Home › Books & Reviews › Capsule Reviews › Tanks, Fighters And Ships: U.S. Conventional Force Planning Since World War Ii

Tanks, Fighters And Ships: U.S. Conventional Force Planning Since World War Ii

Maurice A. Mallin
Reviewed by By Gregory F. Treverton
Winter 1990/91
Print Email
Login or Register to leave a comment.

Sign-up for free weekly updates from ForeignAffairs.com.
Maurice A. Mallin
Brassey's
1990
273 pp.

Mallin identifies six eras in the history of American planning for conventional forces. Era seven, now beginning, is not so new in its combination of tight budgets, a changing international context and ambivalent public attitudes. By history's lights, defense spending should turn upward again in the near future, but Gorbachev and Soviet decline may change all that.

Related

Essay, Special 1989
The Defense Debate
Gregory F. Treverton

US public expectations of a 'peace dividend' from the collapse of the socialist bloc are unrealistic. Structural properties of US defence policy-making, and the non-existence of any strategic vision not predicated on the monolithic Soviet threat, mean that "for the next several years the 'peace dividend' will be much smaller than enthusiasts hope, and earning it will require departures from customary congressional habits". Offers advice on a strategy for reducing US defence expenditure (1) avoid a return to the 'hollow army' by shifting towards reserve or 'round-out' units (2) cut US forces in Europe in the light of CFE results, not in advance of them (3) defer various high-price equipment programmes, while preserving R&D budgets (4) using arms control to cut what the USA "can safely do without".

Read
Review Essay, Sep/Oct 1998
Imagining Kosovo: A Biased New Account Fans Western Confusion
Aleksa Djilas

Noel Malcolm's history of Serbia's flashpoint province is marred by his sympathies for its ethnic Albanian separatists, anti-Serbian bias, and illusions about the Balkans.

Read
Essay, Nov/Dec 1998
Tokyo's Depression Diplomacy
Yoichi Funabashi

Japan faces its biggest foreign policy challenges since World War II. Its leaders must snap out of their deep funk to confront a rising China, a nuclear South Asia, a United States increasingly prone to Japan-bashing, and a world in economic free fall. Instead of sulking over the growing closeness of U.S.-China ties, Tokyo should take the initiative and propose trilateral dialogues with Beijing and Washington on a range of issues, especially Asian security, nuclear disarmament, and macroeconomic policy. Japan's pessimism threatens the world's prosperity. If Tokyo stays on the sidelines, the world will pass it by.

Read