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"No military" was an actual thing in the United States prior to WWII. See any good bio. of Eisenhower for details
by ArkyBeagle 10y ago
"No military" was an actual thing in the United States prior to WWII. See any good bio. of Eisenhower for details
- sokoloff 10y agoWe've had a navy since 1775.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> We've had a navy since 1775. That's the tradition, but its not entirely true; the Continental Navy was formed in 1775, but disbanded 10 years later in 1785, and it was nearly another decade before the US Navy was formed in 1794.
- sokoloff 10y agoThanks for the fact correction (seriously). In any case, anything in the 18th century is well before Eisenhower... ;)
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoI hope my explanations to the others helps to clarify what I mean. I omitted needful words :)
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoWe have indeed. I didn't mean literally "no military" but we've had extreme drawdowns after every conflict . By "no military" in scare quotes I mean that there was an aversion to a standing army dating back to the Revolution. I was ( apparently overly simplistically) identifying that as a principle. The Legislature literally did not want the Executive to use the standing army as a political tool. Obviously, the inventory ... lag of ships means that we'd have larger navies in some peacetime intervals than others. We only had permanent forces after the advent of the Cold War.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> "No military" was an actual thing in the United States prior to WWII. No, it wasn't. A minimal peacetime army and, for most of its history, a substantial navy -- with reliance on that navy, the oceans, sheer size to provide depth, and the fact that only a small number of countries had land borders to provide mobilization time for the army in time of need was a thing for the US prior to WWII. > See any good bio. of Eisenhower for details Any bio of Eisenhower (or any non-fiction work more generally) that claims the US had no military prior to WWII is, ipso facto, not a good one.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoThere was a vastly reduced military in the interwar period. Not literally "no military". This goes back to the American Revolution. Not having a standing army was really of key importance in the US from the Founding. I would have thought the reference to Eisenhower's bio. would be enough to show that there was some army. The Navy varied dependent on who was in charge.
- dragonwriter 10y ago> There was a vastly reduced military in the interwar period. Sure, but its not even approximately the same as no military (and its much more true of the Army than the Navy, except, IIRC, for two periods -- from the end of the revolution to 1794 when there was little (and, from 1785, no) Navy, and about a decade somewhere around 1870-1880 when there was a very small Navy. From just before the turn of the 20th Century onward, the US at no point didn't have a world class Navy.
- ArkyBeagle 10y agoAgreed. "A moat the size of two oceans" and all that. Thanks for clarifying things.