over time.

In the previous section of my essay I already described how diverse the field really is. This diversion, however, often leads to division as well. One such division, for instance, is the debate between defensive and offensive realists. Offensive realists see hegemony as the paramount of state security and therefore perceive it as the best possible option to pursue. Defensive realists, on the other hand argue that hegemony most probably brings a significant amount of unwanted conflict with it, therefore it is wiser of states to opt for a balance of power systems where power is distributed relatively equally among states making it less likely that states will attack each other. This might only seem like a small disagreement between realist scholars, however it can influence policy making to a great extent. Thus, if scholars of the same theory cannot agree on a common theoretical framework, the field might become overcomplicated and it can hinder the applicability of the theory. Moreover, unsolved internal debates can weaken the prestige of any

The field of International Security Studies has evolved from the discipline of International Relations as a passage to apprehend the driving forces within international politics. The increases of traditional and non-traditional security threats and problems have made security studies vital to academics, governments, and policymakers. In addition to that, the theory of realism has been a long prevailing paradigm in international security studies. Moreover, realism is more than a single theory, but this school of thought has flowered and has generated many new branches and sub-branches within realism. Among this school of thought, prominent works in the theory of realism include the highly influential classical realism

Understanding security issues and giving it a specific definition has been much debated over for many years. This is because theorists of international relations look at security from different perspectives just like they examine the concept of polarity and power from different perspectives. The argument the essay poses is that the concept of polarity can be useful in helping us to understand security issues and this is because by looking at the three different types of polarity, it can demonstrate to us how the security level of states differentiates. In addition, the essay will also state that the neorealist perception on polarity is more convincing in today’s world in comparison to the view that the liberalist and constructivist has. In order to support the argument, the essay will firstly look at the concept of security itself and the views that some theorists take on it. Secondly, it will look at the concept of power. Thirdly, it will look at the three different types of polarity which are; a) multipolarity, b) bipolarity and c) unipolarity. Fourthly, it will look at how polarity was before, during and after the Cold War and following that it will look at the neorealist view on polarity in comparison to the constructivist and liberalist. In addition to the above, it will look at how China is rising.