Toward a Consensus on Military Service: Report of the Atlantic Council's Working Group on Military Service compiles the work of several authors who are all members of Working Group on Military service. Each chapter tackles relevant issues regarding the U.S. peacetime military volunteer force, such as its previous experiences and future prospects. The opening chapter covers the setting, which in turn provides a geopolitical overview of the issues faced by the U.S. military. The next chapter discusses the history of American military recruitment system, from colonial times up to the last draft era. Chapter 3 tackles the present and future of the U.S. security requirements, while the next chapter discusses the concept of an all-volunteer force as well as its implications. The fifth chapter provides an analysis of the experience and prospects of military reserves in the all-volunteer era. Chapter 6 discusses the possible repercussions of an all-volunteer forces as well as the possible remedy of such predicament. Chapter 7 explains several recruitment options for both active and reserve forces, while the Chapter 8 discusses the use of a compulsory military service when an all-volunteer system is proven inadequate. The ninth chapter examines the relationship between how the U.S. military builds up its military manpower and how it affects U.S. society both morally and ethically. The last chapter provides recommendation based on the information inferred from the previous chapter.
In this provocative book, Andrew Bacevich warns of a dangerous dual obsession that has taken hold of Americans, both conservatives and liberals alike. It is a marriage of militarism and utopian ideology, of unprecedented military might wed to a blind faith in the universality of American values. This mindset, Bacevich warns, invites endless war and the ever-deepening militarization of U.S. policy. It promises not to perfect but to pervert American ideals and to accelerate the hollowing out of American democracy. In The New American Militarism, Bacevich examines the origins and implications of this misguided enterprise. He shows how American militarism emerged as a reaction to the Vietnam War, when various groups in American society -soldiers, politicians on the make, intellectuals, strategists, Christian evangelicals, even purveyors of pop culture-came to see the revival of military power and the celebration of military values as the antidote to all the ills besetting the country as a consequence of Vietnam and the 1960s. The upshot, acutely evident in the aftermath of 9/11, has been a revival of vast ambitions, this time coupled with a pronounced affinity for the sword. Bacevich urges Americans to restore a sense of realism and a sense of proportion to U.S. policy. He proposes, in short, to bring American purposes and American methods-especially with regard to the role of the military-back into harmony with the nation's founding ideals. For this edition, Bacevich has written a new Afterword in which he considers how American militarism has changed in the past five years. He explores in particular how this ideology has functioned under Barack Obama, who ran for president on a campaign based on hope for change and for a new beginning. Despite such rhetoric, Bacevich powerfully suggests, the attitudes and arrangements giving rise to the new American militarism remain intact and inviolable as ever.
We are in the midst of a Dwight Eisenhower revival. Today pundits often look to Eisenhower as a model of how a president can govern across party lines and protect American interests globally without resorting too quickly to the use of force. Yet this mix of nostalgia and frustration with the current polarized state of American politics may mislead us. Eisenhower’s presidency has much to teach us today about how a president might avert crises and showdowns at home or abroad. But he governed under conditions so strikingly different from those a chief executive faces in the early 21st century that we need to question how much of his style could work in our own era. The chapters in this volume address the lessons we might draw from the Eisenhower experience for presidential leadership today. Although most of the authors find much to admire in the Eisenhower record, they express varying opinions on how applicable his approach would be for our own time. On one side, they appreciate his limited faith in the power of his words to move public opinion and his reluctance to turn to the use of force to solve international problems. On the other side, it was plain that Ike’s exercise of “hidden-hand” leadership (in Fred Greenstein’s evocative term) would not be possible in the modern media environment that makes Washington a giant fishbowl and instant revelation an acceptable norm. Both Eisenhower admirers and skeptics (and many of the authors are both) will find much in these essays to reinforce their preconceptions – and much that is unsettling. Eisenhower emerges as an effective but flawed leader. He was in many ways the right man for his time, but limited because he was also a man of his time.
This book is a collection of papers that resulted from a series of studies initiated by the Atlantic Council of the United States in 1974. The papers deal with various aspects of achieving adequate collective and cooperative efforts to deal with key contemporary problems of a transnational nature.
The European Security Study (ESECS) published its Report on "Strengthening Conventional Deterrence in Europe" in May 1983. The Study was prompted by concern about the relation of NATO dependence on the early use of nuclear weapons to its primary purpose of maintaining secure peace with freedom in the NATO region.
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