American Conflicts - Research Paper Example

American Conflicts Introduction The American Revolution The American Revolution was staged by American colonists to gain independence from Great Britain. There are several interpretations on the American Revolution on how it was fought and for whom. The American Revolution was “a political revolution that had social consequences,” and was not merely a series of events with political and military implications. This was a thesis advocated by Jameson. (Young, 2011, p. 16) The revolution was a series of events, or a stream and had to spread far and wide. There was a rapid growth of American nationalism in the period leading to independence, expressed in writings on Washington and his comrades in arms. The Revolution was seen as a war of independence. There are several stages in a revolution. One stage is that “the various fibres are knit together” and you have to stretch some parts while loosening the other parts. There can several analogies of a revolution. But one thing is certain, there has to be change. Revolution is change, and the change can be in the system, in the method and the ways of ruling. The social consequences of a revolution are not the result of the wishes and plans of those who started the revolution but by the desires of those who are in control. The American Revolution was started by only a few compared to the population at that time. It was started by a numerical minority, “just like the Viet cong” (Morris, 1969), although by the end of the revolution, majority of the colonists may have supported the struggle against Great Britain. The war between the Patriots and Tories resembled like the Vietnam-Vietcong conflict. The Americans sought foreign aid instead of foreign alliance. John Adams warned that alliances would entrap America in future European wars. However, the French pushed an alliance on the Americans, which had many consequences. For instance, the French did not want a second American invasion of Canada, and the French did not want the new United States full control of the North American continent because they had the fishing rights in the Mississippi (Morris, 1969, p. 350). The Civil War Wars mar the history of a nation. The Civil War in America’s history, which marked its 150th year in 2011, tested the American spirit. What seemed too old is still fresh in our history books because it was a traumatic period in the annals of the growth of a nation. Civil wars and conflicts are never pleasant to anyone’s memory. It was a brutal blood confrontation of a people that ended slavery in the United States. In 1791, a revolution known as the Whiskey War was started. Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton enforced what was considered a bitter pill for whiskey farmers, imposing a 25% excise tax for whiskey distilleries. The farmers, later known as “Whiskey Boys,” refused to pay the tax and soon about 75 whiskey distillers faced trial for tax evasion. From this simple case, the small band of Whiskey Boys attacked the tax collectors. There was exchange of fire and some properties belonging to a tax collector were burned down. The Whiskey Boys created chaos and rambled home but the rebellion sizzled (Vandiver, 2005, p. 1). President George Washington was determined to enforce his constitutional mandate but had to use militia because his general, General Anthony Wayne, was away fighting troublesome Indians in the Northwest Territory. Washington had legal grounds to activate the militia into an effective force under a congressional act of 1792. He then issued a proclamation to activate the militia in 1794. But there were problems with supplies and in troop leadership. Some states decided to lead their own troops. The American militiamen were derided by regulars, British and American, and even by the people, but they later evolved into the modern National Guards (Vandiver, 2005). Militias were respected because of their heroic performance but they had an image of being a weak force lacking in training. The Whiskey Boys gained sympathies from western Maryland in which Governor Thomas Lee had to stop a small rebellion. Then there was another rebellion in Virginia but was suppressed by Virginia governor “Light Horse Harry” Lee. Richard Howell of New Jersey met a small force so easily with his efficient militia. The states had to mobilize a force of 14,000 to be sent to the mountains. Food and supplies became a problem. The militia had to be formed as the Constitutional Convention did not want to create a United States military force because it was against the principles of liberty. Washington named the assembled force the Army of the Constitution with “Light Horse Harry” Lee in charge. The lesson from the pockets of rebellion was that the United States protected itself by forming militias and despite these being disorganized they could be used to establish armies. The Whiskey War proved that campaigns can be won with a large force (Vandiver, 2005, p. 4). The American Civil War The American Civil War was for absolute change; the Southern States aimed for separation or absolute independence, while the Northern States aimed for absolute union. The causes and circumstances involved were somewhat related with Haiti’s Declaration of Independence. This Atlantic country’s independence was a symbolic start of a racial and social revolution that shook the countries propagating slavery. The Haitian Revolution impacted heavily on the United States. The American people faced the racial paradox in