American War Strategy

Does waging war all around the world make one's country more secure? This is what the United States attempted to do in the 20th century. American war strategy differed during the Second World War and Cold War conflicts like the Vietnam War. However, some aspects remained consistent, such as the American reliance on air power, the Navy, and bombing campaigns. The success of the American war strategy also varied: the country rose as a victorious superpower in 1945, but lost the long, costly conflict in Vietnam.

Fig. 1 - The Hiroshima atomic bomb cloud within two to five minutes after detonation, August 6, 1945.

American War Strategy and Foreign Policy

There is a direct relationship between American foreign policy and its war strategy. Before the Pearl Harbor attack (December 1941), the U.S. maintained neutrality. In contrast, the American Cold War containment policy was global in scope, and the U.S. got involved in many international conflicts.

American Strategy in the Second World War

The overall American strategy in the Second World War was to cooperate with the Soviet Union (USSR) and Britain, through the Grand Alliance, to win the war in Europe and Asia. In Europe, the Allies sought to open the second front and link up with the Soviet Union, fighting alone in the east until mid-1944. In Asia-Pacific, the American strategy was to push the Japanese out of the territories that they conquered.

Grand Alliance

The liberal-democratic United States, the Communist (socialist) Soviet Union, and colonial Britain became unlikely allies during the Second World War despite their ideological differences. They were known as the Big Three, or the Grand Alliance. The Allies fought against Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, and imperial Japan—the Axis Powers.

Fig. 2 - Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin at the Yalta Conference, USSR, February 1945.

The Allied leaders, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill, met at three conferences to discuss the overarching war strategy as well as the postwar order:

• Tehran (Iran), between November 28 and December 1, 1943;
• Yalta (Soviet Union), between February 4 and 11, 1945;
• Potsdam (Germany), between July 17 and August 2, 1945.

The Allies faced many serious questions. Early on, the Americans and the British analyzed opening a second front in continental Europe to help the Soviet Red Army that was fighting Nazi Germany alone in the east. The last Allied conference, Potsdam, took place after the victory in Europe and focused on ensuring Japan's unconditional surrender.

North African Theater

Britain and the United States carried out Operation Torch in North Africa in November 1942. This operation was limited in time, but also allowed the Americans to get involved on a large scale and use airborne power.

European Theater

The Normandy Landings, also known as D-Day, were part of Operation Overlord by the United States, Britain, and Canada in the summer of 1944. This operation opened the second front in continental Europe. It began in June 1944 and liberated France by the end of August. Until this point, it was the Red Army fighting in the east and responsible for approximately 80% losses of the opponent. Overlord was a dangerous amphibious operation that turned out to be successful. It allowed the American and British soldiers to link up with their Soviet counterparts.

Asia-Pacific Theater

The Americans could not engage in a full land campaign in the Asia-Pacific theater because they were also engaged in Europe. At the same time, approximately 40% of the total U.S. war effort was dedicated to this region. President Roosevelt's overarching strategy was ambitious. He wanted to push out the Japanese, establish democratic rule in the former Japanese colonies, and to ensure that European colonialism did not resurface.

Fig. 3 - A U.S. Navy Douglas SBD-5 Dauntless of bombing patrols USS Washington and USS Lexington, Gilbert and Marshall Islands campaign, November 12, 1943.

Americans engaged in mass-scale bombing campaigns in Japan, including the firebombing of Tokyo (1944-1945) and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 1945). Hundreds of thousands of civilian lives were lost and approximately 40% of urban infrastructure.

American War Strategy during Cold War

The Cold War (1945-1991) was a period after the Second World War when the world was bipolar, that is, divided between the spheres of influence of the two rival superpowers, the U.S. and the USSR. These superpowers did not get into direct confrontation because they possessed nuclear weapons, hence the term "cold" war. However, they engaged in many indirect proxy conflicts in other regions.

