essay of history of military

The Role of the Military in U.S. History: Past, Present, and Future

2024 Index of U.S. Military Strength

Assessing the Global Operating Environment

Assessing Threats to U.S. Vital Interests

An Assessment of U.S. Military Power

Topical Essays

About the Index

Introduction

• Executive Summary

Contributors and Acknowledgments

• Methodology
• Previous Indexes and Essays

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Heritage.org

Jan 24, 2024 41 min read

James Jay Carafano

The rise of professional militaries in the West is credited with accelerating the process of creating the modern nation-state. In addition to defending the state from external threats, professional armed forces performed internal security, public safety, and administrative functions that helped to establish the legitimacy of its sovereignty.

The United States stood as an exception to that trend. While a professional army was assembled to help win independence from England, it did not help to create the U.S. This was accomplished by the people. In the new republic, national sovereignty was reserved for the people. The government’s armed forces, like all of the other instruments of national power, were to be servants of the people, not a means with which to govern them. This concept is foundational to the roles, missions, and actions of the U.S. armed forces past, present, and future. Nevertheless, as the nation evolved, so did the scope and activities of the American military.

Birth of the Republic

Defining appropriate civil–military relations was foundational to the establishment of the United States. The principles for organizing military force were largely drawn from British history, culture, legal concepts, and tradition.

The experience of Britain in the state-formation period of the 17th and 18th centuries was unique. In almost every other instance, militaries emerged as important instruments of domestic control as well as weapons of war. This evolution was not unique to Europe. It was also common in Latin America as well as parts of Africa and Asia. In places where great empires did not have dominion, rulers had limited capacity to marshal military forces either for military campaigns or for internal security. Rulers could either call for levies from lords or assemble militias on the one hand or contract for mercenaries on the other. Neither solution was particularly satisfying to sovereign powers because not completely controlling armed forces compromised both their power and their legitimacy.

The Italian scholar Nicollo Machiavelli (1469–1527) struggled with the dilemma of the pursuit of power in his political and military writings. He decried mercenaries as rapacious and unreliable. 1 He argued for an army of citizen-soldiers 2 who would virtuously serve the state, an idea that at the time was well-meant but impractical. What most states did instead was mass resources that allowed for temporary standing armies—either of conscripts or of rented forces from foreign powers like the German Landsknechte.

As the constitutional character of the British state evolved, however, history led Albion on a different path. During the English Civil War (1642–1651), the crown used both the professional army and hired foreign troops to prosecute the war against the forces mustered by a revolt led by leaders in Parliament. After an interregnum (1649–1660), the crown was restored, but James II abdicated in 1688 over another confrontation with Parliament. The Bill of Rights issued when William and Mary were offered the crown enshrined that foreign troops should not be stationed on British soil, the military should be raised only by Parliament, and only a limited standing army should be stationed in Britain and never mobilized against the British people. 3 This enshrined in law the concept of “no standing armies” as well as the rationale for checks and balances so that the government could never use the armed forces as an instrument of tyranny against the people.

It was the British “no standing armies” tradition and the republican concept of the citizen-soldier envisioned by Machiavelli that together served as the intellectual foundation for the American armed forces. The practical lessons from decades of armed warfare between nation-states in Europe, the Americas, and Asia were also considered in deciding how to organize the American armed forces. While the Americans wanted civilian control of the military, they also wanted armed forces that could fight and win. This meant that land and sea forces needed to be under unified military commands that could muster professional troops and matériel for extended campaigns and employ them as effectively as possible.

Thus, during the American Revolution in 1775, the Continental Congress commissioned George Washington as commander in chief of the Continental Army. 4 Meanwhile, the Congress assumed responsibility for raising and supporting a professional army and naval forces instead of just relying on the colonial volunteer militias to fight for independence.

At the end of the war, the Continental Army watched from their cantonment at Newburgh in upstate New York, waiting for the final peace treaty between the United States of America and the United Kingdom and the evacuation of British forces. There was great consternation in the ranks that the Congress had not delivered on many of the promises made to enlistees. Some argued that the military should refuse to disband until their grievances were addressed or even march on the Continental Congress. Washington quelled the mutiny, 5 his principal argument being that their loyalty to the nation and to the appointed civilian leaders in the Continental Congress transcended their personal interests.

The practical lessons of the American Revolution did as much as the intellectual scholarship of writers like Machiavelli, John Locke, and others to shape the drafting of the U.S. Constitution that was finally ratified in 1788. 6 The foundational document had a great deal to say about the roles, missions, and oversight of the armed forces. In fact, there is more articulation of stated and enumerated powers related to defense in the Constitution than there is about any other function of government. 7

The Constitution enshrined civilian control of the military by making the President the commander in chief of the armed forces. 8 This was more than a symbolic appointment. Below the level of the President, to this day, no single officer has command authority over all U.S. military forces.

In addition to ensuring unity of command and effort in wartime, the Constitution gave Congress the authority and responsibility for raising and maintaining national military forces, 9 thereby limiting the power of the executive to use or maintain armed forces independently, without reference to Congress. Congress authorized creation of today’s Army (under the Secretary of War) in 1789; 10 Navy (under the Secretary of the Navy) in 1794; 11 and Marine Corps (serving within the Department of the Navy and under the Secretary) in 1798. 12

The Constitution also authorized individual states to raise and maintain militias. 13 This authority was granted partly because the Congress assumed that there would be a small standing Army and Navy in peacetime with most internal security tasks addressed by the states themselves. Laws later evolved for state forces to work in concert with or under the national government. During the War of 1812, for instance, Andrew Jackson had a commission as a major general in the regular United States Army and command of the Seventh Military District. He organized the defense of New Orleans with a combination of militias, volunteers, and a handful of professional forces.

Thus, since the earliest days of the republic, Americans proactively sought to implement all of the concepts they thought essential for the armed forces of a republican state with civilian control, limited professional militaries in peacetime, and armed forces focused on defending against external threats rather than being employed for internal security. The armed forces were primarily for foreign threats and constabulary duties in frontier territories and on U.S. borders. President Thomas Jefferson, for example, deployed naval and Marine forces to safeguard U.S. interests against the states of North Africa. The United States fought two separate wars with Tripoli (1801–1805) and Algiers (1815–1816) and maintained a Mediterranean Squadron in theater that has continued in different iterations down to the present day.

That said, however, the Constitution did not prohibit the use of armed forces in a domestic theater under extraordinary circumstances. 14 George Washington as the first President demonstrated that authority in 1794 when he called out troops under federal authority to quell the Whiskey Rebellion, a series of violent protests against the first excise tax imposed by the new government. At the time, before troops could be raised, the Militia Act of 1792 required a Supreme Court associate justice or “the district judge” to certify that law enforcement was beyond the control of local authorities. 15 After that determination, Washington issued a proclamation announcing that the militia would be called out under his command. The troops dispersed the insurrectionists.

In responding to the Whiskey Rebellion, the President declared that he was acting with “deepest regret” and that the military was being employed to restore civil order, not as a political instrument. 16 As President, Jefferson likewise looked to policies demonstrating that military forces were national instruments not to be used to further political interests. For instance, when the U.S. government built its first complement of frigates for the Navy, it ordered that contracts be distributed to several ports in different states to demonstrate that the Administration was not picking favorites. Jefferson established the first federal military academy at West Point in 1802 and distributed appointments among all the states to create opportunities for both political parties to contribute to the Army’s officer corps, ensuring that no single political faction dominated the ranks of regular Army officers. 17

The structural decisions made to organize national defense ensured an effective military without consolidating political control of the armed forces. In this respect, the U.S. overcame the principal critique over the capacity of republics to defend themselves, highlighted in Alex de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America . 18 De Tocqueville had many nice things to say about the new nation and the concept of democracy, but he wondered whether a representative republic could fight wars and deal with protracted security challenges without collapsing over internal squabbling and political factions in a government where authority was divided and organized to provide checks and balances against the independent use of force by the executive.

From the West to the Western Hemisphere and the World

Experience proved that the U.S. could use armed forces decisively to protect itself. In this respect, as the republic grew, strategy and interests did as much as the political constructs laid out in the Constitution to shape the roles and missions of the armed forces.

Again, Washington’s action proved formative in developing and employing the armed forces. From the birth of the republic, there was a ferocious debate between political factions over how to defend the new nation. At the time, the global geopolitics that largely affected the fledgling state was the rivalry between France and Great Britain over spheres of influence. This competition extended to the Western Hemisphere where both countries had colonial holdings as well as economic and security interests at stake.

In the U.S., one faction argued for aligning with the British. The other argued for siding with France. Washington argued for what at the time was an even more controversial decision. The U.S., he declared in his farewell address to Congress, should have “no entangling alliance,” 19 eschewing treaty alliances with either Paris or London. Washington did not intend to author an immutable principle of American foreign policy; Article II the Constitution specifically grants government the authority to execute treaties. 20 Rather, Washington was making a declaration of grand strategy: an overall expression of ends, ways, and means to secure U.S. interests over the long term.

The U.S. was a fledgling power, Washington reasoned, and the best way to secure American interests was to ensure that they were not intertwined with and overwhelmed by those of either great power (Britain and France), thereby avoiding the risk of the U.S. becoming a vassal state or being drawn into the endless wars between the rival empires. In part, this decision allowed the U.S. to maintain modest armed forces without stressing the finances of the young republic and creating a powerful government institution that might later be used to undermine democratic rule.

Washington’s choice became the orthodoxy of American grand strategy until President James Monroe advanced the Monroe Doctrine in his annual message to Congress in 1823. 21 Monroe argued that European powers were obligated to respect the Western Hemisphere as the United States’ sphere of interest. This new strategic formulation was grounded in America’s expanding power and interests, particularly with regard to westward expansion and ensuring freedom of the seas for American shipping. Commensurately, the U.S. military added modest expeditionary capability and increased capacity to conduct constabulary operations in new territories. The most muscular employment of U.S. forces in the hemisphere was the Mexican–American War (1846–1848).

Emphasis on hemispheric defense remained the focus of the U.S. armed forces, although there were exceptions. The U.S., for example, still maintained the European Squadron in the Mediterranean; deployed an East India Squadron in 1835 (which became the Asiatic Squadron in 1868); and established the Great White Fleet, a group of Navy battleships that circumnavigated the globe from 1907 to 1909. The U.S. military also maintained a ground-force presence in China throughout the first decade of the 20th century in addition to forces in the Philippines.

Hemispheric defense, however, remained the U.S. military’s dominant focus. The armed forces, for instance, were called upon for a punitive expedition in Mexico (1916–1917). The American occupation of Haiti from 1915 to 1934 was justified in part as an attempt to secure avenues of approach to the United States through the Caribbean. Even the U.S. intervention in World War I was justified as based on hemispheric defense, predicated on the need for preemptive action to counter the likelihood of invasion by the German Empire and Mexico.

In fact, until the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, which triggered U.S. entry into World War II, hemispheric defense remained the guiding strategy behind the missions, structure, and manning of the American armed forces.

By the end of World War II, the U.S. had emerged incontestably as a global power with global interests and responsibilities. Strategy was largely structured around fighting the Cold War with the Soviet Union included establishing an independent Air Force branch; building strategic forces (nuclear-armed missiles, bombers, and submarines); permanently stationing major forces overseas; maintaining a global military command structure; and investing in expansive treaty alliances, principally NATO.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, the crafting of a consensus global grand strategy became difficult, but the U.S. still recognized that it needed armed forces with global reach and the capacity to conduct extended campaigns.

The September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks renewed concerns about the defense of the home front and engendered a persistent need for security not seen except in wartime since the early days of the republic, although the military traditionally had provided support to civil authorities—for example, in response to the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906. In another example, in 1929, the city of Tacoma, Washington, experienced a massive power outage. 22 The Department of the Navy ordered the USS Lexington to respond, and the ship’s four giant generators helped to provide electricity for the next several weeks. Only after 9/11, however, did the mission of homeland defense become integral to long-term U.S. strategy.