those times preceding the Civil War. It was a brutal and bloody war which reminded the Americans of the Haitian Revolution and the legendary black general Toussaint Louverture (Clavin, 2007). African Americans identified themselves with Haiti and Toussaint was “the touchstone of a transatlantic identity, which transcended both time and space as it joined their violent struggle for freedom and equality to a black revolutionary tradition that was deeply rooted in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world” (Clavin, 2006, p. 88). White abolitionists helped in building this notion because when they saw armed and uniformed black men, they also imagined “American Toussaints, committed, disciplined, and talented slave soldiers who were eager to both die and kill for freedom” (Clavin, p. 88). Touissaint and the Haitian Revolution became revolutionary symbols and subversive ideology that challenged the “white supremacist ideas” that supported slavery and the American republic. Men do not have control of modern war but they are controlled by it. The circumstances surrounding the outbreak of hostilities in the Civil War were well known all throughout many states. There was talk of “Disunited States” since 1856. The Civil War looked like an old-fashioned war in which some parts of the war resembled World War I than to the American Revolution. But it was a “modern war” because technical aspects were used in the way it was fought. The modern techniques changed the conditions under which future wars would be fought. For example, the weapons used in the civil war were provided with a crude term, a musket for the infantry man’s weapon. Musket means “a muzzle-loading smoothbore,” but within a year after the civil war had begun, the infantrymen were already carrying rifles. The new weapons were muzzle-loaders but different from the traditional ones, the old smoothbore, which had an effective range of one hundred yards. (Catton, 1986) The traditional weapon could not hit an enemy at a distance of a hundred and fifty yards or more. In the old fighting system, the assaulting team was always on a fixed bayonet to get ready for a hand-to-hand fighting; in other words, their weapons were almost useless. Only the assaulting team with greater number and adequately massed was close to being successful. The old smoothbore had shorter effective range but was more effective than the infantry musket. During a fight, the defensive line had the advantage if they had enough guns arranged in a defensive proper spot, but the offensive can have the cavalry charge where the cavalry squadron could use their sabres to finish the gunners. The use of new effective rifles was introduced only in 1861, but before that infantry drill and training for new recruits were based on rifles of limited range and the generals who provided the tactics based their thinking on those kinds of weapons. When weapons changed, the entire art of warfare had to change too (Catton, 1986). The use of the rifle Springfield or Enfield altered the way of warfare. The Springfield, a predecessor of the Garand rifle, was more advanced than the old smoothbore. Today it is just a museum piece but it helped change the course of history through the art of effective fighting. With the new Civil War rifle, an enemy could be hit from even up to a mile distance. Opposing armies of the Civil War reported that close-quarter battle was effective than with the use of the old smoothbore weapons. Engagement could be decided within a short distance. With the Springfield sharpshooters were effective in destroying defensive lines. The infantry’s increased effective range was more feared than the artillery. This was also true with the cavalry which was used to attack the infantry; but now with the rifle’s effective range, the cavalry was sure to be destroyed if it attacked a formed infantry. The cavalry became less useful and effective, more assigned to scouting arm or “to screen army’s movements” (Catton, 1986, p. 19). The weapons used in the Civil War completely altered the conditions for which they were intended to be used. Major mistakes and tragedies were committed because of the wrong tactics the generals obtained in the course of training recruits. But despite the use of muzzle-loaders, the cavalry regiment and the old artillery, it still can be said that the Civil War was a modern war (Catton, 1986). Asymmetric Wars In examining conflicts of the past, specifically on imperialist expansion of big countries like the United States, one thing is certain, that so-called Third-World resistance was suppressed “with speedy efficiency” because of superiority in power. But there were some conflicts that were difficult for countries to obtain victory because of superior military capability. Between 1946 to 1954 countries like Indochina, Indonesia, and others like Algeria, Cyprus, Morocco, and Tunisia, gained individual victories against industrial powers with superior military capability. The French were defeated against determined nationalist forces and twenty years later a much stronger U.S. armed forces with five hundred thousand troops had to withdraw and concede defeat (Mack, 1975). The Vietnam revolutionaries realized the importance of a protracted warfare which the United States strategists and politicians did not want to venture. This was one of the principles of Mao Tse-tung’s war strategies, i.e. victory could be attained through intensive mobilization of forces from the countryside by the guerilla leadership (Mack, 178). The