The American war strategy had an ideological and a practical component. The ideological component was the Truman Doctrine (1947), containment, and domino theory. In practice, the United States relied on air power in its bombing campaigns and nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

Truman Doctrine

President Harry Truman (1884-1972) gave a speech to Congress in March 1947 which came to be known as the Truman Doctrine. In his view, the United States and its sphere of influence represented freedom and democracy, whereas the Soviet counterpart stood for oppression. The immediate circumstances of this speech were providing aid to Turkey and Greece to keep these two countries in the American sphere of influence. Overall, however, the Truman Doctrine was global in reach because it sought to challenge the Communist (socialist) ideology everywhere.

Fig. 4 - Portrait of President Harry S. Truman, ca. 1947.

Containment

American statesman George Kennan (1904-2005) was one of the main proponents of the containment policy, which defined the U.S. foreign-policy course for the entire Cold War period. In 1947, Kennan published an article using the pseudonym Mr. X called “The Sources of Soviet Conflict.” In the author’s view, the United States should challenge the Soviet Union and the Communist (socialist) ideology worldwide. However, Kennan also believed that the Soviet leadership sought to avoid war. During the Cold War, the Americans focused on the first part of this article, but not the second.

Fig. 5 - George Kennan, 1947 (no known copyright restrictions).

Domino Theory

The domino theory was one of the essential components of American Cold War foreign policy. Dean Acheson (1893-1971), Under Secretary and then the Secretary of State, under President Truman, subscribed to this theory which “held that if one nation fell to the Communists, its neighbors would surely follow.”¹ The theory did not account for the agency of other nations to choose their own path.

Europe

The bipolar division of Europe arose out of the Second World War. The U.S. and the Soviet Union established their spheres of influence in the west and east, respectively. It is important to note that the Soviet Union had been invaded by Napoleon and Adolf Hitler from the east, which made that region a direct security concern for the USSR. In contrast, the US was surrounded by two oceans, which meant that Europe was not a direct security concern for the Americans but a place to exert power.

From the American perspective, the containment policy worked well in Europe where the U.S. nuclear weapons and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (1949), NATO, acted as deterrents for potential Soviet expansion.

Asia

The containment policy failed in Asia. The Americans did not consider other factors, for example, decolonization. As Southeast Asian countries, such as Vietnam, gained their independence from France, the Vietnamese remained resilient in their national-liberation struggle.

Korean War

The Korean War (1950-1953) took place during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations and ended in an armistice. This war was the first serious conflict since the Second World War. The United States supported the South Korean side, while China and the Soviet Union supported the North Korean counterpart. Americans got involved because they thought that Korea would fall to Communism through the domino theory. One of the dangers of this war was the use of nuclear weapons. Indeed, President Truman threatened to use them against China having already used them against Japan.

Vietnam War

The Vietnam War (1955-1975) was a complex conflict during the Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations. This war arose out of the national liberation struggle in Southeast Asia in the context of decolonization. South Vietnam was supported by the United States and other countries like Australia, and North Vietnam was supported by China, the Soviet Union, and Viet Cong guerilla fighters.

The United States subscribed to the domino theory and believed that Vietnam would turn Communist as it got free from France. As a result, the U.S. began by supplying instructions and ended with mass-scale bombing campaigns of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Fig. 6 - Peasants suspected of being Viet Cong (Vietnamese Communist guerrilla fighters) under detention by U.S. Army, 1966.

As the Asian civilian death toll continued to rise, American soldiers were dying too. As a result, the U.S. experienced the largest antiwar protests in history, as ordinary people, public intellectuals, and politicians alike questioned American involvement.

Ultimately, the war ended after North Vietnam broke the Paris Peace Accords (1973), entered South Vietnam in 1975, and established the reunited Socialist Republic of Vietnam in 1976.

American War Strategy and Interests in the 21st Century

After the Cold War, the U.S. sought an updated role in the new world order. One of the key focal points for the U.S. in the 1990s and early 2000s were non-state actors such as terrorists, especially after September 11, 2001. However, after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the U.S. also pursued sweeping goals and nation-building, which were unsuccessful.