Strategy vs. Reality

While strategic needs have generally defined the scope, size, and missions of the military over the course of U.S. history, there is a saying: “Strategy can change faster than foster structure.” In other words, sudden changes in the geostrategic environment can occur that reveal inadequacy in force planning or introduce dramatic and unanticipated new demands.

The American Civil War (1861–1865) is perhaps the starkest example. For the first half-century of the republic, the armed forces mostly conducted constabulary duties and punitive expeditions on the frontier. It was never envisioned that the military would be required to conduct major campaigns or even operations in a domestic context. When the secession of the southern states plunged the country into conflict, the armed forces had to adapt rapidly, including by employing national conscription to fill the ranks.

The Civil War also saw the first widespread deployment of persons of color in the U.S. Army. By the end of the Civil War, roughly 179,000 black men (10 percent of the force) served in the Union Army. Another 19,000 served in the U.S. Navy. 23 After the war, blacks continued to serve in segregated units. The most famous were the “Buffalo Soldiers,” cavalry units that served on the American frontier. Buffalo soldiers also fought in the Spanish–American War and served in the Philippines. 24

Another significant departure from tradition was the use of soldiers as federal marshals during Reconstruction. During the presidential election of 1876, President Ulysses S. Grant dispatched troops to polling stations in South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida, where electoral votes remained in dispute. Reflecting the ongoing national debate between security and government power within the United States and the appropriate use of the armed forces, this measure precipitated calls for the passage of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, 25 which prohibited federal troops from enforcing state or federal laws without congressional approval.

Reconstruction was not the first and would not be the last time that the armed forces became mired in political and social controversies. Despite Posse Comitatus, during the 19th century, military forces were often called upon to restore public order. For example, between 1875 and 1918, state militias or federal troops were called out to respond to labor unrest over one thousand times.

Unfortunately, although the armed forces were intended for hemispheric defense, the chaotic attempts to launch an invasion force from Tampa, Florida, proved that the U.S. Army was not up to the task of executing an expeditionary campaign in Cuba during the Spanish–American War in 1898. Further, the War Department struggled to integrate active-duty forces, state militias, and volunteer units. In response, the U.S. Congress passed the Militia Act of 1903 26 establishing the modern National Guard from state militias and codifying the circumstances under which state National Guard units could be federalized. Congress also created both Army and Navy Reserve forces, thereby establishing in the modern era three formal components of the armed services:

• The active force (full-time federal troops);
• The National Guard (state forces that could be mobilized under federal service); and
• Reserves (federal troops that were inactive until mobilized for federal service).

As the armed forces struggled with the transformation from an ancillary security force to the principal instrument of American national power, it also had to undergo a significant intellectual transformation. During the Civil War, for instance, the armed forces had an unprecedented requirement to conduct major campaigns including joint operations (involving multiple services). A modicum of military education was gained in the Army and Navy military academies as well as the military service schools.

Military theory and doctrine drew heavily from European experience, especially the Napoleonic wars, and influential writers such as Antoine Henri Jomini. 27 Later, the American armed forces were deeply influenced by works such as Alfred Thayer Mahan’s The Influence of Seapower Upon History 28 and Carl von Clausewitz’s On War 29 that emphasized conventional military operations. American military theory and doctrine were also influenced greatly by combat experience, including experience during the Civil War and World War I, where U.S. forces drew heavily from the British and French military establishments’ understanding of planning, staff work, and other operational skills.

In preparation for and during World War II, the U.S. armed forces developed skills that far exceeded what was needed for hemispheric defense and would serve as the basis for modern thinking about warfare. For example, before the outbreak of World War II, the Naval War College conducted sophisticated war games for global war. 30 Military staffs developed the Rainbow Plans, 31 which dealt with various global contingencies. The Army Air Corps developed concepts for strategic bombing. By the time the U.S. armed forces emerged from World War II, they had the world’s most sophisticated system for the development of professional military education, doctrine, and strategic planning.

In preparing for participation in World War I and World War II, the U.S. also had to scramble to reorganize for new missions that exceeded hemispheric defense. During both wars, for instance, the United States instituted wartime drafts to expand military capabilities. However, the drafts ended when hostilities concluded.

In addition, the services had to develop new capabilities. During World War I, the Army established aviation forces under the Signal Corps. After the war, in 1926, the Army formally established an Army Air Corps. 32 The Navy developed submarine and naval aviation forces. In the interwar years, the Marine Corps developed expeditionary amphibious warfare capabilities (which were also adopted by the U.S. Army during World War II).

During the interwar and wartime years, there also were numerous incidents in which the armed forces and their leaders became mired in political controversy despite the constitutional strictures that sought to insulate the conduct and oversight of the military from partisan political activity. One of the most noteworthy was the controversial decision to use the Army to eject the Bonus Marchers (World War I veterans who marched on the capital in Washington, D.C., demanding cash redemption of their service bonus certificates). 33

Even during wartime, the U.S. military often became embroiled in the challenges of social change. Many of the major U.S. military training bases were in the South in states that had instituted “Jim Crow” laws legalizing unequal treatment of African Americans. The presence of mobilized black soldiers resulted in many incidents. Race riots also occurred overseas in Europe and the Pacific. Despite the tensions of segregation, many African Americans volunteered to serve in the military during World War II.

Women also mobilized in significant numbers to serve in the armed forces, though they were organized in reserve corps under the Army, Navy, Marines, and U.S. Coast Guard. Their service was limited by the fact that they were not allowed to perform combat-related duties.

A Dramatic Transformation

Before World War II, there was vigorous debate over the future of U.S. strategy and how best to protect American interests. This debate was catalyzed by a national organization, the America First Committee, whose leadership included famed aviator Charles A. Lindbergh, the movement’s most recognizable spokesperson. Right up until the U.S. entered World War II, the majority of Americans supported the group’s basic aim: to avoid becoming involved in overseas wars and instead strengthen the nation’s capacity for hemispheric defense.

Days after Pearl Harbor, Lindbergh wrote in his diary: “I can see nothing to do under these circumstances except to fight. If I had been in Congress, I certainly would have voted for a declaration of war.” 34 Many of the America First Committee’s leaders volunteered to serve in the armed forces. 35 Lindbergh managed to find ways to contribute to the war effort, even flying combat missions in the South Pacific.

After the Second World War, America’s place in the world and the requirement for large, standing military forces were open questions. The postwar world marked a dramatic transformation in the U.S. military that was shaped largely by changing geostrategic conditions and the evolving nature of American power and influence. The concept of hemispheric defense now seemed wholly inadequate. A number of initiatives were undertaken to ensure that U.S. forces had global reach and influence. As the confrontation with the Soviet Union escalated into a Cold War, the armed forces became the primary instrument for the American strategy of containment against the Soviet threat.

The National Security Act of 1947 formalized the roles of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which had evolved informally over the course of World War II. 36 The law created a National Security Council to improve coordination of the armed forces with the other instruments of national power. An independent Air Force was also established. In addition, authority over the armed forces was consolidated. This eventually led to the Department of Defense, which oversaw the secretaries of the Army, Navy, and Air Force.

The Selective Service Act of 1948 served as the basis for the modern Selective Service System. 37 As global tensions with the Soviet Union rose, a draft was maintained during peace and war (unprecedented in U.S. history) until 1973.

America’s standing armed forces also expanded dramatically. During the course of the nation’s history from its founding to World War II, the U.S. averaged 1 percent to 2 percent of national GDP during peacetime, expanded dramatically during wars, but then was quickly reduced to a one-digit or two-digit norm after the conflict. Throughout the Cold War, however, the U.S. averaged between 7 percent and 8 percent of GDP. 38 Defense spending was also the lion’s share of the federal budget and government research and development (R&D) funding, mostly related to national security, that dwarfed the private sector.

New Age, New Challenges

The notion that maintaining a small peacetime standing force would be sufficient to ensure that the military would not be exploited as an instrument to undermine democratic rule was clearly no longer relevant in a modern age when large standing armed forces were the norm, not the exception. The notion remained attractive—even desirable—but global realities trumped America’s historical preferences.

The American military establishment grew to such an extent during the first decade of the Cold War that in his farewell address in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned that “[i]n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” and “must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.” 39 Nevertheless, the U.S. political structure proved remarkably resilient in sustaining civilian control of the military, a testament not only to the oversight of Congress and the sense of the American people, but also to the professionalism of the military itself and its commitment to constitutional principles.

Political and social tensions affecting the military were endemic throughout the Cold War. In 1949, a number of active and retired senior naval officers became embroiled in a plot to undermine the Administration’s naval policies, an incident that was labeled “the Revolt of the Admirals.” 40 During the Korean War, President Harry Truman ordered the full racial integration of the U.S. military. 41 Truman also sparked a significant confrontation when he fired the senior U.S. commander in the theater, General Douglas MacArthur, for insubordination. In the 1950s, President Eisenhower called out U.S. troops to enforce orders to integrate schools in the South.

The 1960s and 1970s proved even more contentious as the nation was rocked simultaneously by the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements. Military forces were frequently called out to quell disturbances. The most shocking incident occurred in 1970 when National Guard soldiers fired on demonstrators at the Kent State University campus, killing four students. 42

Military culture struggled to adapt to the tumultuous challenges of Cold War politics and social change and unrest. Two of the most influential books of the time were Samuel Huntington’s The Soldier and the State (1957) 43 and Morris Janowitz’s The Professional Soldier (1960), 44 both of which sought to define the military’s place in modern American society and reconcile the struggles in contemporary civilian–military relations. But while both were deeply influential and widely read in the military, their prescription to define a professional space insulated from political turmoil, the rapidly changing modern world, and the rapid shifts in demands of and attitudes toward the military largely proved fruitless and inadequate.

For much of American history, absent major wars, the American military was comprised of people and institutions that had scant interaction with most Americans. The military drew limited public resources. Sailors were far away at sea, and soldiers were stationed on dusty bases in Texas or far-off garrisons in China, removed from everyday life.

From World War II (when more than 10 percent of American men were in uniform) on, the armed forces and veterans were a ubiquitous part of American life. Moreover, social change intertwined America and its armed forces. In 1978, the women’s reserve corps were disbanded, and women were integrated into the regular services (though still excluded from combat roles). Women were also accepted at the nation’s military academies. Change also brought new challenges. In the coming decades, for instance, all of the services would face major scandals involving the treatment of women in the military and be dogged by allegations of sexual abuse and violence in the armed forces.

Guns vs. Butter and More

Another significant change in the military’s place in American life was the armed forces’ impact on fiscal policy. From the American Revolution through the first half of the 20th century, when military forces were modest, defense spending might engender occasional heated controversies and debates but was not a significant factor in the American political economy. That completely changed after World War II. Although the military after the war remained—and remains to this day—a global force that required significant funding, the size of the military and its related funding were continually whipsawed, buffeted by politics, the state of the U.S. economy, and global affairs. For example:

• With the conclusion of the Second World War, President Harry Truman (1945–1952) consciously sought to reduce the armed forces, only to reverse course with the outbreak of the Korean War.
• President Dwight Eisenhower (1953–1961) also instituted significant reductions in conventional forces, which he offset in part by increased funding for nuclear arms, a policy that was continued by President John Kennedy (1961–1963). 45
• President Lyndon Johnson (1963–1969) dramatically increased defense spending to accommodate the war in Vietnam, but he also increased domestic spending, which resulted in a significant negative impact on the economy.

Presidents continued to look for military reductions until President Ronald Reagan (1981–1989) dramatically increased the size of the military, justifying it as necessary to outmatch the Soviet military. Following the end of the Cold War, the military experienced a cascading series of force reductions that continued until the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and the outbreak of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. President Barack Obama (2009–2017) again sought force and spending reductions, only to see that trend reversed by President Donald Trump (2016–2017), who sought to increase readiness; focus on countering China, Russia, and Iran; and establish a new military service—the United States Space Force.

Much of the push and pull in the size, scope, and funding of military forces was the result of more than fiscal pressures, changing geopolitics, and views of how to employ modern militaries. In the wake of the Vietnam War, for instance, the U.S. military came in for scathing criticism. One influential critique, historian Russell Weigley’s The American Way of War (1973), 46 argued that American military tradition was overly focused and dependent on the use of brute force in war. Another well-known critique, Harry G. Summers’ On Strategy (1982), 47 concluded that the problem was how modern militaries are employed.

