Diplomatic History Commons^™

The Uss Liberty Incident: Accident Or Intentional Attack, Maximus E. Marlowe

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

When I first heard the story of the USS Liberty I became extremely interested in learning more about the events that transpired and began reading about the incident in my free time. Thus, when I registered for Modern American Military History with Dr. Snead, I was already eager to research this topic.

While my primary fields of study are engulfed in the Colonial American period, I have had a strong interest in American military history since I was a child. This would especially be the case with the U.S. Navy as my father is a retired Naval officer and I …

A Matter Of Accountability: Communication And Coordination Failures Proceeding Pearl Harbor, Marc C. Jeter

Bound Away: The Liberty Journal of History

Abstract

Save for September 11, 2001, arguably no other incident in American history generates persistent and impassioned debate associated with the questions of why and on whom to affix responsibility than does the Pearl Harbor raid. For both Japan and the United States the road to December 7 (or 8^th in Japan), was long and complex. Ensconced within the context of what was underway in Europe, there existed little room for diplomatic miscalculations or missteps. Thus for American civil, military, naval, and diplomatic leaders in Washington, D.C. and throughout the world, that American installations were attacked should not have …

Broken Nest: Deterring China From Invading Taiwan, Jared M. Mckinney, Peter Harris

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Deterring a Chinese invasion of Taiwan without recklessly threatening a great-power war is both possible and necessary through a tailored deterrence package that goes beyond either fighting over Taiwan or abandoning it. This article joins cutting-edge understandings of deterrence with empirical evidence of Chinese strategic thinking and culture to build such a strategy.

Jus Ad Bellum, Natural Law, And The Invasion Of Iraq, Johnny Davis, Johnny B. Davis

Liberty University Journal of Statesmanship & Public Policy

The thesis is the coalition invasion of Iraq violated international law because it went beyond the limited authority to use force given by United Nations Resolution 144 and violated natural law just war principles. The involvement of the United States not only violated just war principles but the requirements of the United States Constitution because Congress did not declare war as was required. The invasion also went beyond the legal limits imposed by the United States Joint Congressional Resolution authorizing the use passed on 2 October 2002. Further, the invasion was not justified by any prior United Nations resolution nor …

Crisis Management Lessons From The Clinton Administration's Implementation Of Presidential Decision Directive 56, Leonard R. Hawley

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Drawing on personal experience, the author asks what the current administration can learn from the Clinton administration’s implementation of Presidential Decision Directive 56, examines the real-world application of the directive during the Clinton administration and the pitfalls of its agency-centric successor during the Bush administration, and identifies recurring problems and best practices for successfully responding to current global crises.

A Distinction Without A Difference: Vietnam, Sir Robert Thompson, And The Policing Failures Of Vietnam, Mark J. Rothermel

Madison Historical Review

The scholarship analyzing the failure of the American involvement in Vietnam began even before the war finished. Whether the Orthodox School which considered the war unwinnable or the revisionist which argued there was a path to victory for the Americans, there have been libraries of tomes arguing who or what was to blame for the American defeat. An increased amount of scholarship recently has been written regarding the influence of British officer Sir Robert Thompson and his attempt to advise both the South Vietnamese and American war efforts.

Thompson, who gained fame as one of the key leaders for the …

Making The War Colleges Better, Richard A. Lacquement Jr

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.

The Long Defeat – Glimpses Of Final Victory: The Years Of The Locust, Evan B. Lanning

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

An examination of Tolkien’s conception of history, the crisis of unpreparedness preceding the Second World War, and a relating of the story of Churchill’s warnings and eventual ascension to the position of Prime Minister. This study will compare the historical perspective of Tolkien, as represented in his fictional works, with the turmoil that transpired during the early days of WWII. Mostly, it will demonstrate how Tolkien’s view of history manifested itself within the context of the very perilous realities leading up to WWII. Nonetheless, a larger portrait of the nation of Great Britain, Winston Churchill, and their joint struggle to …

Casualties Of War? Refining The Civilian-Military Dichotomy In World War I, Eric Grube

Madison Historical Review

Throughout the First World War, newspapers around the world mocked the British state for its lavish spending on captured German officers kept at Donington Hall, a refurbished English estate. Why was this camp such a controversial space of perceived decadence? I argue that its comforts seemed to linger from an earlier era, one in which military men exuded genteel civility as integral to their supposedly heroic service. The British state essentially enabled such treatment, and the public decried this space for sustaining the anachronism of aristocratic privilege in the face of a globalized total war. However, the German inmates expected …

Ike’S Constitutional Venturing: The Institutionalization Of The Cia, Covert Action, And American Interventionism, Jacob A. Bruggeman

