After Containment: The Functions of the Military Establishment

Abstract

After World War II, the United States reconstituted its military policy for the third time in its history. A strategy of deterrence was adopted as the military counterpart to a foreign policy of containment. This strategy involved military alliances, overseas deployments, larger and diversified military forces, higher levels of readiness, and development of programs for strategic retaliation, continental defense, European defense, and limited war. By 1972, the original basis for this strategy was disappearing: public support for military burdens had decreased; the Soviet Union had achieved military parity with the United States; Europe, Japan, China were independent centers of economic and political power; local hegemonic powers had emerged in the Third World. For the foreseeable future, only the Soviet Union is in a position to aspire to global preeminence and thus pose a significant threat to U.S. security. Hence the U.S. must aim to avoid: military inferiority vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, diplomatic isolation among the major powers, and exclusion by the Soviet Union from political or economic access to any major portion of the Third World. These goals require military forces to support diplomacy as well as to maintain deterrence. More specifically, they require: a redefinition of the role of the strategic retaliatory force, recognizing its diplomatic as well as deterrent functions; the adaptation of U.S. forces deployed in and designed for the defense of Europe to the more general purpose of great power reinforcement; and the conversion of limited war forces into counterintervention forces to deter Soviet military intervention in the Third World. While civilians played a major role in developing the strategy of deterrence, the principal responsibility for elaborating these changes in strategy will rest with military officers.