The Goldwater–Nichols Act of 1986, 48 the first sweeping legislative reform since the National Security Act of 1947, was authored to address the inefficiencies and inadequacies of the military in modern warfare. Among the initiatives in the law were measures to improve the conduct of joint operations by improving the ability of the individual services not just to work together, but to develop synergies more intentionally by leveraging each other in an integrated way.

Technology also introduced dramatic changes. The proliferation of silicon microchips engendered a new generation of computer technologies that had an immediate impact on the military. GPS, for instance, enabled the widespread deployment of precision-guided weapons. Technological evolution also affected (and continues to affect) how the military conceptualizes operations. In addition to being joint, forces must also be multidimensional, integrating operations on land, at sea and below the surface, in the air, in space, and in cyberspace.

The U.S. military has also been asked to conduct a wide variety of operations, from conventional warfare to occupation duties, border security, and homeland defense, and to assume an expanding role in space operations. On top of this, while the U.S. armed forces have always been tasked with global missions since World War II, the rise of China, a resurgent Russian threat, and persistent aggression from Iran in the Middle East have led to a lively debate over how to apportion forces and efforts—an especially difficult challenge given the reduction in forces following the end of the Cold War.

In addition, manpower issues have increasingly come to shape the nature of the force. Before the end of the Cold War, reserve components (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard) and National Guard (Army and Air Force) were used predominantly only in wartime. Since the end of the Cold War, the armed forces routinely call on all components of the “total force.”

Further, the U.S. military has not employed Selective Service since the 1970s. Instead, the military relies on recruiting and retaining an all-volunteer force. The challenges of sustaining such a force are changing with the demographics of the country, particularly since there is decreasing propensity to serve in the military and fewer American youth are qualified for military service. 49 Though all military positions have been open to both men and women, the challenge continues to grow.

Another contemporary challenge is the size of the veteran population, which is on a scale not seen since Vietnam. Veterans who have a range of physical and mental health challenges, as well as valuable skills to bring to civilian communities, also have political influence. Historically, large veteran populations after the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and Vietnam have had an economic, political, and social impact on the country in addition to affecting how we provide services and support for future servicemembers. The 9/11 generation most likely will as well.

While the armed forces were buffeted in the post–Cold War world by shifts in focus, demands, funding, and the advent of technologies that affect military operations, they were also affected by dramatic social change. President Bill Clinton (1993–2001) generated controversy when he attempted to change policies to allow homosexuals to serve openly in the armed forces. Opposition was substantial and led to a compromise policy known as “don’t ask, don’t tell.” Under President Obama, gays and lesbians were permitted to serve openly in the military, and restrictions prohibiting “gay marriage” were removed. 50

These shifts have introduced a dramatic cascade of social policy changes that now includes controversy over transsexuals serving in the U.S. military. Further, initiatives like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) and Environmental and Social Governance (ESG) programs have embroiled the armed services in controversial debates over social policies and cultural norms. Proponents of such changes argue that increased diversity within the force will somehow make it stronger, more effective, and more resilient while also aligning it with the demographic profile of American society, but there is no clear evidence that supports these claims. To the contrary, such politically progressive policies appear to hurt recruiting and retention efforts and have spurred strong opposition within the military and among the retired and veteran communities.

Looking to the Future

The history of America’s military demonstrates the resilience of democratic structures. Yet it is also clear that the constitutional order governing the military’s relationship with the federal government and the American people is not immune from political pressure and destructive influence. The healthy state of civil–military relations can never be taken for granted; nor should the need to check influences and impulses that seek to make military forces a tool of political factions.

U.S. history shows that the roles, missions, structure, and capabilities of America’s military forces are regularly subject to change. As the needs of providing for the common defense continue to evolve, so must the armed forces. Consequently, the why, how, and extent of change should be a subject of serious, sober debate. America will remain a global power and will continue to need a military that is up to the task of protecting the homeland and the country’s interests on a global scale. The struggles the nation has faced since the end of World War II and the forces that impact them—geopolitics, the economy, technology, and social change—are not going away. The choices that have to be made in the future will be no easier than the choices that had to be made in the past. Nor will the magnitude of the consequences of getting it right or wrong be any less.

[1] Florence Inferno, “Nicollo Machiavelli,” February 3, 2014, https://www.florenceinferno.com/niccolo-machiavelli/ (accessed August 11, 2023).

[2] Cary Nederman, “Niccolo Machiavelli,” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Summer 2022 Edition, ed. Edward N. Zalta, https://plato.stanford.edu/cgi-bin/encyclopedia/archinfo.cgi?entry=machiavelli (accessed August 11, 2023).

[3] Acts of the English Parliament, Bill of Rights [1688], 1688 Chapter 2 1 Will and Mar Sess 2, https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aep/WillandMarSess2/1/2/introduction (accessed August 11, 2023). “The Bill of Rights is assigned to the year 1688 on legislation.gov.uk (as it was previously in successive official editions of the revised statutes from which the online version is derived) although the Act received Royal Assent on 16th December 1689.” Ibid., note X1.

[4] “Commission from the Continental Congress, 19 June 1775,” National Archives, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/03-01-02-0004 (accessed August 11. 2023).

[5] Ron Chernow, Washington: A Life (New York: Penguin Books, 2011), pp. 432–436.

[6] National Constitution Center, “The Day the Constitution Was Ratified,” Blog Post, June 21, 2023, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/the-day-the-constitution-was-ratified (accessed August 11, 2023).

[7] U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clauses 11–14, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-1/#article-1-section-8 (accessed August 13, 2023).

[8] U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 1, https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/#article-2-section-2 (accessed August 13, 2023).

[9] “The Congress shall have Power…To raise and support Armies” and “To provide and maintain a Navy.” U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8, Clauses 12 and 13.

[10] National Constitution Center, “On This Day: Congress Officially Creates the U.S. Army,” Blog Post, September 20, 2020, https://constitutioncenter.org/blog/on-this-day-congress-officially-creates-the-u-s-army (accessed August 13, 2023).

[11] National Archives, “Launching the New U.S. Navy,” Educator Resources, page last reviewed September 7, 2016, https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/new-us-navy (accessed August 13, 2023).

[12] U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps University, “Brief History of the United States Marine Corps,” July 2001, https://www.usmcu.edu/Research/Marine-Corps-History-Division/Brief-Histories/Brief-History-of-the-United-States-Marine-Corps/ (accessed August 13, 2023).

[13] U.S. Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, Clause 16.

[14] Though the Insurrection Act was not passed until 1807, it was clear from the statements and actions of America’s early elected officials that there were times of crisis when U.S. military forces would be needed in domestic affairs under extraordinary circumstances. The permissions and restrictions were eventually codified in the act. See 10 U.S. Code Chapter 13—Insurrection, https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?path=/prelim@title10/subtitleA/part1/chapter13&edition=prelim (accessed August 12, 2023).

[15] Militia Act of 1792, 2nd Cong., 1st Sess., May 2, 1792, https://constitution.org/1-Activism/mil/mil_act_1792.htm (accessed August 12, 2023).

[16] George Washington, “Proclamation, 7 August 1794,” National Archives, Founders Online, https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Washington/05-16-02-0365 (accessed August 12, 2023).

[17] United States Military Academy West Point, “A Brief History of West Point,” https://www.westpoint.edu/about/history-of-west-point (accessed August 12, 2023).

[18] Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America , trans. Henry Reeve, Vol. I (London: Saunders and Otley, 1835), https://ia800302.us.archive.org/5/items/democracy01tocq/democracy01tocq.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023), and Vol. II (London: Saunders and Otley, 1836), https://ia804707.us.archive.org/8/items/in.ernet.dli.2015.42993/2015.42993.Democracy-In-America--Vol2.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[19] George Washington, “Farewell Address,” September 19, 1796, https://www.ushistory.org/documents/farewelladdress.htm (accessed August 12, 2023).

[20] U.S. Constitution, Article II, Section 2, Clause 2.

[21] National Archives, “Monroe Doctrine (1823),” Milestone Documents, page last reviewed May 10, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/monroe-doctrine#transcript (accessed August 12, 2023). The transcript is introduced by a note specifying that “ The Monroe Doctrine was expressed during President Monroe's seventh annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823. ”

[22] David Wilma, “U.S.S. Lexington Provides Electricity to Tacoma Beginning About on [ sic ] December 17, 1929,” HistoryLink.org , January 24, 2003, https://www.historylink.org/File/5113 (accessed August 12, 2023).

[23] Jim Percoco, “The United States Colored Troops,” American Battlefield Trust, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/united-states-colored-troops#:~:text=In%20contrast%20to%20men%20serving%20on%20land%2C%20the,another%2019%2C000%20served%20in%20the%20United%20States%20Navy (accessed August 12, 2023).

[24] Jonathan Curran, “Buffalo Soldiers,” National Museum of the United States Army, https://www.thenmusa.org/articles/buffalo-soldiers/ (accessed August 12, 2023).

[25] For the most recent text of the act as amended, see 18 U.S. Code Section 1385—Use of Army, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, and Space Force as Posse Comitatus, https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1385 (accessed August 12, 2023). See also Jennifer K. Elsea, “The Posse Comitatus Act and Related Matters: The Use of the Military to Execute Civilian Law,” Congressional Research Service Report for Members and Committees of Congress No. R42659, updated November 6, 2018, https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/R42659.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[26] Militia Act of 1903, Public Law 33, 57th Congress, 2nd Session, January 21, 1903, https://govtrackus.s3.amazonaws.com/legislink/pdf/stat/32/STATUTE-32-Pg775.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[27] Encyclopedia.com , “Swiss History: Biographies: Antoine Henri Jomini,” updated May 18, 2018, https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/swiss-history-biographies/antoine-henri-jomini (accessed August 12, 2023).

[28] Alfred Thayer Mahan., The Influence of Sea Power Upon History (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1890), http://www.enabed2016.abedef.org/resources/download/1403180516_ARQUIVO_MahanInfluenceofSeaPowerUponHistory.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[29] Carl Von Clausewitz., On War , trans. Col. James John Graham (London: N. Trübner, 1873), https://www.clausewitz.com/readings/OnWar1873/TOC.htm (accessed August 12, 2023). This version is introduced by a note specifying that “[i]t is derived from the German original, Clausewitz’s Vom Kriege (Berlin: Dümmlers Verlag, 1832).”

[30] The U.S. Naval War College conducted 318 war games during the 1920s and 1930s that drove 21 fleet exercises to test various concepts developed by the games. See “The Fleet Exercise,” Chapter 4 in James A. Miller, “Gaming the Interwar: How Naval War College Wargames Tilted the Playing Field for the U.S. Navy During World War II,” Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Master of Military Art and Science, Military History, Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, December 13, 2013, pp. 48–69, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA599136.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[31] Henry G. Cole, The Road to Rainbow: Army Planning for Global War, 1934–1940 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2002).

[32] U.S. Air Force, Air Force Historical Support Division, “1926—The U.S. Army Air Corps Act,” https://www.afhistory.af.mil/FAQs/Fact-Sheets/Article/459017/1926-the-us-army-air-corps-act/ (accessed August 12, 2023).

[33] Public Broadcasting Service, “The Bonus March (May–July, 1932), American Experience , https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/macarthur-bonus-march-may-july-1932/ (accessed August 12, 2023), and Paul Dickson and Thomas B. Allen, “Marching on History,” Smithsonian Magazine , February 2003, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/marching-on-history-75797769/ (accessed August 12, 2023).

[34] Charles A. Lindbergh, The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1970), p. 561.

[35] James Jay Carafano, “The Truth About the America First Movement,” Heritage Foundation Commentary , July 11, 2016, https://www.heritage.org/defense/commentary/the-truth-about-the-america-first-movement .

[36] S. 758, National Security Act of 1947, Public Law 80-253, 80th Congress, July 26, 1947, https://global.oup.com/us/companion.websites/9780195385168/resources/chapter10/nsa/nsa.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023). For the text of the law as amended, see National Security Act of 1947 [Chapter 343; 61 Stat. 496; approved July 26, 1947] [As Amended Through P.L. 117–328, Enacted December 29, 2022], https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/COMPS-1493/pdf/COMPS-1493.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023).

