If the years leading up to World War II were an unlikely success, the years leading up to World War I were a predictable failure, not only because of lax intellectual output by the officer corps, but because of woeful adaptation to new technology. It was, in part, this careful analysis by the rising generation of officers that made the interwar years an “unlikely success story” rather than the dismal failure that many historians depict. Crucially, during the much maligned interwar years prior to the Second World War, students at the Army War College gave rigorous study to the previous global war, making them uniquely prepared to meet the challenges of the next. This tradition remained even as the nature of the Army and of warfare in general changed. As early as the Jefferson Administration, the Army grew into a professional force and built up the educational apparatus at West Point to insure that, when wartime expansion came, those at the top of the chain-of-command would be competent, dedicated leaders capable of forming an effective strategy. In the aftermath of every war, a cadre of career officers remained behind to plan and prepare for the next conflict. While postwar drawdowns historically gutted the enlisted ranks, the officer corps remained more stable. Although far from perfect, the Army has a laudable track record developing these facets in peacetime, regardless of the size of the force, and it has paid off handsomely when war comes. military the envy of the world: intellectual development of the officer corps understanding of the role, and limits, of technology and clear perception of the kinds of challenges the Army will face in the future. In Drawdown, we see the tools that make the U.S. Even where it does have a numerical advantage, the American people will never support the wanton risking of the nation’s soldiers, nor should they. Sheer numbers have value (just ask the German soldiers who invaded the Soviet Union), but the United States is unlikely to possess any such advantage if another conventional war arises in Asia or Eastern Europe. Army so effective, even when it had to rebuild itself at the outset of every war. That does not mean readers should pass over Drawdown, however, for it still offers superb insights into what has historically made the U.S. military is facing a serious reduction anytime soon. Even beyond the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, ongoing tensions in North Korea and a raging civil war in Syria make it unlikely the U.S. The Trump Administration is now looking to give the military a sizable increase in its budget, and given the unstable situation in Afghanistan, American forces will likely remain there for the foreseeable future. The political situation has changed significantly in the interim. Farrell wrote the epilogue in the aftermath of a 2015 announcement that the Army was cutting some 40,000 troops, and in 2016 an Army Times headline ominously warned that its forces were shrinking to pre-World War II levels. Farrell comments on the “inevitable drawdown” facing the Army now that the occupation of Iraq is over and the war in Afghanistan ostensibly winding down. In his epilogue, retired Army colonel Kevin W. has done so on multiple occasions.ĭrawdown is quite clearly intended to speak to contemporary problems. Despite a scathing epilogue that emphasizes a history of short-sighted cutbacks, the overall picture that emerges is one of an army that consistently manages to rise up and meet the challenges of the next conflict, and the reader cannot escape the conclusion that it is in fact possible to manage drawdowns well-indeed, the U.S. In a series of essays authored by some of the leading scholars in military history, Drawdown provides a survey of how the Army confronted postwar reductions and prepared itself for future wars. After every major war there followed a large-scale discharge of volunteers and draftees and the imposition of tight budgetary constraints on the military.ĭrawdown analyzes the history of this process in the U.S. Historically, he is absolutely right-from the earliest years of colonization through 1945 Americans saw sizable armies as a threat to liberty, not the noble guardians of it. Military historian and Iraq War veteran Peter Mansoor opens the volume by asserting that however much Americans might support their troops (or at least claim to), the reality is that once warfighting ends the hard realities of budgets and public opinion will demand a contraction in the size of the armed forces. fights wars, but what it does in their aftermath. “The shrinking of the armed forces is not just an economic necessity but a historical inevitability ” thus opens Drawdown: The American Way of Postwar, a fascinating analysis not of how the U.S.
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