America’s wars, from the Revolution onwards, have shaped the country’s technological capabilities, expanded its geographic reach and enhanced its global role.
By Daniel Serwer
America’s wars,
from the Revolution onwards, have shaped the country’s technological
capabilities expanded its geographic reach and enhanced its global role.
Image Attribute: Soldiers of 1st
Brigade Combat Team, 34th Infantry Division salute the American flag as the
United States anthem is being played during their departure ceremony at
historic Fort Snelling May 22, 2011. 1st
BCT will be deploying to Kuwait in support of Operation New Dawn. Source: DoD , Flickr Creative Commons
America’s
independence from Great Britain was established in law by the Revolution and in
fact by the War of 1812. The America that emerged from the Revolution was
determined to avoid “entangling alliances,” especially in Europe, and to focus
on exploring and defining its own territory. It was still an outpost, not
a power. The War of 1812 is little remembered in the United States except
for the burning of Washington DC and the composition of the Star-Spangled Banner.
But there were more far-reaching consequences. The country developed its
own technological capacities, especially in cotton manufacturing, to replace
British goods. The United States came to recognize that it would continue
to need military capabilities, including a substantial navy and professional
army officers, provided by West Point. The formerly contentious issue of
America’s border with Canada was settled, and the conquest of Indian lands in
the mid-West was begun. Whether the war was a victory or a defeat is
still debated, but America was a much more self-confident and secure nation
after the Treat of Ghent than it had been before.
The Mexican War
of 1846-48 and the Gadsden Purchase of 1853 settled America’s southern border
and opened up the West to mass migration, the Indian wars, and railroads, which
were vital to America’s growth as a continental power. The Mexican War
also marked the first successful projection of American ground forces into a
foreign country, with the occupation of Mexico City by forces that included
many of the generals who later fought for both North and South in the Civil
War. Americans have forgotten, but the Mexicans have not, a pattern that
would be repeated in the future.
The Civil War,
though catastrophic in human and material losses, likewise shaped an America
more powerful than the one that preceded it. Slavery was legally
abolished but exploitation of former slaves continued in many guises.
More than the South, the war economically reshaped the North, whose war-stimulated
manufacturing made the United States a global industrial power for the first
time. The Federal Government, before the war less important in many
respects than the governments of the individual states, began to acquire many
functions that make it the dominant governing structure in the United States
today.
It was not until
war with Spain in 1898 and the subsequent colonization of the Philippines, Guam
and Puerto Rico, as well as the less formal domination of Cuba, that the United
States began to become a world power capable of serious international
intervention. Its well-equipped navy was the essential instrument.
While America
hesitated to intervene in World War I, its eventual deployment on the side of
the Allies was decisive. The American Expeditionary Force under General
Pershing tipped the scales in favor of Britain and France, but President Wilson
failed in his efforts to extend America’s reach in the post-war period through
the League of Nations. In World War II, the United States likewise tilted
the balance in favor of the Allies in Europe with both manpower and air
supremacy, even as it used atomic weapons to end the Japanese challenge to
American domination of the Pacific. In the post-war period, President
Truman succeeded where Wilson had failed: the United Nations established
a multilateral framework that served U.S. purposes and provided a global
governance structure for the superpower competition known as the Cold War.
America fought
Communist powers twice during the Cold War: first in Korea, to a draw
that allowed the South to remain non-Communist; then in Vietnam, where a
similar effort at division of the country into Communist and non-Communist
North and South failed, as the U.S. faced a determined guerrilla struggle that
viewed itself as fighting for independence and unity of the country. The
Vietnam failure made the United States hesitant about international
intervention and unwilling to fight guerrilla wars.
In its
aftermath, the Weinberger and later the Powell Doctrines sought to limit the
conditions under which the United States would intervene militarily
abroad. American military doctrine virtually erased guerrilla warfare and
counterinsurgency operations. The American military, professionalized and
therefore no longer subject to draftee resistance, could only be committed if
vital U.S. interests (or those of its allies) were at stake, and then only
wholeheartedly, with clear and achievable political and military objectives,
and with a reasonable assurance of support from the American people and
Congress. Force was explicitly a last resort. Powell also
required a clear exit strategy once fighting ended.
Desert Storm
demonstrated that successful intervention was feasible in the post-Cold War
World, provided there was both an international mandate and overwhelming
force. The UN Security Council provided a clear mandate to use “all
necessary means” to liberate Kuwait from Iraqi occupation. The war was
fought in accordance with Powell’s view that overwhelming force should be
brought to bear, and a clear exit strategy maintained. This was done with
a combination of more traditional tanks and massive manpower as well as with
high-tech laser-guided bombs and other advanced weaponry, followed by a quick
retreat without taking Baghdad.
Intervention in
Bosnia and Kosovo showed that “economy of force” operations conducted from the
air, with local forces on the ground, are possible even without a strong
international mandate, though the eventual outcomes were negotiated resolutions
that fell short of complete success.
The overall
pattern is clear: each American war has extended the country’s physical
reach and technological capacity to project power, shaped its post-war role and
increased its weight in world affairs.
Will the
Afghanistan and Iraq wars follow this same pattern? Or has something
fundamental changed?
About The Author:
Daniel Serwer is a professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of
Advanced International Studies and director of its Conflict Management Program,
as well as a Senior Fellow in the Center for Transatlantic Relations and a
Scholar at the Middle East Institute.
Formerly Vice President of the Centers of Innovation at the United
States Institute of Peace, he oversaw the Institute’s work in rule of law,
religion and peacemaking, sustainable economies, media and conflict, and
science, technology and peace-building, as well as security sector governance
and gender.
As USIP Vice
President for Peace and Stability Operations, Serwer worked on preventing
inter-ethnic and sectarian conflict in Iraq and served as the executive director
of the Iraq Study Group. He facilitated
dialogue between Serbs and Albanians in the Balkans. He came to USIP as a
senior fellow working on Balkan regional security in 1998-1999. Before that, he
was a minister-counselor at the Department of State, where he won six
performance awards. As State Department director of European and Canadian
analysis in 1996-1997, he supervised the analysts who tracked Bosnia and Dayton
implementation as well as the deterioration of the security situation in
Albania and Kosovo.
Serwer served
from 1994 to 1996 as U.S. special envoy and coordinator for the Bosnian
Federation, mediating between Croats and Muslims and negotiating the first
agreement reached at the Dayton peace talks. From 1990 to 1993, he was deputy
chief of mission and chargé d’affaires at the U.S. Embassy in Rome, where he
led a major diplomatic mission through the end of the Cold War and the first
Gulf War.
Publication Details:
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originally published at peacefare.net by Daniel Serwer LLC is
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