[37] Report No. 2438, Selective Service Act of 1948 , Conference Report to Accompany S. 2655, U.S. House of Representatives, 80th Congress, 2nd Session, June 19, 1948, https://tile.loc.gov/storage-services/service/ll/llmlp/act-1948/act-1948.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023); Selective Service System, Office of the General Counsel, The Military Selective Service Act as Amended Through July 9, 2003: Compilation of the Military Selective Service Act (50 U.S.C. App. 451 et seq.) , https://www.sss.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/MSSA-2003.pdf (accessed August 12, 2023); and Selective Service System, “History and Records: History of the Selective Service System,” https://www.sss.gov/history-and-records/ (accessed August 12, 2023).

[38] Guillaume Vandenbroucke, “Which War Saw the Highest Defense Spending? Depends How It’s Measured,” Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, On the Economy Blog, February 4, 2020, https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2020/february/war-highest-defense-spending-measured (accessed August 13, 2023), and Robert Higgs, The Cold War Economy: Opportunity Costs, ideology, and the Politics of Crisis , Independent Institute, July 1, 1994, https://www.independent.org/publications/article.asp?id=1297 (accessed August 13, 2023).

[39] National Archives, “President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address (1961),” Milestone Documents, page last reviewed June 20, 2023, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address (accessed August 12, 2023).

[40] Peter C. Luebke, “H-078-1: ‘The Revolt of the Admirals,’” U.S. Navy, Naval History and Heritage Command, March 2023, https://www.history.navy.mil/about-us/leadership/director/directors-corner/h-grams/h-gram-078/h-078-1.html (accessed August 12, 2023).

[41] National Archives, “Executive Order 9981: Desegregation of the Armed Forces (1948),” Milestone Documents, page last reviewed February 8, 2022, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/executive-order-9981 (accessed August 12, 2023).

[42] “The Background of the Tragedy at Kent State University,” The American Legion Magazine , Vol. 89, No. 1 (July 1970)], pp. 22–27, https://archive.legion.org/node/1830 (accessed August 12, 2023).

[43] Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Practice of Civil–Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1957).

[44] Morris Janowitz., The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: The Free Press. 1971).

[45] “The Army and the New Look,” Chapter 26 in American Military History , U.S. Army, Office of the Chief of Military History, Army Historical Series, 1989, https://history.army.mil/books/AMH/AMH-26.htm (accessed August 12, 2023), and Patrick M. Condray, “The New Look of 1952–53,” Chapter 3 in Charting the Nation’s Course: Strategic Planning Processes in the 1952–53 “New Look” and the 1996–97 Quadrennial Defense Review , Thesis Presented to the Faculty of the School of Advanced Airpower Studies, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama, for Completion of Graduation Requirements, Academic Year 1997–98, Air University Press, 1999, https://media.defense.gov/2017/Dec/28/2001861726/-1/-1/0/T_CONDRAY_CHARTING_THE_NATIONS_COURSE.PDF (accessed August 12, 2023).

[46] Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War: A History of United States Military Strategy and Policy (New York: Macmillan, 1973).

[47] Harry G. Summers Jr., On Strategy: A Critical Analysis of the Vietnam War (Novato, CA: Presidio Press, 1995).

[48] H.R. 3622, Goldwater–Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986, Public Law 99-433, 99th Congress, October 1, 1986, https://www.congress.gov/99/statute/STATUTE-100/STATUTE-100-Pg992.pdf (accessed August 11, 2023).

[49] Thomas Spoehr and Bridget Handy, “The Looming National Security Crisis: Young Americans Unable to Serve in the Military,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 3282, February 13, 2018, https://www.heritage.org/sites/default/files/2018-02/BG3282.pdf .

[50] News release, “Statement by the President on the Repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” The White House, September 20, 2011, https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/09/20/statement-president-repeal-dont-ask-dont-tell (accessed August 11, 2023).

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The role of military history in the contemporary academy.

A Society for Military History White Paper byTami Davis Biddle, US Army War College, and Robert M. Citino, University of North Texas.

The resort to war signals the failure of far more satisfactory means of settling human conflicts. It forces us to face and wrestle with the darkest corners of the human psyche. It signals the coming of trauma and suffering—often intense and prolonged—for individuals, families and societies. War-fighting concentrates power in nondemocratic ways, infringes upon civil liberties, and convulses political, economic, and social systems. From the wreckage—the broken bodies, the redrawn boundaries, the imperfect treaties, the fresh resentments and the intensified old ones—altered political and social patterns and institutions emerge that may help to prevent future conflicts, or sow the seeds of new ones. All of this creates a difficult, complicated, and fraught historical landscape to traverse.

Though the study of war is demanding, both intellectually and emotionally, we cannot afford to eschew or ignore it. Examining the origins of wars informs us about human behavior: the way that we create notions of identity, nationality, and territoriality; the way that we process and filter information; and the way that we elevate fear and aggression over reason. Analyzing the nature of war informs us about the psychology of humans under stress: the patterns of communication and miscommunication within and across groups; the causes of escalation; and the dynamics of political and social behavior within nations and across populations. And studying the consequences of wars helps us to understand human resilience, resignation, and resentment; we learn to identify unresolved issues that may lead to further strife, and we develop a heightened ability for comprehending the elements of political behavior that can lead to sustainable resolution and the re-building of broken—indeed sometimes shattered—social, political, and economic structures and relationships.

Research in military history not only informs and enriches the discipline of history, but also informs work in a host of other fields including political science, sociology, and public policy. Students need this knowledge in order to become informed, thoughtful citizens. If the role of a liberal education is to hone analytical thinking skills and prepare young people to accept their full responsibilities in a democratic society, then it is more than ever imperative that we prepare our students to think critically and wisely about issues of war and peace. Among its many roles, scholarship has a civic function: it facilitates our understanding of the institutions we have created, and opens a debate on their purpose and function.1

The members of the Society for Military History have a broad and inclusive sense of our work and our educational mission. We see our realm as encompassing not only the study of military institutions in wartime, but also the study of the relationships between military institutions and the societies that create them; the origins of wars, societies at war; and the myriad impacts of war on individuals, groups, states, and regions. Our mission encompasses not only traditional studies of battles, but also of war and public memory. The cross-fertilization in these realms has been extensive in recent years, and each one has influenced the others in salutary ways.

Several decades ago the phrase “new military history” arose to highlight a shift away from traditional narratives that focused on generalship and troop movements on the battlefield. But events have clearly overtaken the phrase. The “new military history” is simply what military history is today: broad-based, inclusive, and written from a wide range of perspectives. In an essay for The American Historical Review in 2007, Robert Citino wrote: “Once controversial, and still the occasional subject of grumbling from a traditionalist old guard, the new military history is today an integral, even dominant, part of the parent field from which it emerged. It has been around so long, in fact, and has established itself so firmly, that it seems silly to keep calling it “new.’” 2

Those of us who labor in this realm believe that our work, which is regularly published by some of the most discerning presses in the world, deserves not only a wide readership, but serious scholarly attention. The increasing number of university presses initiating military history book series reflects our field’s vitality. And the National Endowment for the Humanities has signaled its support for our work by launching a major new initiative to fund military history research: http://neh.gov/veterans/standing-together. Beyond this, we believe that for our democracy to remain healthy, the study of war must be included in the curricula of our nation’s colleges and universities.

The short essay that follows will argue the case for integrating a broadened, revitalized military history subfield into history departments nationwide. And it will highlight the potential dangers of failing to do so.

Overcoming Old Stereotypes

The phrase “military history” still stirs conflicted emotions or hostile reactions among those who teach history in the nation’s colleges and universities. Indeed, this fact has convinced some of those who study war to distance themselves from the phrase, or to eschew it altogether. But there is a case to be made for retaining and reinvigorating the term, linking it to the body of innovative scholarship that has been produced in recent years, and continues to be produced today. The first step is open communication and exchange between those inside the field and those outside of it. Within the academy, conversation and education ought to be the first steps towards breaking down stereotypes.

The challenges facing those who study war extend beyond the fact their terrain is challenging, morally-freighted, and emotionally-draining. Wariness towards the field persists despite its evolution in recent decades. Other historians—for instance those who study slavery, or the history of Native Peoples, or the dictatorship of Josef Stalin—work in fraught spaces without finding themselves the object of suspicion or stereotype. Part of the problem stems from the way that military history is, and has been, identified and categorized inside American popular culture.

Anyone walking into a large bookstore will find, in most cases, a sizable section labeled “military history.” Some of the work located there will be of high quality – serious, deeply- researched, and conforming to the highest scholarly standards; but some of it will consist of shallow tales of adventure and conquest, written for an enthusiastic but not terribly discerning audience. Some of it will cover esoteric topics that appeal to those with highly particularized interests, such as military uniforms, weapons types, or aircraft markings. Popular military history varies immensely in quality, and there is a great gulf between the best and the worst it has to offer. Outside the subfield, all this work tends to be lumped together, however, and academics with little exposure to serious scholarship in the field may assume that it is a discipline defined by the weaker side of the spectrum.

Popular television also complicates the lives of academic military historians. “Info-tainment” via commercial media shapes ideas about what military history is, and how its practitioners allocate their time and energy. The academic subfield struggles also to free itself from association with popular writing and popular film that grasps too readily at “great man” theories, triumphalism, nationalism, gauzy sentimentality, or superficial tales of derring do. We face a suspicion that those drawn to the field are mesmerized by the whiz-bang quality of arms technology, or the pure drama of organized violence. We find ourselves called upon, sometimes, to answer the charge that by studying armed conflict we are glorifying it or condoning it. Because the field was predominantly male for a long time, many of our colleagues assume that it remains so, and is hostile to women.

Unfortunately, many in the academic community assume that military history is simply about powerful men—mainly white men—fighting each other and/or oppressing vulnerable groups. The study of the origins of war was fertile ground during the 1920s and 1930s as scholars searched for answers about the complex, wrenching, and seemingly incomprehensible event that was the “Great War” -- as it was then called. But by the 1960s, critics had begun to conclude that military and diplomatic history focused too much on presidents, prime ministers, and generals; many felt it had become dry and stale, and had few new insights to contribute to our understanding of the past. In the United States this problem was exacerbated by the Vietnam War, and the terrible, searing divisions it created in the domestic polity. No small number of senior academics today came of age during that war, and, understandably, they resolved to put as much distance as possible between themselves and engagement with military issues of any kind.

Shedding the Baggage and Making a Difference

Shedding these burdens will require ongoing and mutual outreach from both military and non-military historians. Perhaps the best way for military historians to make their case to the broader profession is to highlight the range, diversity, and breadth of the recent scholarship in military history, as well as the dramatic evolution of the field in recent decades. Military historians believe that our work is a vital component of a liberal education that prepares students to be informed and responsible citizens. Young scholars taking up the study of war are broadly-trained and well-trained—and they must be since high-quality military history demands that its practitioners understand the intricate relationship between a society and its military institutions. This requires competence not only in political and economic history, but in social and cultural history as well. Scholars fortunate enough to have grown up in departments that are home to outstanding social and cultural historians have benefited immensely from the privilege, and it is reflected in their work.3

Over time, the practitioners of academic military history have become more diverse, and have looked at war from new angles. As minorities and women enter the field, they bring to it their own unique lenses and fresh perspectives. In 2005 the Society for Military History elected its first woman president, Carol Reardon. In recent years the SMH has awarded a high percentage of his prizes, grants and scholarships to young women, specifically the Edward M. Coffman Prize for First Manuscript. Recent awardees include Ellen Tillman from Texas State University, San Marcos, for “Dollar Diplomacy by Force: US Military Experimentation and Occupation in the Dominican Republic, 1900-1924” (2014); Lien-Hang Nguyen, University of Kentucky, for “Hanoi’s War: An International History of the War for Peace in Vietnam” (2012); and Kathryn S. Meier, University of Scranton, for “The Seasoned Soldier: Coping with the Environment in Civil War Virginia” (2011).

