A national defense policy for the twenty-first century.

• Author: Landis, Benjamin L.

It is the obligation of any government to accept the responsibility to ensure both the territorial integrity of the society of which it is the government and the personal security of the members of that society. In the case of the United States, this obligation is mandated as one of the six responsibilities of the federal government by the Preamble to the Constitution. How any government meets this obligation is determined by its geopolitical situation, i.e., its geographical location vis-a-vis other societies, the attitudes and capabilities of those societies that can threaten its territorial integrity and the security of its population, and its available economic and human resources.

With respect to the United States of America, until after the Second World War, the primary factor on which its national defense policy was based was its geographical isolation. Since its founding, the barrier created by the oceans surrounding it has effectively protected it against invasion, except for the brief and unsuccessful incursion by the British in 1812. Then, the fledgling American navy was inadequate to prevent the supreme naval force in the world at the time from depositing and sustaining troops on American soil. Yet that invasion was not only short-lived, but modest in its achievements. Obviously, the defense policy of the United States from the beginning was also based on the knowledge that there was no practical possibility that its two land-based neighbors--Canada and Mexico--would attempt to transgress the country's territorial integrity or to harm its population. In fact, the contrary has been the historical case. The United States has invaded both of its smaller neighbors on different occasions. In the development of a national defense policy that follows, the war-like propensities of Mexico and Canada will not be deemed an issue meriting attention.

This geographical isolation as the basis of the national defense policy manifested itself from the founding of the United States until the beginning of the Second World War by the maintenance of a strong navy and a very small army. And this defense policy was successful in maintaining the security of American territory and society. The entry of the United States into the First World War was not precipitated by any threat to United States territory or society. The Second World War with the eventual entry of the United States into that conflict as a principal force necessitated a gigantic increase in both the army and navy, as well as the creation of an air force. It is important to realize that the precipitating cause of American entry into the Second World War, i.e., the Japanese aerial attack on Pearl Harbor, was intended to eliminate the capability of the United States Navy to interfere in the Japanese invasions of the countries of Southeast Asia, the Philippines, and the island chains of the Western Pacific. It was not intended to be the prelude to an invasion of the United States mainland or the Hawaiian Islands.

Until the attack on Pearl Harbor, the American people had felt secure behind their ocean barriers reinforced by a navy that was capable of preventing any invasion of the American mainland. Nazi Germany, the instigator of the Second World War, did not appear as a threat to United States territory or society. In fact, after conquering most of Western Europe, Hitler launched the Third Reich toward self-destruction in the depths of the Russian land mass. How the Second World War would have played out had Japan not committed the colossal error of bombing Pearl Harbor cannot be divined, except that Nazi Germany would have eventually been defeated. Would the Soviet Union have liberated all of Western Europe and established Communist puppet states from Norway to Italy? Would the United States have entered the war anyway in order to prevent a Communist takeover of all of Europe? Possibly interesting historical speculation, but only that.

With the end of the Second World War, the United States government visualized a return to the traditional defense policy based upon its ocean barriers. However, such intentions were cut short by the beginning of the Cold War, which can be reasonably placed in 1948 with the start of the Soviet blockade of Berlin. The United States government supported by the American population recognized in the Soviet Union a threat to the country's territorial integrity and to the security of its population. The most visible aspect of this threat was the quickly developed and quickly expanded Soviet capability of delivering by ICBM nuclear warheads on United States territory. To counter this threat the United States developed an equivalent nuclear warfare capability and, through the development of an ICBM retaliatory force and a missile-launching nuclear submarine force, the means of achieving massive nuclear strikes. Thus, the doctrine of mutually assured destruction was acknowledged by both the United States and the Soviet Union and forestalled the Cold War from becoming a nuclear holocaust.

The other aspect of the Soviet threat, and in reality more menacing than the Soviet nuclear strike capability, was the propagation by the Soviet Union of Communism throughout the world by supporting national Communist Parties and attempting to set up Communist governments wherever possible. The establishment of Communist governments in that part of Eastern Europe overrun by the Soviet armies on their way to Berlin, the establishment of a Communist government in China, and the invasion of South Korea by Communist North Korea created in the American psyche a real sentiment of a non-nuclear military threat against the non-Communist world. The United States government, therefore, conceived the need for a large army and air force, in addition to its traditional strong navy, outside all nuclear warfare considerations.

With the support of the American population, the United States government conceived itself as the "policeman" protecting the non-Communist world from the expansion of the Communist world. It spread its military force over the whole world; it engaged in war against Communist intrusions in Korea and Vietnam and Cuba; it supported non-Communist regimes, even though they were not democracies; it supported indigenous rebellions against Communist regimes. All these "police" actions required the maintenance of major military forces. The Cold War national defense policy of the United States thus entailed a large inter-continental nuclear...