French easily won against the Indochina with just a small force, about fifteen thousand men. However, this was altered when the Vietnamese used guerrilla tactics. By 1954 the Vietminh forces subdued the French army which had now bloated into two hundred thousand men. When the United States armed forces waged a war against Vietnam, they also conceded defeat and withdrew. The Vietnam Was is an example of an asymmetric war, i.e. small forces battling against a giant fighting machine. There were pockets of rebellion. The enemy knew their territory in the mountains of Vietnam against a modernized army of the United States who fought in the wrong way. The following section is about the Vietnam War and some explanation why the United States had to concede defeat despite its well-equipped forces. The Vietnam War In Vietnam, the United States had to deal with the growing guerilla warfare which had picked up apace with the foundation of the National Liberation Front at Ho Chi Minh’s direction in 1960. Washington’s ally, President Diem of South Vietnam, requested support from the Kennedy administration in the autumn of 1961 in which Kennedy responded by sending a mission led by Maxwell Taylor, his presidential military advisor, and Walt Rostow to conduct assessment. The report recommended economic aid and technical advisors for the government of South Vietnam, to include government reforms on the part of Diem’s government in order to discourage activism, the dispatch of air force teams known as “Farmgate,” and the establishment of a military task force composed of 8,000 troops to be sent to Vietnam. The Taylor recommendation was considered by Kennedy although this was opposed by Roger Hilsman, director of the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at the State Department in the Kennedy administration, who was studying “the new Communist tactics of guerrilla warfare and subversion”. Hilsman’s INR study also gave its recommendation, saying that “the most effective way of meeting a guerrilla threat like that of the Viet Cong is not with regular troops, but rather by a sophisticated combination of civic action, intelligence, police work, and constabulary-like counter-guerrilla forces that use a tactical doctrine quite different from the traditional doctrine of regular forces” (Hilsman as cited in Protheroe, 2008, p. 268). The growing interest for a Vietnam intervention was in the offing but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had reservations of the effectiveness of the military task force. In McNamara’s opinion, only a large force could save South Vietnam from falling into the hands of the communists. He told Kennedy that by sending American forces on a substantial scale they could convince Vietnam’s communist allies (Russia and China) that they meant business. By 8 November, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Dean Rusk of the State Department backed the position of McNamara. They agreed that they had to prevent the fall of South Vietnam to the communists by sending troops of substantial number and the resources needed to accomplish this mission. Kennedy accepted the recommendations but was reluctant to send ground troops. In January, the president instructed to form the Special Group Counter Insurgency (CI), with the leadership of General Taylor, to conduct a study in the ways of preventing subversion against U.S. allies (Protheroe, 2008). Hilsman conducted an actual study on South Vietnam and his report was carried out in a document titled “A Strategic concept for South Vietnam,” in which he sugested that the communist insurgency was first and foremost a political rather than a military challenge. The Viet Cong were poised for a military coup d’état for the communists to seize power. The Viet Cong’s real source of both supplies and recruits were the people and the villages, but terrorism was not significantly used. Hilsman recommended that the United States should conduct counter-insurgency efforts aimed at providing safety and security for the villages. This counter-insurgency would rely on political, military and civic action, to strategically defend villages, then to be supported by the South Vietnamese army that would utilize guerilla tactics. According to Hilsman, his report was based on the expertise and recommendations of Robert Thompson, a special advisor of the British embassy in Saigon, who had conducted counterinsurgency in Malaya in the 1950s. Thompson first used the term “strategic hamlets” (FRUS, 1961-1963 as cited in Protheroe, 2008, p. 270). The Hilsman report could not have convinced the Pentagon and the American military establishment because by 21 January, a South Vietnamese-United States action was conducted against the Viet Cong at Binh Hoa, just near the Cambodia border, in which an assault was directed at a Cambodian village wherein a number of villagers were killed or wounded before the original target was bombed and occupied. According to Hilsman, the strategy at Binh Hoa was counter-productive and against the principles of counterguerrilla warfare; it “created more communists than it kills” (Protheroe, 2008). Counterinsurgency warfare should be able to distinguish between hardcore guerillas and ordinary villagers. In Saigon, a plan known as “Operation Sunrise” was implemented which would establish a belt of villages in Binh Duong as initiated by the Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG). A strategic village policy directive known as “Delta Plan” prepared by Robert Thompson was being