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throw0101dyesterday at 6:56 PM1 replyview on HN

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...

The author is a retired professor from the US Naval War College:

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Nichols_(academic)


Replies

reactordevyesterday at 8:17 PM

Ah 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.

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