Even a quick glance at the program for the 2014 Annual Conference of the Society of Military History reveals a thriving subfield that is diverse and dynamic. Papers delivered this year included: “The Chemists’ War: Medical and Environmental Consequences of Chemical Warfare during World War I” (Gerard J. Fitzgerald, George Mason University); “World War I, Manhood, Modernity, and the Remaking of the Puerto Rico Peasant” (Harry Franqui-Rivera, Hunter College); “British Counterinsurgency and Pseudo-warfare in Palestine, 1936-39” (Matthew Hughes, Brunel University); “War, Disease, and Diplomacy: Transatlantic Peacemaking and International Health after the First World War” (Seth Rotramel, Office of the Historian, Department of State).4

The scholarship in our field entitles its authors to claim a legitimate place among their colleagues in the academy and beyond. Indeed, books about war continue to earn national and international recognition. Fredrik Logevall’s superb work, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam, was a recent (2013) winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the Francis Parkman Prize. It examined the way that disastrous decisions at the end of France’s war in Indo-China set the Americans up for their own catastrophe in Vietnam. Just over a decade ago, Fred Anderson’s account of the Seven Years’ War, Crucible of War, set a new standard for history that is deeply perceptive, sweeping in scope, and able to comprehend and convey the overarching trajectory and import of the story, including its most subtle and nuanced details. Several of the nominees for the inaugural Guggenheim-Lehrman Prize in Military History – including Rick Atkinson’s The Guns at Last Light, and Allen C. Guelzo’s Gettysburg: The Last Invasion – are works not only of breathtaking research but also of profound literary merit. The first book in Atkinson’s trilogy on the Second World War, An Army at Dawn, won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2003.5

Contemporary military history has been incorporated into some of the best broad- scope and survey literature written in recent decades, allowing the narrative of conflict to become part of a comprehensive story that includes—rather than avoids—warfare and all of its wide-ranging and long-lasting effects. Here the excellent volumes produced by for the “Oxford History of the United States” series come immediately to mind.6

At the same time as it has branched out into new areas, however, military history retains a footing in “operational history,” the province of war, of campaign, and of battle. As today’s military historians recognize, battlefield history gains maximum impact when it is infused with insights into the nature and character of the organizations taking part. It requires knowledge of their social composition, command hierarchies, norms and cultural codes, and relationships to non-military institutions. Insights from social, cultural, gender and ethnic history have influenced the study of more conventional military history, with scholarship emphasizing aspects of mobilization, training and doctrine, and combat as a reflection of values and institutions in society. Operational history enables us to make sense of the larger story of war because battlefield outcomes matter: they open up or close off opportunities to attain (or fail to attain) important political ends.7

In addition, combat sheds light on the civil-military relationship within states, and the way that societies are able (or unable) to leverage technology by setting up organizations and processes to take advantage of it. What happens on the battlefield also influences, and sometimes crafts, key social and political narratives. For instance, the tactical and operational reasons for stalemate on the Western Front matter precisely because this stalemate shaped the human experience of the war, burdened its settlement, and shaped its legacy. The stalemate also changed the way that European power was understood and interpreted by those peoples under the yoke of European colonialism in the early part of the 20th century. Similarly, one cannot understand the intensity of the Truman-MacArthur civil-military clash during the Korean War— and its long and damaging legacy—unless one understands the power and influence gained by the latter through his military victories in World War II, and, in particular, at Inchon in 1950.

Adding Depth and Insight to College Curricula

Scholarly military history puts big strategic decisions about war and peace into context; it draws linkages and contrasts between a nation’s socio-political culture and its military culture; it helps illuminate ways in which a polity’s public and national narrative is shaped over time. All this gives the field relevance, and, indeed, urgency, inside the classroom. Scholars in our field are well-positioned to draw linkages and build bridges among subfields in history, and to engage in interdisciplinary work. Because warfare has dramatic consequences at every level of human existence, it must be a central element in the way that we understand our own narrative through the ages. To avoid the study of war is to undermine our opportunity to fully comprehend ourselves—and our evolution over time—in social, political, psychological, scientific, and technological realms.

Students long for intellectual frameworks that help them understand the world in which they live—and the study of war and conflict is an essential part of such frameworks. For instance, it is difficult if not impossible to understand the geo-political fault-lines of the 21st century world if one does not understand the causes and outcomes of the First World War. Students will not understand Vladimir Putin’s contemporary Russian nationalism if they do not understand (at least) Western intervention in the Russian civil war, the history of the Second World War, the Cold War that followed it, and the expansion of NATO following the Soviet collapse in 1989.

Through popular media and public discourse in this decade alone, American students have heard about such events as the bicentennials of the Napoleonic Wars and War of 1812, the centennial of the First World War, and the sesquicentennial of the battle of Gettysburg. They realize that in order to fully comprehend the significance of these commemorations, they need a basic historical grounding that can explain why the events mark turning points—and have thus become influential pieces of our contemporary narrative.

Our students’ desire for knowledge creates an important opportunity for Departments of History. The late recession has produced a drop in humanities majors as students seek courses that seem more likely to produce an immediate payoff in terms of jobs and wages. Legislative budget cuts have forced even state schools to conform to a tuition-driven model, and departments that cannot attract a sufficient number of students can expect hard times to get harder. University college administrators, particularly college deans and chairs of History Departments, may find some relief in the appeal of military history. Courses in military history tend to fill, not only with history majors and minors, but also with students from other disciplines who are interested in the field. And because military history intersects regularly with the profession’s other subfields, it can serve as an ideal gateway to the other specializations any given History Department has to offer. It may, as well, lure back some of the students who have been drawn away to political science, international relations, and public policy departments. But the central reasons for an embrace of contemporary military history go far beyond the practical realities of departmental budgets.

Civic Responsibility

Military history ought to be a vital component of a liberal education, one that prepares students to be informed and responsible citizens. Since civilian control of the military is a foundational element of American democracy, our civilians must have enough basic knowledge to carry out this function competently and responsibly. In the US today, the burden of military service is carried by only about 1% of the population. The remaining 99% have only limited (if any) contact with serving military personnel, and military institutions; our young people know little about warfare—and its profound costs and consequences—outside of what partial and often unhelpful information filters through via the popular culture. We do little to prepare our citizens to understand their role in owning and controlling a large military institution. Indeed, many of our young people have no idea of how the US military came to exist in its present form, what tasks it has been called upon to carry out in the past (or why), and what tasks it may be called upon to carry out in the future.

This is an unsettling state of affairs, especially since the US military does not send itself to war. Choices about war and peace are made by civilians – civilians who, increasingly, have no historical or analytical frameworks to guide them in making the most consequential of all decisions. They know little or nothing about the requirements of the Just War tradition and the contemporary legal and ethical frameworks that affect jus ad bellum, jus in bello, and jus post bellum. They know little about the logistical, geographical, and physical demands of modern military operations; they do not realize that the emotional stresses, profound complexities, and constant unpredictability of war-fighting make it more difficult than any other human endeavor to carry out successfully. And they do not sufficiently link this fact to the family stresses and emotional wounds that veterans endure.

Any use of military force is so consequential on so many levels that it demands serious contemplation and full comprehension by all those in a democratic polity who own some piece of responsibility for it. In a democracy, the burden—including and especially the moral burden—of choosing to use violence for political ends belongs to elected officials and to the people they represent.8 And, once a choice to use force is undertaken, elected officials continue to have a serious responsibility to remain fully engaged in the wielding of violence on behalf of the state. When Americans go to war, they do so because they have been sent by the elected leaders of the Republic; they carry the flag of the United States, and wear that flag on the sleeves of their uniforms. Civilians must respect the requirements of Just War; this is essential not only for the preservation of American leadership in the world, but also for building a foundation on which a stable post-war peace can be built. Just as crucially, civilians must realize that respect for Just War requirements is essential to the mental and emotional health of the soldiers, sailors, and airmen they send to war.

In addition, civilians need to understand how consistently and tirelessly one must work to align means and ends in war. Soldiers will be fully occupied trying to cope with the intense and ever-changing demands of the battlefield, while civilian policymakers will be fully occupied trying to build and maintain support for national strategy. With both groups working round the clock in their own realms, it is easy for them to begin to drift apart. An intentional and unflagging effort must be devoted to maintaining the ongoing civil-military communication that gives strategy its meaning, and that prevents the nation from engaging in counterproductive or even senseless conflict.

The rather cavalier and shortsighted way that Americans sent troops to war in Iraq in 2003 spoke to vast gaps in civilian understanding of the capabilities of blunt military instruments, in the complexity of sectarian political divisions (exacerbated by a colonial legacy) within Iraq, and in the myriad and long-lasting costs of warfare and war-fighting—among individuals and societies. Officers and NCOs who enter the US professional military education (PME) system are educated about the responsibilities they hold in a society where civilians control the military and make decisions about where and when to use military force. At the most senior level of PME, for instance, War College students become well-versed in the special responsibilities they hold on the military side of the civil-military equation. Today’s civilians, by contrast, are under- educated about their responsibilities. Even as the American people built a large military and handed it vast responsibilities, they devoted less and less time to equipping their future civilian leaders with the knowledge they need to interact with the military in informed and constructive ways. This affects the nation’s ability to develop, implement, and sustain an optimal national security strategy for itself, and to adequately address the great range of crucial issues pertaining to the effects and consequences of war.

It is incumbent upon those who train our college and university students—our next generation of civilian leaders—to address the civilian side of the equation. They must teach today’s students about the role of the military in a democracy, the blunt character of military force, and the lasting consequences of the decision to wage war. To ignore the study of such an enterprise is, in the end, corrosive of the Constitutional principles that legitimize choice and action in the American system of government. The strong body of literature produced by contemporary military historians, and the knowledge and pedagogical skills that they bring to the classroom, can surely help in this crucial task.

This White Paper, written By Drs. Rob Citino and Tami Davis Biddle, first appeared in print in November 2014 under the auspices of the Society for Military History. Its purpose was to generate discussion of the key role that military history should play within college and university history instruction. Tami Davis Biddle’s views are her own and do not necessarily reflect those of the US Army, Department of Defense, or US Government.

1 Professor Walter McDougall, Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, makes this point powerfully in a short essay for the Foreign Policy Research Institute entitled, “The Three Reasons We Teach History,” Footnotes 5, no. 1 (February 1998). See www.fpri.org/footnotes. 2 Robert M. Citino, “Military Histories Old and New: A Reinterpretation,” American Historical Review 112 (October 2007): 1070-90. 3 In her essay for the Times Literary Supplement special issue, “New Ways in History,” Stella Tillyard commented on the productive cross-fertilization between academic and popular history. She specifically cited the influence of social history upon military history. See Tillyard, “All Our Pasts: The Rise of Popular History,” TLS , 13 October 2006, 7-9. 4 Gerard Fitzgerald presented his paper as part of a Presidential Panel on “The Environmental Dimensions of World War I” sponsored by the Society for Environmental History, which has established a productive partnership with the Society for Military History. 5 Atkinson’s “Liberation Trilogy” on the US Army in the Second World War includes: An Army at Dawn (2002); The Day of Battle (2007); and The Guns at Last Light (2013). 6 Two prominent examples include David Kennedy, Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999); James T. Patterson, Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996). The former won the Pulitzer Prize (2000) and the latter won the Bancroft Prize (1997). 7 This is a point that is made and emphasized in another Pulitzer Prize-winning volume in the Oxford series, James McPherson’s classic analysis of the US Civil War, Battle Cry of Freedom (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). This work too won the Pulitzer Prize in history. 8 An illuminating argument about the need for citizens to reclaim this responsibility is found in Sebastian Junger, “Veterans need to share the moral burden of war,” Washington Post , 24 May 2013. The citizen’s role in the use of military power is the central concern in Rachel Maddow’s, Drift: The Unmooring of American Military Power (Crown: New York, 2012). 9 Richard K. Betts puts the case powerfully: “Any significant resort to force will hurt people on a large scale, without definite assurance of achieving its purpose. For these reasons, force should be used less frequently, with better reason, and with more conscious willingness to pay a high price than it has been in many cases since the Cold War.” He adds, “The presumption should actually be against it unless the alternatives are unambiguously worse.” See Betts, American Force: Dangers, Delusions, and Dilemmas in National Security (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 12-13.

