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On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change): > […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It wa
by throw0101d 6mo ago
On the changes to US military organization and thinking post-WW2 (and the name change):
> […] The United States has a Department of Defense for a reason. It was called the “War” Department until 1947, when the dictates of a new and more dangerous world required the creation of a much larger military organization than any in American history. Harry Truman and the American leaders who destroyed the Axis, and who now were facing the Soviet empire, realized that national security had become a larger undertaking than the previous American tradition of moving, as needed, between discrete conditions of “war” and “peace.”
> These leaders understood that America could no longer afford the isolationist luxury of militarizing itself during times of threat and then making soldiers train with wooden sticks when the storm clouds passed. Now, they knew, the security of the country would be a daily undertaking, a matter of ongoing national defense, in which the actual exercise of military force would be only part of preserving the freedom and independence of the United States and its allies.
* https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/09/defense-war-cringe-department/684112/ https://archive.is/https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive...
The author is a retired professor from the US Naval War College:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)
- reactordev 6mo agoAh yes, the administration’s love of Axis of Allies, or is it allies of axis? They don’t know, they got distracted by the mustaches and the desire to conquer the world.
- spwa4 6mo agoYou do realize that the Axis (Nazi Germany, Japan) were attacking everyone with the explicitly stated goal of conquering the world (and subjecting it to the holocaust, we might add), and US stopped them, conquered Europe, North Africa, half the Pacific, and nothing has been able to stop the US military since. And the US ... retreated. We might add, the Soviets, the other axis, did not retreat. China did not retreat. Both of them started killing people to keep their conquests. I mean, there's no shortage of stuff that the US did wrong and US made mistakes. This was not one of them.
- reactordev 6mo agoMy point was that this administration seems to like the axis plan more than the original US/Allied plan. I'm fully aware of which side was which. Tell that to Hegseth and Miller.
- oblio 6mo agoI think OP is talking about the current administration.
- reactordev 6mo agoNo one reads anymore
- deleted 6mo ago[deleted]
- cogman10 6mo agoThe US did not retreat. We fought multiple wars to maintain our power and influence. We toppled multiple regimes to maintain puppet governments. Very much the same as the USSR and China have done. Vietnam, Korea, Iran, Iraq, Cuba, Guatemala, Haiti, etc. US conquest was quiet similar to British conquest. They didn't make their conquered people citizens (that'd make things tricky for exploitation) so instead they make sure the "democracies" they spread elected the right leaders who just so happen to align with US interests. There's a reason the US has military bases across the globe. It's not because they've retreated from their subservient states.