studied by President Diem. General Harkins was fully supportive of the counterinsurgency plan suggested by Hilsman but both opposed Operation Sunrise because they believed that this was exposed to a Viet Cong attack. In one incident, the Viet Cong displayed the corpses of women and children killed by air strikes under the Farmgate program. But President Diem was fully supportive of Farmgate and also approved the Delta Plan, which became a priority of the South Vietnamese government. Hilsman was against the military’s use of napalm and defoliants against crops because this might have some political implications. Defoliation is similar to “gas warfare,” according to Hilsman. And it was approved by President Kennedy that defoliation experiments should be conducted in Thailand instead in South Vietnam. (Protheroe, 2008) Operations into North Vietnam In the summer of 1964, South Vietnamese agents penetrated North Vietnam to conduct sabotage by destroying bridges, railroads, and other public installations. Planes rained psychological warfare leaflets and intercepted radio broadcasts. South Vietnamese troops kidnapped North Vietnamese citizens to extract valuable information. North-Vietnamese troops who greeted them were peppered with cannon and machine-gun fire (Wells, 2005, p. 9). This was the beginning of Operation 34-A. But the guerillas that made it into North Vietnam never came out alive. Now comes the Johnson administration after the Kennedy assassination, whose new military advisers were convinced that the situation in Vietnam needed a decisive action. But most of Johnson’s military advisers did not want an overt escalation, fearing that China and the Soviet Union would enter the scene and that it would also worry America’s allies. Politics was also involved as the presidential elections in the U.S. were in the offing (Wells, 2005). The Tonkin Gulf incidents occurred. It was in the early morning of July 31, 1964 an operation to attack two small North Vietnamese islands commenced. It was headed by General William Westmoreland. The operation was supported by the U.S. destroyer Maddox which was then proceeding toward the islands. Bombers freed payloads on North Vietnamese villages adjacent to the Laotian border. But on August 2, the Viet Cong forces struck back with three North Vietnamese torpedo boats attacking the Maddox. One of the boats sank attacked by jets coming from a supporting U.S. aircraft carrier. Another U.S. destroyer, the Turner Joy, joined Maddox in patrolling the gulf. In the evening, something was detected in the Maddox’s radar in which the sonarman announced that torpedoes “were in the water” and about to strike them. The Maddox was about to open fire when it noticed that the Turner Joy was missing. If indeed the gunner could have opened fire to stop the torpedoes, there could have been a misencounter. In the morning, Navy officers in the Pacific sent a message to Pentagon that the two destroyers were engaged with the enemy. President Johnson immediately ordered to attack North Vietnamese torpedo boats, sent assault planes to Southeast Asia, and asked Congress to declare war. Admiral Ulysses Grant Sharp, commander in chief of the Pacific, told Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara that the attack on the two US destroyers was not true (Wells, 2005). During those fights, attacks and counter-attacks, the U.S. policy makers realized that the war would become a protracted war. The Viet Cong exhibited enormous energy and persistence. Every time they attacked, a great number fell from them. But they always came back with more new recruits. Village people were the source of supplies and encouragement. The South Vietnamese government’s credibility started to dwindle by 1965. On November 1, the National Liberation Front made their move and killed five Americans and injuring seventy-two others. Victory for the NLF was becoming a reality when the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN) lost two battalions. On Jaunary 6, 1965, William Bundy called for more solid action from the American troops. There were 21,000 U.S. troops called “advisers” stationed in the South and a few ground troops. The U.S. policy makers recommended bombing North Vietnam. National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy told Johnson to change America’s role into an active one, not a passive role because this might lead to a possible defeat (Wells, 2005). However, McNamara pushed for the clearing of U.S. dependents and told the Americans inside Vietnam to act immediately. On February 13, President Johnson ordered to activate Operation Rolling Thunder” which was aimed to conduct a sustained air strikes against North Vietnam. This was a revenge to what at Pleiku, an army helicopter base attacked by NLF troops in which 9 Americans were killed and over a hundred wounded. The public supported Operation Rolling Thunder, but war critic continued to grow in number. Small protests were staged across the United States. Members of the Women Strike for Peace (WSP) and Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom (WILP) staged a picket at the White House, and other small protests which had anti-war slogans. Anti-war sentiments were all over many campuses, but there was one university, the Kent State University in Ohio, were some protesters were assaulted by prowar students. The U.S. government needed public support for its bombing policy over North Vietnam, and so it released a White paper accusing North Vietnam of a scheme to conquer