10 Richard K. Betts, “Is Strategy an Illusion,” International Security 25, no. 2 (Fall 2000): 7.  

Robert Citino, PhD

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Most studies of the Sino-Japanese War are presented from the perspective of the West. Departing from this tradition, The Battle for China brings together Chinese, Japanese, and Western scholars to provide a comprehensive and multifaceted overview of the military operations that shaped much of what happened in political, economic, and cultural realms. The volume's diverse contributors have taken pains to sustain a scholarly, dispassionate tone throughout their analyses of the course and the nature of military operations, from the Marco Polo Bridge Incident to the final campaigns of 1945. They present Western involvement in Sino-Japanese contexts, and establish the war's place in World War II and world history in general.

About the authors

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Hans van de Ven, FBA, is Professor of Modern Chinese History at Cambridge University.

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Importance of Military Essays ⚔

Essays on the military are critical because they help us comprehend the military’s history, tactics, and effects on society. They give us a place to conduct in-depth study and analysis, enabling us to examine and assess many facets of the military career.

We may learn a great deal about the complexity of combat, the advancement of military strategies and equipment, and the military’s influence on international politics and security by reading and writing on military topics. These pieces encourage critical thinking, spark intellectual debate, and improve military knowledge and study in addition to instructing and informing readers.

When writing a military essay, you may explore compare and contrast essay topics such as the similarities and differences between military strategies or the contrasting perspectives on the impact of warfare in different historical periods. For example, you can compare the military tactics used in World War I and World War II or contrast the views on the effectiveness of air power in modern warfare.

Types of Military Essays 🎖

Military essays come in various formats with various functions and writing styles. Here are four specific categories:

☑ Expository essays

 These papers seek to offer a concise and impartial exposition of a military subject or idea. They investigate the issue logically and methodically while providing factual information. Expository essays can be written on various subjects, including the history of a particular fight, the composition and organization of a military unit, and the operation of military technology.

☑ Argumentative Essays

In a military setting, an argumentative essay will express a particular point of view or argument and back it up with facts. Critical thinking and persuasive writing skills are needed to make a strong argument in these essays. Argumentative military essays could examine the moral ramifications of military action, debate the merits of a specific defense plan, or assess the efficacy of a military strategy.

☑ Comparative essay

Comparative essays analyze and contrast various elements of military systems, tactics, or historical events. They draw attention to contrasts, similarities, and patterns to comprehend the topic better. A comparative essay, for instance, can examine the parallels and differences between ancient and current combat or contrast the military strategies of various countries.

☑ Analytical essays

They dive into the specifics of a military subject, dissecting it into its component elements and critically analyzing them. To comprehend the subject, these essays require thorough investigation, data interpretation, and theoretical frameworks. Analyzing the origins and effects of a particular fight, evaluating the influence of military technologies on conflict, or reviewing the efficacy of a military doctrine are a few examples of analytical military studies.

If you’re looking to incorporate a capstone project into your military essay, consider exploring various capstone project ideas related to the military. These can range from analyzing the effectiveness of military training programs to developing strategies for improving military logistics or examining the ethical implications of autonomous weapon systems.

Format and Structure of a Military Essay 🪖

Here is a broad outline for a military essay, though precise requirements may change based on the assignment or institution:

☑️ Introduction

Start your paragraph with a compelling opening sentence or hook to capture the reader’s interest.

Describe the subject’s history and how it relates to the military.

Declare the essay’s thesis or significant point in clear terms.

Each paragraph should concentrate on a distinct subtopic or argument supporting the thesis.

Start each paragraph with a topic phrase that states the paragraph’s central theme.

Include examples, analysis, and supporting data to support the core point.

Use transitional words or phrases to transition between paragraphs and concepts seamlessly.

☑️ Discussion and Analysis

Discuss the implications of the evidence offered in the body paragraphs after it has been analyzed.

Think critically and offer perceptive criticism on the subject.

Consider opposing viewpoints or arguments, then reasonably and logically respond to them.

Summarise the key ideas covered in the essay, focusing on their importance.

Indicate how the essay’s main argument or thesis has been reinforced by restating it.

☑️ Citations & References

Include a separate section or bibliography for references, if necessary.

Use an appropriate citation format (such as APA, MLA, or Chicago) to give credit where credit is due.

Make that the reference list and in-text citations are formatted correctly and consistently.

Writing Tips for Military Essays

Research: Investigate your issue in-depth using reliable sources, including academic journals, books, government publications, and reliable websites. Obtain a range of viewpoints to create a comprehensive grasp of the subject.

Creating a Strong Thesis: Create a thesis statement that summarizes your essay’s essential points and is clear and concise. Throughout the essay, specific, contested arguments should support your thesis statement.

Creating an outline or structure for your essay guarantees the concepts are presented logically. Your essay should be broken up into an introduction, a body, and a conclusion. Each paragraph should contain a primary topic or point supporting your thesis.

Using Proper Language: Use a clear, concise, and formal tone when writing. Use proper and suitable military jargon and concepts. Aim to avoid jargon or excessively technical language that could mislead readers unfamiliar with military lingo.

Accurately citing your sources will ensure they receive due credit. Use the APA, MLA, or Chicago citation styles as specified by your instructor or institution. Use in-text citations for direct quotations, paraphrases, and other material that is not well known.

Military essay examples

“The Impact of Military Technology on Modern Warfare” examines how the character of warfare has changed due to developments in military technology, including drones, cyberwarfare, and artificial intelligence, and what this means for military strategy and ethics.

“Leadership Lessons from Historical Military Figures”: Examine the traits and tactics of historic military titans like Sun Tzu, Alexander the Great, and General George Patton, and discuss how they apply to modern military leadership.

Examine the historical development, present difficulties, and prospects for women serving in the armed forces in “The Role of Women in the Military.” Discuss how gender integration has affected military culture and effectiveness.

“The Use of Propaganda in Military Conflicts”: Examine how various countries and their armed forces have used propaganda to sway public opinion, inspire soldiers, and affect the results of military operations.

“Ethical Dilemmas in Modern Warfare”: Examine the moral dilemmas that military personnel face in today’s conflicts, such as the use of drones, the killing of civilians, and torture. Analyze various ethical systems and consider possible answers to these problems.

To incorporate the concept of a capstone project in your military essay, it’s crucial to understand the four essential elements that make up a successful capstone project. These elements include identifying a problem or challenge, conducting in-depth research, developing a comprehensive solution or approach, and presenting your findings through a well-structured and persuasive essay, for example, in “I want to be soldier” Essay .

For a concise and focused military essay, you may employ a 5-paragraph essay format . This format includes an introduction, three body paragraphs discussing key points or arguments, and a conclusion. It allows you to present your ideas clearly and organized, making it easier for readers to follow your thoughts.

Remember to pick a subject that interests you personally and fits the assignment’s or course’s requirements. To make your military essay exciting and instructive, do extensive research, create a fascinating topic, and employ concise, well-structured arguments backed by proof.

⏭ ORDER CUSTOM MILITARY ESSAY ⏮

As a result, military essays are critical in helping us learn more about the military, its history, tactics, and effects on society. They give people a place to conduct research, analyze information, and engage in critical thought, which promotes intellectual development and adds to the body of knowledge in military studies. Whether it’s an argumentative essay on the ethics of war or an expository essay on military technology, these pieces provide insightful analysis.

By diving into the complexities of military themes, we acquire a greater understanding of the sacrifices and difficulties military people face and the broader ramifications of their actions. Military essays provide a way to explore, analyze, and connect with the many facets of the military profession, making them an essential instrument in education, research, and intellectual conversation.

Writing a military essay can be a tricky task. Hence, you should seek professional help. There are various advantages to ordering your essay from WritingMetier . Our staff of expert writers, who specialize in military subjects, guarantees thoroughly researched and excellent articles.

You will receive personalized and unique content punctually provided and treated with strict confidentiality. We are the best option for your essay or military research paper demands because of our commitment to academic brilliance, user-friendly method, and focus on customer happiness.

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Laura Orta is an avid author on Writing Metier's blog. Before embarking on her writing career, she practiced media law in one of the local media. Aside from writing, she works as a private tutor to help students with their academic needs. Laura and her husband share their home near the ocean in northern Portugal with two extraordinary boys and a lifetime collection of books.

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Hoover Military Experts Chart the History of Proxy Wars, from Ancient Greece to Ukraine and Gaza

Hoover fellows and scholars affiliated with the institution’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group explored the history and use of proxy wars, and what they mean for modern great-power competition, at a conference on March 22, 2024.

Hoover Institution (Stanford, CA) – Hoover fellows and scholars affiliated with the institution’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group explored the history and use of proxy wars, and what they mean for modern great-power competition, at a conference on March 22, 2024.

The group talked about proxy wars dating back to ancient Greece, how they led to larger major global conflicts in history, the US experience with proxy wars, and the status of conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza and with Iran’s proxies across the Middle East.

The workshop was chaired by Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow Victor Davis Hanson , and organized by Research Fellow David Berkey and Senior Program Manager Megan Ring.

The workshop featured four presentations: “The Origins and Rules of Proxy Wars,” by Visiting Fellow Paul Rahe ; “Proxy Wars and Cold War Superpowers,” by Distinguished Visiting Fellow Josef Joffe ; “Post–World War II and Middle East Proxy Wars,” with Michael Doran ; and “Ukraine and Gaza,” by Center for Naval Analysis senior research scientist Michael Kofman and Tad and Dianne Taube Senior Fellow Peter Berkowitz .

What Is a Proxy War?

Simply put by the Oxford Dictionary, a proxy war is a “war instigated by a major power which does not itself become involved.”

But, as Paul Rahe explained, not all proxy wars follow that format.

The workshop began with a look at historical proxy wars, focusing in on one such conflict, the Sicilian Expedition of 415 BC, in which Sparta used Syracuse as a proxy to wage war against Athens and Segesta on the island of Sicily.

Proxy wars have come a long way since then, but many of the elements remain the same. Indirect participants can supply arms, money, or actual combatants to the proxy conflict.

These positive reinforcements to influence the conduct of their proxy faction might be complemented or replaced by negative reinforcements, such as using force to compel the proxy to behave the way the major power sees fit.

Throughout the day, participants floated competing definitions of what a proxy war is and when they arise.

One workshop participant suggested that a proxy war is an indirect conflict between two great powers, using smaller states or movements to do the fighting in a less escalatory, possible smaller-scale environment.

Another individual suggested that proxy wars are cheaper and safer ways for major powers to inflict pain on one another as opposed to all-out conflict, especially in the nuclear age.

Participants examined the following questions in determining the characteristics of such conflicts:

Are most proxy wars the product of two smaller states entering into armed conflict, with larger outside players subsequently picking sides because the war outcome will advance their strategic interests? Or are proxy wars most often fought when two great powers are engaged in a strategic rivalry and reach a stalemate, but not wanting to escalate to a state of total war, pick smaller aligned states and encourage them to fight instead?

When is a conflict participant a partner or ally? Does a proxy become a partner or ally when it begins engagement in a war?

The scholars also discussed how the Cold War saw a plethora of proxy wars erupt across the globe between communist and capitalist movements. Major ones included the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and the Angolan Civil War, but there were dozens of smaller conflicts between 1946 and 1991 that qualified as proxy wars.

Do Proxy Wars Work?

In asking whether proxy wars work, attendees replied, in short: yes, but also no.

They work if the outside player can keep control of its proxy, if they can provide stable and ample funding to the proxy, and if they have a well-defined end objective. But such wars can be extremely costly and can also widen into general wars between great powers.

One attendee observed that proxy wars work best when the fighting occurs near an area that could be considered a sanctuary—a region that an opponent would consider too high-risk to deploy its own troops.

Modern examples of sanctuaries include China for the United States during the Korean War; Pakistan for both Soviet and US troops during their respective deployments in Afghanistan; Syria and Iran for US troops during the Iraq War; and Poland for Russian forces in the current Ukraine war.

