Military History Capstone

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

Two years earlier, America’s military preparedness was not that of a nation expecting to go to war. In 1939, the United States Army ranked thirty-ninth in the world, possessing a cavalry force of fifty thousand and using horses to pull the artillery. Many Americans — still trying to recover from the decade-long ordeal of the Great Depression — were reluctant to participate in the conflict that was spreading throughout Europe and Asia. President Roosevelt did what he could to coax a reluctant nation to focus its economic might on military preparedness. If the American military wasn’t yet equal to the Germans or the Japanese, American workers could build ships and planes faster than the enemy could sink them or shoot them

If it weren’t for the War of 1812, the U.S.’s military may have never improved as it did at the end of the war, and it would not have become as systematized. Americans started acknowledging the true sensation of nationalism after the war. The War of 1812 gave the U.S. military control, a powerful economy, which had less dependence, and the self-assurance to expand its

The Army’s success in battles becomes a product of its readiness, training, and equipment and of course its size. In the American history, the success of the first battles was a product of combination of all the mentioned factors and especially reduction of the military numbers. Due to the public’s will and pressure for downsizing the force after conflicts and increasing the number right before the following conflicts, the will to repair the damage already done was almost obsolete. In his article, Dunn (2013) mentions, “public reaction to the US first battles served as a catalyst for repairing the state of the Army”. The downsizing routine followed after Cold War period, in order to match the proper rate of forces on the evolving and complicated environment.

This book by Otis A. Singletary deals with different aspects of the Mexican war. It is a compelling description and concise history of the first successful offensive war in United States military history. The work examines two countries that were unprepared for war. The political intrigues and quarrels in appointing the military commanders, as well as the military operations of the war, are presented and analyzed in detail. The author also analyzes the role that the Mexican War played in bringing on the U.S. Civil War.

As acknowledge in the paragraph above the authors of this third edition book are Allan R. Millett, Peter Maslowski, and William B. Feis and they completely revised and expanded the book by adding more events and details of the American military experience in the Balkans and Somalia,by analyzing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan from 2001 to 2012, and by providing two new chapters on the Vietnam War.All of the authors of this history book are well educated and obviously know a lot about the history of the United States. Millet is a “University Research Professor,Ambrose Professor of History, and Director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University

For the Common Defense A military history of the United States from 1607 to 2012 (Third ed., p. 714). New York: Free

Wayne Wei-Siang Hsieh is a professor of history at the United States Naval Academy, his work, West Pointers and the Civil War, attempts to explain the development of both Union and Confederate armies during the American Civil War. He begins with examining the development of the U.S. Army between the War of 1812 and the Mexican War. Citing the need and development of a, albeit small, professional Army following the tactical embarrassments of the war with Britain. Hsieh explains how, after the reforms that followed the War of 1812, the U.S. Army was able to attain a decisive victory against Mexico in 1846. In the post Mexican War there were changes, if not straight creation, of infantry, artillery, and cavalry doctrine. This doctrine developed

The U.S. Constitution provides power to the President and Congress to develop and enact national security policy (Ulrich, 1). As such our civilian leaders have the right and responsibility to maintain oversight of the military. Two civil-military relations theories, Normal and Clausewitzian, offer competing views. The Normal theory suggests officers are professionals and interference from civilian leaders is inappropriate (Cohen, 4). The Clausewitzian theory contends the statesman may inject himself in any aspect of military strategy since

In 1878 after the publication of his book the Armies of Asia and Europe, Upton would turn his attention to the completion of reforming the American military policy. Upton’s publication explained his view of the history of the American military the shortcomings and failures that endangered the nation. The reform Upton proposed for expanding the Army organization, was an effort to apply the lessons learned from previous American conflicts as well as his observations from other nation’s armies during his career. Lessons learned is a term we frequently use in today’s military. We conduct After Action Reviews for every event, task, mission, and operation conducted. The point is to learn from

Texas A&M at its core is a senior military academy, with a rich history of producing leaders for our nation’s finest. Since our inception in 1876, there have been Texas Aggies fighting, and dying, in every American conflict. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the involvement of aggies who served in World War I, and specifically, the contribution made by Jesse L. Easterwood to the University, state of Texas, and our nation. When regarding our schools history, specifically with World War I, we saw an entire senior class drop out, and we fly 55 flags at every home football game to remember those who never came back to this great school.

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

Through this brief conflict the American Military was able, again to find weakness in its mobilization and preparedness in the army. Finding these types of weaknesses in these conflicts is essential for the

Military Professionalism cannot be incontestably defined, unless it is phrased in terms of what it seeks to address: the relationship between the civilian and military spheres and the traditions and skills necessary to conduct effective exercises of power on behalf of the state. Thus, Military Professionalism may be defined as any combination of behaviors, traits, values, and skills which lead to an optimal outcome in these categories. Huntington and Janowitz differ insofar as they attempt to describe different methods by which Military Professionalism is arrived at, though their core metrics are similar insofar as they agree upon the existence of an optimal level of power for the military to possess in relation to the civilian government.

Military history is a humanities discipline within the scope of general historical recording of armed conflict in the history of humanity, and its impact on the societies, their cultures, economies and changing intra and international relationships.