South Vietnam by means of “concealed aggression” (Wells, 2005, p. 21). The White Paper provided evidence to support its contention and was backed by the Washington Post. Some senators, like Senators Mike Mansfield and Russell Long, praised the contents and intentions of the paper. Senator Long even suggested to prepare for war against China or the Soviet Union if Hanoi did not stop its policy of aggression. But there were critics of the White Paper, attacking its propaganda value. General William Westmoreland, worried about air bases becoming NLF targets, requested troops to protect the large U.S. airbase at Danang. This was granted by the president four days after although General Maxwell Taylor, U.S. ambassador to South Vietnam, opposed the move as it might start a process of more troop deployments. On March 8, two Marine battalions landed at Danang with welcoming party composed of young and pretty school girls presenting orchid leis to the soldiers (Wells, 2005, p. 21). Westmoreland saw the Marine landing as good sign for the U.S. troops and hoped that this would alleviate the situation and may lead for a favorable settlement for the Americans and the South Vietnamese government. But when there was no response from Hanoi, the general and his people including President Johnson started to get frustrated. Discussions in Washington were now about allied troop deployment to Vietnam. They suspected that the NLF was planning a big offensive and doubted the capability of South Vietnam’s ARVN to hold on. There was a request for a troop deployment of about a hundred thousand men, but Johnson agreed to only one fifth of the requested number. But he granted Westmoreland’s request of his troops to engage actively rather than merely guarding base or staying foot. Johnson was worried that the country was against the war in Vietnam and was convinced that war was not the people’s choice from the beginning and that people’s support for the war was “wide and not deep” (Wells, 2005, p. 23). American Involvement in Vietnam and Iraq How do people compare Iraq to Vietnam? The Bush administration classified the Iraq war as part of the war on terror and considered it similar in extent and significance to World War II (Bush, 2001 as cited in Schuman & Corning, 2006). There are those who consider Iraq as a distraction from the war on terror and similar to the Vietnam War. For both wars, American troops were sent into a country with different culture, language and history. In both circumstances, public frustration grew because of an enemy too difficult to identify and impossible to fight against by means of traditional ways. The United States openly entered the war in 1965 and U.S. involvement officially ended in 1973. Casualties for dead and injured Vietnamese were estimated to be about one to three million. The 1991 Gulf War On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait which led to the Persian Gulf War. Revolutions in Military Affairs (RMA) The way Americans adopt to change shows their national character: they are always restless. They consider anything new as better even if the old one still works. And change they always embrace. America’s sincerity to change mixes with “a peculiar strategic culture to shape American national security policy” (Metz, 2006, p. 1). Those in charge with national security have a fascination and obsession with technology, e.g. space technology, star wars, robotics, unmanned aerial vehicle, etc. The United States is a large country but sparsely populated; they often substitute technology for labor. And they use it in times of peace and in times of war. Revolutions in military affairs became popular in the 1990s as a debatable issue within Pentagon on the subject of war strategy for future conflicts and as controversial item for budgetary and procurement requirements. Ideas on revolutions in military affairs came from two primary sources, namely early historians and Soviet military thinkers. The British historian Michael Roberts wrote that during the seventeenth century, Sweden started a military revolution by introducing new innovations in the military organization and strategies. The changes were introduced by the warrior-king Gustavus Adolphus. There were many discussions about the revolutions and how these affected the conduct of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century warfare (Murray & Knox, 2001). Many historians believed that Roberts was right in saying that European warfare went through basic systemic changes. Soviet military theorists, on the other hand, wrote some notions on revolutions in military affairs. The Red Army of the Marxist-Leninist ideology received changes in its revolutionary quests. Soviet military thinkers analyzed the results of the First World War and its effects on military strategies in the 1920s and 1930s. In 1941, the German Blitzkrieg was almost successful in destroying the Soviet Union and so the latter had to make operational changes in the conduct of war. The Soviet Union began to develop missile and nuclear weapons systems which closely competed with that of the West (Murray & Knox, 2001, p. 3). Revolutions in military affairs refer to the use of technology and network to provide speed, efficiency, and high-tech weapons program. One that has been developed is the Future Combat Systems, a highly budgeted weapons program using an advanced software program developed by Boeing collaborating with the U.S. Army. In the analysis of the RMA from many years back up to the present conflicts