In each of those instances, the safe adjacent sanctuary territory allowed the proxy a virtually indestructible ability to regenerate and resupply their forces. During the Korean War, North Korean troops could slip into China to avoid being targeted by UN forces. During the Afghanistan campaign, Taliban fighters could retreat into Pakistan to regroup and rearm, with little risk of Pakistani or US pursuit.

Suggestions were made that conflicts such as the Spanish Civil War and the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in the 1930s set the stage for wider confrontations such as the Second World War.

Also mentioned was the fact that the United States itself was once a proxy—fighting for its own independence from Britain with the support of France. Moreover, there were more French soldiers and sailors present at the Battle of Yorktown (1781) than Continental Army troops. In this sense, American troops served as a proxy in the great-power competition between France and Britain.

Today, the United States is engaged in multiple proxy wars: supplying arms to the Ukrainians to repel and degrade the Russian military; supplying arms to Israel so it can dismantle Hamas (an Iranian proxy); and directly confronting a wider array of Iranian proxies in Syria, Iraq, and the Red Sea.

Regarding US engagement in proxy conflicts, some speakers noted that American administrations have unique challenges in prosecuting them.

Unlike authoritarian powers of today such as Russia or China, the United States must justify to its voting public not only the strategic value but also the moral imperative of engaging in such a conflict.

Several attendees said having to argue for the moral good of engaging in such proxy conflicts holds the United States back, compared with its great-power rivals.

Building on this idea, another attendee said that US officials need to better shape the public narrative when engaging in proxy conflicts, especially in online contexts, as it often cedes the argument to voices from its rivals.

Proxy Wars of Today: Iran, Ukraine, and Gaza

Toward the end of the day, attendees heard from Michael Kofman. He provided a detailed outline of the status of the Russia-Ukraine War, including its immediate challenges for both states.

Attendees heard that while the outcome of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not yet determined, it is dependent on several hard choices the Ukrainians, the European Union, and the United States must make in the next three to six months.

Attendees also heard from Peter Berkowitz on the status of the conflict in Gaza.

Berkowitz reviewed the stages of the conflict to date—from the initial days after the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, to the estimated combatant and civilian losses inside Gaza since Israeli troops began their incursion.

He criticized the Israeli government for its poor preparation of defenses along the Gaza border fence and its decision to permit Hamas to operate relatively unimpeded prior to last year’s attack.

In terms of solutions, he said the “least bad option” would be some combination of support from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates in funding a massive reconstruction effort in Gaza while simultaneously helping stand up a local Palestinian leadership apparatus, with Israel retaining the security responsibility for the area.

Others commented that it might be up to twenty years before Gaza has any sort of effective local governance, based on the amount of damage and upheaval it has seen in the last six months.

The situation of Iran and its proxies, and how the United States must contend with them, weaved its way through the day’s discussion.

Several speakers argued that the current US administration has engaged in “strategic timidity” when confronting Iranian proxies such as the Houthi movement, Hezbollah, and the Popular Mobilization Forces of Iraq.

Some participants said that the United States shouldn’t assume that Iran would be deterred by strikes on its proxy forces. They maintained that a more effective deterrence strategy would be to target Iranian advisors and suppliers supporting those proxies in the Middle East.

They also criticized the Biden administration’s continued hopes that Iran will return to multilateral negotiations regarding its nuclear ambitions. They cited this hope for a deal as characteristic of the irresolution of the Biden White House when it considers direct military retaliation against Iran in response to the actions of its proxies.

Scholars discuss the nature of proxy warfare at the Hoover Institution’s Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson speaks at the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Hoover Institution visiting fellow Paul Rahe speaks about the history of proxy warfare in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Hoover Institution distinguished visiting fellow Josef Joffe speaks about proxy warfare during the Cold War at the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran speaks about proxy warfare in the Middle East at the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Michael Kofman, senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, speaks about the challenges Ukraine faces in its war with Russia at the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

Hoover Institution senior fellow Peter Berkowitz speaks about the Israel-Hamas war at the Military History in Contemporary Conflict Working Group Conference in Blount Hall on March 22, 2024.

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The History of Mongol Conquests and Its Military Essay

Introduction.

During the Mongols’ military and political rise, the Mongolian empire made outstanding achievements under Genghis Khan. He invaded Northern and Southern China dynasties, conquering the Jin, Xia, and Song dynasties. The essay explores Sino-European interactions before the Mongols and Song dynasty’s interactions with the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin. In addition, the essay examines the history of Mongol conquests and its military while highlighting the significance and significant points of the Mongolian empire.

Sino-European Interactions before the Mongols

Sino-European interactions are relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the European Union (E.U.). The Chinese traded with their European counterparts before the Mongols. The Roman high classes greatly wanted Chinese silk in exchange for Mediterranean coral and glass valued in China (Lattimore O., and Lattimore. E 54). In the PRC, there were settlements of foreigners in most of the towns, and they played a vital role in the spread of cities and towns beyond the old management centers and assisted in disseminating foreign ideas and objects throughout Chinese land. For instance, the Tang Chinese felt some ambivalence concerning foreigners in their land. They were enthused and fascinated by what Europeans brought, whether material culture or intellectual excitement; however, they did not often trust or like the messenger (Waley-Cohen 10). The interactions appeared to bring some civilization to China because it was possible to attain some powerful sense of the world beyond the PRC from the accounts of European merchants, soldiers, and religious travelers.

Moreover, the Silk Roads came to link China to Europe, which opened a network of trade avenues across Asia and Europe. The borders were open, and travel became easy, making European merchants take advantage while expanding many different religions. Significant travels from Europe to China occurred during the Yuan dynasty before the Mongols. In this period, several delegations traveled from European countries to China as religious leaders, diplomatic ambassadors, and traders (Hanshu 88). In addition, a diplomatic envoy was sent from China to Europe and met with the European kings and the pope (Waley-Cohen 30). Further, before the Mongols conquered China left an in-depth effect on the political, economic, and cultural life of several states and countries throughout Eurasia (O. Lattimore and E. Lattimore 59). Hence, before the Mongols, Sino-European interactions were conducive and favorable to both parties, as the Chinese and Europeans benefited from these interactions.

Song Dynasty’s Interactions with the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin

The interactions of the Song dynasty with the Liao, Western Xia, and Jin were that of adversaries. Jin, the Liao, and the Western Xia were non-Chinese states and enemies of Song in northern China. The three regimes continuously fought against one another, which permitted the Song dynasty to enlarge its borders. Nonetheless, they did not implement a defensive approach against them. The Song frequently came into conflict with the non-Chinese states. A dynasty governed China during the most brilliant cultural epochs (O. Lattimore and E. Lattimore 62). The Song Dynasty alternated between warfare and diplomacy with the Western Xia in the Northwest region and the Liao Dynasty in the Northeast. The Song dynasty applied military force to conquer the Liao and recapture the 16 Prefectures (Waley-Cohen 35). The Liao troops revolted against Song armies and were involved in destructive yearly campaigns in the Northern region of Song until 1005 when they signed the Shanyuan Treaty that determined the northern border conflicts (Waley-Cohen 37). This treaty was a conclusion of successive wars between the Song and Liao dynasties creating peace in the region.

Further, Song won many military victories over the Jin dynasty in the early 11th century, ending in a campaign spearheaded by Shen Kuo. Nonetheless, the campaign failed because the rival military officers disobeyed straightforward orders, and the territory attained from the Western Xia was lost. For approximately 150 years, the outcome of the Song wars was a stalemate (Waley-Cohen 39). They did not conquer their neighbors, Liao, Western Xia, and Jin; however, they lost a substantial area. Thus, they kept their regional integrity and were able to thrive within their boundaries. The Liao dynasty in the Northeast served as a military threat to Song. Their empire extended in the late 900s even though Xia resisted them. In addition, the Song believed that if they attained the Xia region, they might re-establish the profitable Silk Road commerce (Lattimore and Lattimore 65). Fortunately, they won many military battles over the Xia in the 11th century. Further, the combined forces of Song and Jin overwhelmed the Liao dynasty (Waley-Cohen 41). Nevertheless, Jin rose against the Song dynasty capturing its capital city.

The History of Mongol Conquests and Their Military and Its Significance

The Mongol Empire was one of the world’s biggest empires. It began in the Central Asia Steppes before it spread to over 9 million square kilometers. Genghis Khan established this empire around 1200CE when an organization of tribes elected him (Waley-Cohen 43). The Mongolians and the Turkish-speaking were the tribes that formed this territory (Invictus 1). From this point, Khan began to take a sequence of expansions to increase his land and kingdom. The first assignment of his expansion was the His Hsia, located in Northwest China, and then went to the Jin dynasty (Invictus 1). In addition, he managed to conquer the Song dynasty after 319 years of rule.

Further, campaigns of Khan contributed to the fall of Beijing to his leadership, and he included Turkistan in his realm in Central Asia. The efforts shown in his quest for power saw the Mongol empire stretching from the Caspian to China Seas with people of diverse origins, religions, languages, and civilizations. The Mongolians’ nomadic lifestyle and the aspect of using horses made them fierce and swift on the war front. Besides, they adapted to various environments and could survive wherever they were transverse. It offered the best force for the emperor and the Mongolian Empire’s expansion (Invictus 1). They had troops with superior strategy and tactics other than the strength in their numbers. The armies could organize and re-organize to adapt and survive assaults.

The Mongolians were brutal conquerors who smashed everything in their way, and their vast expansion contributed to some environmental effects as many people lost their lives. Hence, a significant depopulation of the conquered territories resulted in vegetation growth cover and a cooling effect on those areas. Mongol empire contributed to the development of the Silk Road as it offered security and created trade to thrive. The leaders served as patrons of the conquered people’s Greta arts, preserving them and leading artists to migrate from Central Asia and the Middle East to Mongolia (Invictus 1). Further, there were significant interactions and exchanges during this era as the Europeans made with Africans and Asians as they traversed the Middle East. It contributed to the exchange of religion, products, ideas, culture, technology, and knowledge (Waley-Cohen 43). Moreover, since they were religious and culturally tolerant people, they permitted the thriving of different religions and cultures across the territory.

It may be summed that each realm was conquered and enlarged into a geographical location where emperors could defend and gain wealth while increasing their influence. Sino-European interactions before the Mongols involved trade, diplomacy, and religious missionaries. Song dynasty’s interactions with Liao, Xia, and Jin were constant aggressive attacks against each other. The Mongolian empire managed to defeat other dynasties such as Song, Xia, and Jin to emerge as one of the largest in the world.

Works Cited

Hanshu, Hou. “Early Chinese Account of the West.” History of the Later Han, 5 th century C.E., 25-220 C.E., pp. 86,88.

Invictus. “ The Mongol Empire .” All Empires: Online History Community , 2001, Web.

Lattimore, Owen, and Eleanor Lattimore. Silks, Spices and Empire: Asia Seen Through the Eyes of Its Discoverers . 3rd ed., Sage Publishers, 1973.

Waley-Cohen, Joanna. The Sextants of Beijing: Global Currents in Chinese History . 7th ed., W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

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Doris Kearns Goodwin and husband Dick Goodwin lived, observed, created and chronicled the 1960s

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Book Review

An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s

By Doris Kearns Goodwin Simon & Schuster: 480 pages, $35 If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org , whose fees support independent bookstores.

“An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s” isn’t precisely the book that presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin set out to write.

Dominating this often fascinating volume is both the colossal presence and the sudden absence of Richard “Dick” Goodwin, Doris’ late husband, whose speechwriting talents defined some of the most memorable moments of the 1960s. The couple’s aim was to co-write a book based on his extraordinary archive — 300 boxes! — of personal papers and curios, from voluminous speech drafts to a shattered police club from the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

Husband and wife spent years perusing and discussing those treasures, an effort short-circuited by his death in 2018, at 86, of cancer. Amid her grief and a move from their rambling home in Concord, Mass., to a Boston condo, Goodwin took up the project on her own.

She describes the result as a hybrid of history, biography and memoir. At its most poignant, “An Unfinished Love Story” is, as the title indicates, an account of personal loss. It also turns out to be a reflection on the process of constructing history, suggesting how time, perspective and stories left unwritten can shape our view of the past.

