The Pentomic Era. The U. S. Army Between Korea and Vietnam

In his history of the Army in the years between the Korean and Vietnam wars, Lieutenant Colonel A. J. Bacevich. US Army, accents the Army's mindfulness of the implications of nuclear warfare. The Army's concern, reflecting a complex mixing of institutional, strategic, and operational considerations, led to major changes in Army organization, doctrine, and weapons. The author argues that during these years, the Army not only survived an institutional identity crisis-grappling to comprehend and define its national security role in a subsequently directed the Army to perform. Viewing itself as an instrument for intervention in highly politicized conflicts of limited scale would have enabled the Army over the long run to equip, organize, and train its soldiers in ways far more pertinent to what they actually have been called on to do.