in some parts of the world, it is with no doubts to conclude that the United States is behind all this new technology and that it shaped the RMA application with its very high U.S. defense expenditure and its push for high-budgeted R&D efforts (Gongora & Riekhoff, 2000). The RMA has provided the United States increased power projection. An RMA refers to a major change in the way war is fought by applying new technologies which can fundamentally change the conduct of military operations; the change is accompanied with innovations in military doctrine and operational and organizational ideas (U.S. DOD as cited in Gongora & Riekhoff, 2000, p. 1). Most of these high-tech warfare applications were used during the Gulf War. What does the public know of star wars, stealth fighter jets, precision-guided missiles, and other military hardware that work with information technology? Many believe it altered the course of the present day warfare (Rogers, 2000, p. 21). Some commentators opine that RMA connotes military transformation because it involves enhancing new technologies along with new operational concepts in conducting war “in dramatically new ways” (Worley, 2005, p. 9). Military transformation is defined as “the act of creating and harnessing a revolution in military affairs” (Worley, p. 9). Transformation involves technology development for war supremacy. The philosophies of Immanuel Kant and Thomas Hobbes influenced America’s defense transformation strategy. Kant’s 1795 essay titled Perpetual Peace fostered the thought that the world should have free-market democracies in order to be free from armed conflicts. The Hobbesian concept states that for the time being the world is a dangerous place to live in. Without liberal democracy, great powers like the United States will have “an organic life-cycle with a rise to prominence inevitably followed by decline” (Kennedy, 1990 as cited in Metz, 2006, p. 2). American conservatives argue that this decline could be postponed and U.S. influence could be sustained by means of a sound strategy. This is now the objective of defense transformation, i.e. the pursuit for continual improvement and effectiveness; the need to maintain influenced and power; the belief that American power was compassionate and benefited the countries of the world; and the idea that the post-Cold War era was a time in which the United States would either bring about and expand its influence or decline. (Metz, 2006, p. 3) The 1991 Gulf War demonstrated the many benefits of the use of technology in warfare. The U.S. military attained lightning victories against a strong and determined enemy with a minimum of bloodshed, reducing negative sentiments from the public against a military engagement. The Gulf War demonstrated a “military-technological revolution in warfare” (Conduct of the Persian Gulf War as cited in Metz, 2006, p. 2). An application of RMA is the Future Combat Systems (FCS), budgeted at $200 billion which is an application of a software developed by Boeing. The software can provide soldiers power through effective communication, supported by drones and other sort of robotics. Robots can neutralize bombs as soldiers direct laser-guided missiles. An advanced technology which the Pentagon wants to apply is a network known as the “Upward Falling Payloads” which will be embedded on the seafloor and ready to be brought on the surface for military action when time comes. This “seafloor -bedded nodes” will have a surveillance or communications system to be brought up by a launch system or the “riser”. The seafloor-based node is positioned at the bottom of the ocean up to more than 6 kilometers deep, will live up to 5 years and put to action two hours after it is ordered or brought up to the surface. The first phase of the project is on study and design, while the second phase will be the testing of the node on 2015 and the final testing of all key systems will be on 2017. (Defensetech, 2014) References Catton, B. (1986). America goes to war: The civil war and its meaning in American culture. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press. Clavin, M. (2007). American Toussaints: Symbol, subversion, and the black Atlantic tradition in the American civil war. Slavery and Abolition, 28(1), 87-113. Defensetech: U.S. to test seabed resupply systems by 2016. 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Protheroe, G. (2008). Limiting America’s engagement: Roger Hilsman’s Vietnam war, 1961-1963. Diplomacy and Statecraft, 19(2), 253-288. doi: 10.1080/09592290802096315 Rogers, C. (2000). “Military revolutions” and “Revolutions in military affairs”: A historian’s perspective. In T. Gongora & H. von Riekhoff (Eds.), Toward a revolution in military affairs?: Defense and security at the dawn of the twenty-first century (pp. 21-40). New York: Greenwood Publishing Group. Schuman, H. & Corning, A. (2006). Comparing Iraq to Vietnam: Recognition, recall, and the nature of cohort effects. Public Opinion Quarterly, 70(1), 78-87. Vandiver, F. (2005). How America goes to war. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Wells, T. (2005). The war within: America’s battle over Vietnam. iUniverse, Inc. Worley, R. (2005). Shaping U.S. military forces: Revolution or relevance after the cold war. Lulu.com. Young, A. (2011). American historians confront “The transforming hand of revolution”. In A. Young & G. Nobles (Eds.), Whose American revolution was it?: Historians interpret the founding (pp. 13-114). New York: New York University Press. Read More