Grand Valley Journal of History

U.S. covert action from the 1950s onward was shaped, in part, by the success a CIA-orchestrated coup d'état in which the United States deposed the popular Iranian nationalist Mohammed Mossadegh. Ordered by president Eisenhower, the coup in Iran set the precedent for utilizing covert action as a means of achieving State goals. In so doing, President Eisenhower overturned the precedent set by his immediate predecessor, President Truman: that is, the precedent of using the CIA in its intended function, gathering and evaluating intelligence. The coup, then, is an exemplary case of venture constitutionalism. Eisenhower, in ordering the coup, extended his …

Writing The Official History Of The Joint Intelligence Committee, Michael Goodman

Secrecy and Society

This article recounts the experience of a professional historian in being given the keys to the kingdom: access to the classified vaults of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee. This article includes some of the problems in having access, but complying with the sensitivities around official accounts, difficulties in writing a global history, or trying to make the work of a committee interesting and accessible, and of trying to determine the impact of intelligence on policy.

How Maine Viewed The War, 1914–1917 (1940 Reprint), Edwin Costrell

Maine History

Originally published in 1940, as the United States once more evaluated possible involvement in global conflict, How Maine Viewed the War, 1914– 1917 looks backward to Maine on the eve of World War I. Author Edwin Stanley Costrell (1913–2010), through a study of newspaper coverage of the years 1914 to 1917, provides a thought-provoking account of a Maine people wrestling with ambivalence over US involvement in the Great War; of a citizenry seeking to reconcile ethnic diversity with national unity; and of a nation divided over pacifism, militarism, isolationism, and internationalism and increasingly moving toward war with Germany. Costrell was …

Gettysburg College Journal Of The Civil War Era 2018

The Gettysburg College Journal of the Civil War Era

No abstract provided.

Will War's Nature Change In The Seventh Military Revolution?, F. G. Hoffman

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

This article examines the potential implications of the combinations of robotics, artificial intelligence, and deep learning systems on the character and nature of war. The author employs Carl von Clausewitz’s trinity concept to discuss how autonomous weapons will impact the essential elements of war. The essay argues war’s essence, as politically directed violence fraught with friction, will remain its most enduring aspect, even if more intelligent machines are involved at every level.

The Successes And Failures Of The Battle Of Mogadishu And Its Effects On U.S. Foreign Policy, Philip B. Dotson

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

The Battle of Mogadishu, more commonly referred to as “Black Hawk Down,” was one of the most controversial conflicts in the second half of the twentieth century. It left a lingering question in people’s minds: was it a success or a failure? While certainly there were many failures and casualties throughout the mission, based on a military definition, it was a clear cut success; Task Force Ranger (TFR) accomplished the objective of the mission, despite significant losses, by retrieving the two targets assigned them. Both the failures and successes of the mission, as well as the overarching Operation Restore Hope …

The Fall Of Kiev, Kevin S. Morrison

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

The Fall of Kiev, is the story about a great city, which on, 6 December 1240 A.D. would fall to the Mongol Hordes. The paper expounds upon the time frame of the prelude, the climax, and the afterward, of Kiev's fall. This paper utilizes scholarly resources from the present day and a very old source, The Hypatian Codex, which is the chronicle of the time period for Rus.

Trust, But Verify: Reagan, Gorbachev, And The Inf Treaty, William D. Watson

The Hilltop Review

This paper is a discussion of the relationship between the deployment of two types of intermediate (medium) range missile systems in Europe, how leaders on both sides viewed the situation, and how the potential use of such weapons affected superpower relations during the last decade of the Cold War.

Maine's Embargo Forts, Joshua M. Smith

Maine History

The Embargo acts, passed in 1806-1808 during the Jefferson administration, were originally designed to punish Great Britain for violating American neutrality on the high seas during the Napoleonic wars. Increasingly, however, the acts were enforced against Americans seeking to defy the embargo and trade with England. Since Maine was heavily committed to trading with Great Britain — and with its colonies immediately to the north of Maine — the War Department ordered several forts built along the District’s coast, ostensibly to protect American citizens from British reprisal or war, but in fact, to enforce the embargoes. The forts brought sharply …

The Alliance Against Disarmament: The Atomic Energy Commission, The National Security Council, And The Joint Chiefs Of Staff, Mary D. Wammack

Psi Sigma Siren

Of the discussions that took place at the highest policy levels during the administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower, those concerning the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the arms race with the Soviet Union were among the most urgent and, perhaps, the most consequential in their failure. In the United States, members of the Eisenhower cabinet and other agencies and departments analyzed and addressed the consequences of various diplomatic proposals. Throughout that assessment phase, the National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Atomic Energy Commission joined in steadfast opposition to arms limitations. On the international plane, the …

“A Few Days Later In Coming:” Major General Winfield Scott’S Role In The Aroostook War, Michael D. Wagner

Maine History

This article is a summary of the military and diplomatic actions taken in 1839 to avert the Aroostock War between the State of Maine and the Province of New Brunswick. Particular emphasis is placed on the actions of Major General Winfield Scott.