Synopses & Reviews
The advent of the all-volunteer force and the evolving nature of modern warfare have transformed our military, changing it in serious if subtle ways that few Americans are aware of. Edited by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian David M. Kennedy, this stimulating volume brings together insights from a remarkable group of scholars, who shed important new light on the changes effecting today's armed forces.
Beginning with a Foreword by former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry, the contributors take an historical approach as they explore the ever-changing strategic, political, and fiscal contexts in which the armed forces are trained and deployed, and the constantly shifting objectives that they are tasked to achieve in the post-9/11 environment. They also offer strong points of view. Lawrence Freedman, for instance, takes the leadership to task for uncritically embracing the high-tech Revolution in Military Affairs when "conventional" warfare seems increasingly unlikely. And eminent psychiatrist Jonathan Shay warns that the post-battle effects of what he terms "moral wounds" currently receive inadequate attention from the military and the medical profession. Perhaps most troubling, Karl Eikenberry raises the issue of the "political ownership" of the military in an era of all-volunteer service, citing the argument that, absent the political protest common to the draft era, government decision-makers felt free to carry out military operations in both Iraq and Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich goes further, writing that "it's no longer our army; it hasn't been for years; it's theirs [the government's] and they intend to keep it."
Looking at such issues as who serves and why, the impact of non-uniformed "contractors" in the war zone, and the growing role of women in combat, this volume brings together leading thinkers who illuminate the American military at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
Review
"Academic yet accessible, this volume offers thoughtful and occasionally disturbing insights into the workings of the world's most powerful war machine." --Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
The Modern American Military is composed of essays surveying the mission and character of the United States armed forces in the twenty-first century. Authors examine force configuration, composition, doctrine, and training, as well as questions of who serves and why, the nature of modern warfare, the relation of the military to civil society, and its role in the institutional structure that constitutes the national security apparatus. As appropriate, the essays take an historical approach, emphasizing the strategic, technological, and cultural factors that have made the modern U.S. armed forces distinctive, both with respect to their own national antecedents and with respect to other nations' contemporary military establishments.
About the Author
David M. Kennedy is the Donald J. McLachlan Professor of History at Stanford University and the Director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West. He won the Bancroft Prize for Birth Control in America: The Career of Margaret Sanger, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Over Here: The First World War and American Society, and won the Pulitzer Prize for History for Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929-1945. He is also the editor of the renowned Oxford History of the United States.
Table of Contents
1. The Counterrevolution in Strategic Affairs
Lawrence Freedman
2. The U.S. Armed Forces' View of War
Brian McAllister Linn
3. Weapons: The Growth and Spread of the Precision-Strike Regime
Thomas G. Mahnken
4. American Military Culture from Colony to Empire
Robert L. Goldich
5. Manning and Financing the Twenty-First-Century All-Volunteer Force
David R. Segal and Lawrence J. Korb
6. Military Contractors and the American Way of War
Deborah Avant and René e de Nevers
7. Filming War
Jay Winter
8. The Future of Conscription: Some Comparative Reflections
James Sheehan
9. Whose Army?
Andrew J. Bacevich
10. Reassessing the All-Volunteer Force
Karl W. Eikenberry
11. Military Justice
Charles J. Dunlap Jr.
12. Women in the U.S. Military: The Evolution of Gender Norms and Military Requirements
Michelle Sandhoff and Mady Wechsler Segal
13. Casualties
Jonathan Shay
Index