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Goodwin, the author of award-winning biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt and others, has a nice touch as a storyteller. Here she successfully navigates the awkward feat of weaving together the couple’s gently probing conversations, her husband’s archival documentation, other historical sources and her own reporting.

“An Unfinished Love Story” offers a bird’s-eye view of familiar events, and of a decade marked by both idealism and political violence. “Too often,” Goodwin writes, with her characteristic optimism, “memories of assassination, violence, and social turmoil have obscured the greatest illumination of the Sixties, the spark of communal idealism and belief that kindled social justice and love for a more inclusive vision of America.”

While arguing for this rosier perspective, the book provides nuance and detail on matters such as the origins of the Peace Corps and the Alliance for Progress, Robert F. Kennedy’s private agonies over whether to challenge LBJ for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1968, and Jackie Kennedy’s emotional struggles after her husband’s 1963 assassination. In a 1966 letter from Hawaii, Jackie addresses Dick Goodwin, her close friend, as a fellow “lost soul” and complains of “memories that drag you down into a life that can never be the same.” That is a sentiment that Doris Kearns Goodwin understands.

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She and the then-married Goodwin — with his “curly, disheveled black hair,” “thick, unruly eyebrows” and “pockmarked face” — met at Harvard in 1972, where she taught a popular course on the American presidency. He had left the Johnson administration in 1965, three years before she joined it, and had become disillusioned with the Vietnam War. Despite having penned her own antiwar piece for the New Republic, she would become an LBJ confidante, an aide on his presidential memoirs and a lifelong admirer.

Not just a speechwriter but a policy advisor and political strategist, Dick Goodwin enjoyed a Zelig-like march through 20th century American history. President of the Harvard Law Review and law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, Goodwin worked for two presidents, John F. Kennedy and Johnson, and several would-be presidents, including Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy. He later wrote the concession speech that Al Gore delivered after the Supreme Court stopped the recount of the 2000 presidential election vote in Florida.

According to his widow, Goodwin idolized the coolly self-possessed JFK, fused with LBJ, regarded McCarthy as “the most original mind” he’d encountered in politics and adored RFK, his best friend of the bunch. (No mention is made here of the seamier side of these politicians’ lives, or how their sexual indiscretions bear on their legacies.)

Nearly every Democratic leader seems to have sought the services of the brilliant, cigar-smoking, workaholic Goodwin. But, as “An Unfinished Love Story” makes clear, he was more than a pen for hire. Goodwin had passionately held views about civil rights, the alleviation of poverty and other issues. As Johnson’s principal speechwriter, he helped fashion both the title and the programs of the Great Society. He was responsible for LBJ’s single most powerful speech, on behalf of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which coopted the anthem of the civil rights movement: “We Shall Overcome.”

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Goodwin left the Johnson administration, against the president’s wishes, to pursue a solo writing career. Over time, his public stance against American involvement in Vietnam pitted him against his former boss. “It’s like being bitten by your own dog,” Johnson said of Goodwin’s defection.

Goodwin was, at heart, deeply loyal, his widow suggests, even if he sometimes chose loyalty to principles over personal attachments. On the other hand, when a previously hesitant Bobby Kennedy entered the 1968 Democratic primary race against McCarthy, friendship prevailed, and Goodwin switched sides, as he had earlier warned McCarthy he would. The RFK assassination, following victory in the California Democratic primary (and Martin Luther King Jr.’s murder earlier that year), was shattering for Goodwin, as for so many others.

“An Unfinished Love Story” is at its most moving when it touches on the Goodwins’ long, happy, occasionally contentious marriage; its bumpy origins (after becoming a widower, he wasn’t as ready to commit as she was); and his emotional farewell. Always attuned to relationships, Goodwin is an astute chronicler of her own.

Beyond underlining the brighter side of the 1960s, the archive and the conversations it prompted changed the couple’s views of the two presidents they served. She gained a deeper appreciation of the impact of Kennedy’s idealism, she writes, while her husband moderated his long-standing bitterness toward Johnson. Embedded in that rapprochement is an unstated hope: that more knowledge and informed debate might somehow ease our country’s current political polarization as well.

Julia M. Klein is a cultural reporter and critic in Philadelphia.

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Guest Essay

A Dangerous Game Is Underway in Asia

By Mike M. Mochizuki and Michael D. Swaine

Dr. Mochizuki is a professor at George Washington University. Dr. Swaine is a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

This month, President Biden threw one of the most lavish state dinners in Washington’s recent memory. Celebrities and billionaires flocked to the White House to dine in honor of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida of Japan, posing for photos in front of an elaborate display of Japanese fans. Jeff Bezos dropped by; Paul Simon provided the entertainment.

The spectacle was part of a carefully orchestrated series of events to showcase the renewed U.S.-Japan relationship — and the notable transformation of the United States’ security alliances in Asia. The next day, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. of the Philippines was also in the U.S. capital for a historic U.S.-Japan-Philippines summit, during which a new trilateral security partnership was announced.

Both events were directed at the same audience: China.

Over the past several years, Washington has built a series of multilateral security arrangements like these in the Asia-Pacific region. Although U.S. officials claim that the recent mobilization of allies and partners is not aimed at China, don’t believe it. Indeed, Mr. Kishida emphasized in a speech to Congress on April 11 that China presents “the greatest strategic challenge” both to Japan and to the international community.

China’s recent activity is, of course, concerning. Its military has acquired ever more potent ways to counter U.S. and allied capabilities in the Western Pacific and has behaved aggressively in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere, alarming its neighbors.

But Washington’s pursuit of an increasingly complex lattice of security ties is a dangerous game. Those ties include upgrades in defense capabilities, more joint military exercises, deeper intelligence sharing, new initiatives on defense production and technology cooperation and the enhancement of contingency planning and military coordination. All of that may make Beijing more cautious about the blatant use of military force in the region. But the new alliance structure is not, on its own, a long-term guarantor of regional peace and stability — and could even increase the risk of stumbling into a conflict.

The security partnership rolled out this month in Washington is only the latest in a string of new defense configurations that reach across Asia and the Pacific. In 2017 the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, known as the Quad, was revived, promoting collaboration among the United States, Japan, Australia and India. In September 2021, Australia, Britain and the United States began their partnership, known as AUKUS, and the United States, Japan and South Korea committed to closer cooperation in a summit at Camp David last August.

All of these moves have been motivated primarily by concern over Beijing, which has, in turn, castigated these countries as being part of a U.S.-led effort to create an Asian version of NATO designed to contain China. None amount to a collective defense pact like the NATO treaty, whose Article 5 considers an armed attack on one member as “an attack against them all.” But China will nevertheless almost certainly regard the latest agreement among the United States, Japan and the Philippines — with which it is engaged in an active territorial dispute — as further confirmation of a Washington-led attempt to threaten its interests.

It’s not yet clear how Beijing will respond. But it may double down on the expansion of its military capabilities and intensify its use of military and paramilitary force to assert its territorial claims in the region, especially regarding the sensitive issue of Taiwan. Beijing could also promote further Chinese military cooperation with Russia in the form of enhanced military exercises and deployments.

The net result may be an Asia-Pacific region that is even more divided and dangerous than it is today, marked by a deepening arms race. In this increasingly contentious and militarized environment, the chance of some political incident or military accident triggering a devastating regional war is likely to grow. This is especially likely, given the absence of meaningful U.S. and allied crisis communication channels with China to prevent such an incident from spiraling out of control.

To prevent this nightmare, the U.S. and its allies and partners must invest much more in diplomacy with China, in addition to bolstering military deterrence.

For a start, the United States and key allies like Japan should make a sustained effort to establish a durable crisis prevention and management dialogue with China involving each nation’s foreign policy and security agencies. So far, such dialogues have been limited primarily to military channels and topics. It is critical that both civilian and military officials understand the many possible sources of inadvertent crises and develop ways to prevent them or manage them if they occur. This process should include the establishment of an agreed-upon set of leaders’ best practices for crisis management and a trusted but unofficial channel through which the relevant parties can discuss crisis-averting understandings.

The immediate focus for the United States and Japan should be on avoiding actions that add to tensions across the Taiwan Strait. The deployment of American military trainers to Taiwan on what looks like a permanent basis and suggestions by some U.S. officials and policy analysts that Taiwan be treated as a security linchpin within the overall U.S. defense posture in Asia are needlessly provocative. They also openly contradict America’s longstanding “one China” policy , under which the United States ended the deployment of all U.S. military forces to Taiwan and does not view Taiwan as a key U.S. security location, caring only that the Taiwan issue be handled peacefully and without coercion.

Japan, for its part, has also become more circumspect about its own “one China” policy by being reluctant to reaffirm explicitly that Tokyo does not support Taiwan’s independence. Recent statements by some political leaders in Tokyo about Japanese military forces being ready to help defend Taiwan will almost certainly inflame Chinese leaders, who remember that Japan seized Taiwan after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894 and ’95.

Washington and Tokyo should clearly reaffirm their previous commitments on the China-Taiwan dispute. Tokyo also should confirm that it does not support any unilateral move by Taiwan toward independence and resist U.S. efforts to compel Japan to commit to Taiwan’s defense. Although American officials have reportedly been prodding Japan to join military planning for a Taiwan conflict, a large majority of Japanese residents do not favor fighting to defend Taiwan. Tokyo can best contribute to deterring China by focusing on strengthening its ability to defend its own islands.

Washington and its allies should shift to a more positive approach to China, aimed at fostering accommodation and restraint. This could include working to secure credible mutual assurances regarding limits on Chinese military deployments, such as amphibious forces and missile capabilities relevant to Taiwan, in return for U.S. limits on the levels and types of arms that it sells to the island. They could also explore increasing security cooperation with China regarding cyberattacks, the defense of sea lanes and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, as well as better collaboration to combat climate change and the outbreak of another pandemic.

China, of course, has its own role to play. In the end, Beijing, like the United States, wants to avoid a crisis and conflict in the region. Given that, it should respond to a more cooperative American and allied approach by moderating its own coercive behavior regarding maritime disputes.

None of this will be easy, given the intense suspicion that now exists between Beijing and Washington and its allies. But new thinking and new diplomatic efforts could incentivize China to reciprocate in meaningful ways. At the very least, it’s necessary to try. Focusing on military deterrence alone won’t work. Trying to find a way to cooperate with China is the best way — perhaps the only way — to steer the world away from disaster.

Mike M. Mochizuki is a professor at George Washington University and a nonresident fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Michael D. Swaine is a senior research fellow focusing on China-related security topics at the Quincy Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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How Big Tech and Silicon Valley are Transforming the Military-Industrial Complex

America’s military-industrial complex has been rapidly expanding from the Capital Beltway to Silicon Valley. Although much of the Pentagon’s budget is spent on conventional weapons systems, the Defense Department has increasingly sought to adopt AI-enabled systems. Big tech companies, venture capital, and private equity firms benefit from multi-billion dollar Defense contracts, and smaller defense tech startups that “move fast and break things” also receive increased Defense funding.  This report illustrates how a growing portion of the Defense Department’s spending is going to large, well-known tech firms, including some of the most highly valued corporations in the world.

Given the often-classified nature of large defense and intelligence contracts, a lack of transparency makes it difficult to discern the true amount of U.S. spending diverted to Big Tech. Yet, research reveals that the amount is substantial, and growing. According to the nonprofit research organization  Tech Inquiry , three of the world’s biggest tech corporations were awarded approximately $28 billion from 2018 to 2022, including Microsoft ($13.5 billion), Amazon ($10.2 billion), and Alphabet, which is Google’s parent company ($4.3 billion). This paper found that the top five contracts to major tech firms between 2019 and 2022 had contract ceilings totaling at least $53 billion combined.

From 2021 through 2023, venture capital firms  reportedly  pumped nearly $100 billion into defense tech startup companies — an amount 40 percent higher than the previous seven years combined. This report examines how Silicon Valley startups, big tech, and venture capital who benefit from classified Defense contracts will create costly, high-tech defense products that are ineffective, unpredictable, and unsafe – all on the American taxpayer’s dime.

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Executive Summary >