preview

American Way Of War Essay

Decent Essays

The notion of an American way of war informs how scholars, policymakers, and strategists understand how Americans fight. A way of war—defined as a society’s cultural preferences for waging war—is not static. Change can occur as a result of important cultural events, often in the form of traumatic experiences or major social transformations. A way of war is therefore the malleable product of culturally significant past experiences. Reflecting several underlying cultural ideals, the current American way of war consists of three primary tenets—the desire for moral clarity, the primacy of technology, and the centrality of scientific management systems—which combine to create a preference for decisive, large-scale conventional wars with clear objectives and an aversion to morally ambiguous low-intensity conflicts that is relevant to planners because it helps them address American strategic vulnerabilities.
The current American way of war derived from cultural ideals of liberty, progress, and capitalism. Americans have sought moral clarity in war because of a commitment to liberty in the form of participatory democracy. During World War I and II, the US fought to spread this vision of liberty beyond American shores. Technology has been central to the American way of war because of Americans’ faith in progress. During the Cold War, concepts such as modernization theory linked the desire to build a better world with overseas economic improvement and technological innovation to

Get Access