Dissertation Information for David T. Fautua NAME: - David T. Fautua
DEGREE:
- Ph.D.
DISCIPLINE:
- History
SCHOOL:
- University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (USA) (2006)
ADVISORS: - Richard H. Korn
COMMITTEE MEMBERS: - Michael H. Hunt - Alex Roland - Joseph T. Glatthaar - R. Don Higginbotham
MPACT Status: Fully Complete
Title: An army for the 'American century': The origins of the Cold War United States Army, 1949--1959
Abstract: There is admittedly a sense of historical mythology, if not scholarly arrogance, embedded in the title of this work that requires some explanation. Any title that purports a particular Army establishment of the United States would be so uniquely representative of the Cold War era of the latter half of the 20 th Century which is, in turn, advertised as the "American Century," and would therefore deserve a history on its "origins" does, indeed, raise questions as to the authenticity of its uniqueness or grand claim as " The 'American Century' Army." And yet that is precisely the challenge of this study. To put in a more scholarly way, the argument and evidence offered here describes an Army establishment of the 1950s that is so unique in its organizational, institutional and intellectual origins as to represent a fundamental break from any previous U.S. Army establishment since the American Revolution.
Though few Americans might actually remember that the term "American Century" was coined by Time publisher Henry Luce in a 1941 editorial urging the United States to enter World War II to defend democratic values, most would, and indeed have, nevertheless internalized the mythology of the 20 th Century as the "American Century." Such a nationalistic embrace is understandable given the United States' "rise to globalism" in the 20 th Century, as historian Stephen Ambrose coined America's dominance, politically, internalized the mytholo economically and militarily. Terms like "Greatest Generation" and "World's Good Samaritan" deepened the mythology of a United States "saving" the world from Fascism and later Communism. The rise of America's armed forces during the 20 th Century, and particularly its role during the Cold War in establishing for the United States what another historian, Melvin Leffler, described as "Preponderant Power," also contributed significantly to the mythology. Indeed, by the end of OPERATION DESERT STORM in 1991, marking the historical punctuation to the end of the Cold War, few observers around the world could deny the unchallenged global dominance of the United States military---and particularly the US Army.
But where there exist voluminous studies on the historiography of the purpose, organization and origins of US Army establishments in every previous period of great challenge to the nation from an external threat since the American Revolution to DESERT STORM, the historiography is silent on the origins of the US Army of the Cold War era. The historical lacuna is startling considering America's preponderance during the Cold War had so much to do with the rise in power of the US military with its seemingly permanent presence around the world and where the majority of its members were American soldiers. Equally interesting was the notion that such a significantly large standing Army could actually exist in what was otherwise considered a period of nominal peace. The overwhelming emphasis of the nation's priority during the Cold War was on building its economic prosperity, not military establishment and certainly not a large standing army. Thus two fundamental historical questions stand out. How did such a large Army in the Cold War come to be? And, more significantly, how was such a large force structure of regulars able to despite an enduring American prejudice against maintaining a large standing Army in peacetime?
The historical anomaly suggested in the latter question is generally explained away by most historians by the fact that the United States was fighting a Cold War , one that "required" a strong standing Army. Indeed, the general view among historians is that the Korean War (1950-1953) served to "militarize" the Cold War, opening the way for supporting and funding a large conventional standing force. In this way the American penchant for keeping a small peacetime Army was overturned. But nothing could be further from the historical truth. In fact, the Cold War was primarily a political and economic war, not military. Moreover, both the Administrations of President Harry S. Truman (1945-1953) and Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953-1960) did everything in their power to avoid any substantial investment in conventional military forces, specifically the Army. It must be recalled, too, that the prevailing national security policy from 1945 to 1960, the formative years of the Cold War, did not rely on conventional forces but rather on Strategic Air Power, the Air Force's ability to deter Communist aggression around the world with the threat of atomic bombing on the Soviet homeland. In other words, both Administrations favored machines over men to fight Communism. Yet despite their determination to prevent a massive Army buildup, the Cold War US Army that emerged by the end of the 1950s was the most powerful peacetime force ever, with a staggering forty percent of its organizations forward deployed around the world not only to deter the Soviet Army but also to advance the interest and ambitions of the United States on a global scale. In other words, the Army of the Cold War had a political raison d'ĂȘtre for existence---and for a global mission---that went far beyond a military "necessity." This feature made the Cold War Army unique as no parallel example of a similar peacetime establishment had ever existed in U.S. military history. Additionally, what should have been a historical anomaly in the 1950s---maintaining a large standing Army in peacetime---was not only overturned in large measure by the generals of the Cold War US Army, it actually became a model for the "norm" ever since the end of the 1950s right up to the present post-Cold War era of American Superpowerdom.
Thus to answer the question on this historical anomaly, it is necessary first to discover the intellectual and organizational underpinnings of the Army of the Cold War; or more precisely, the "origins" of its purpose. Was it designed primarily to deter a war that was primarily a political-economic struggle or primarily to win a war that was then defined by an age of atomic weaponry? Or was it organized to do both: first deter war, but capable of winning should deterrence fail. As will be shown here, the generals of the Cold War Army faced the dilemma of actually having to decide between deterrence and combat readiness. Their decisions produced very different designs and organizational force structures that greatly influenced the security policies of the United States. One such force structure was the controversial Pentomic Division of the mid 1950s, whose design was known to be ineffective as a combat organization by top Army leaders at the time but nevertheless was developed, funded, fielded and touted as "new" and "significant" to America's fight against Communism. Why?
Because "it saved the Army," was how General William G.T. Tuttle, the Commander of the U.S. Army Materiel Command (1989-1992), surprisingly described the Pentomic design. He shared this remarkable---and seemingly counterintuitive---comment in the spring of 1990 during an impromptu discussion on the significance of the Post-Cold War peacetime period in a group of majors attending the Army's Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Normally a four-star would not have visited such a small group except that General Tuttle was accommodating a favor of his former aide-de-camp who (lucky for us) was a member of our student seminar. The end of the Cold War that DESERT STORM would signal was still a year away. But the victory over Soviet Communism was felt as clearly as was the uncertainty of the Army's institutional challenges in the postwar peace. It was to this point that General Tuttle was thinking when he harkened back on an earlier generation's response to a similar challenge in the post-Korean War period.
Few of us at the time understood the significance of General Tuttle's meaning or of the context under which his recollections were cast. What follows is hopefully a starting point toward understanding the full sense of his perplexing meaning and the historical uniqueness of the Cold War U.S. Army.
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MPACT Scores for David T. Fautua A = 0
C = 0
A+C = 0
T = 0
G = 0
W = 0
TD = 0
TA = 0
calculated 2009-04-19 22:05:17
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