US Department of Defense

Department of Defense, US By mid-century the USDA’s role (with the notable exception of setting nutritional standards) had assumed a more global perspective, focusing in particular on crop yields and trade policies. President Harry S. Truman initiated this transition with the Point Four Program (so named because it happened to be the fourth point in his 1949 inaugural speech). Designed primarily to curry favor with developing nations during an era of impending Soviet domination, the nation’s first international economic development program aimed to provide far-ranging technical assistance and economic support to underdeveloped countries potentially ripe for a communist takeover. The USDA became an integral element of this policy by overseeing Point Four’s agricultural training programs. The USDA’s foreign involvement continued when the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 established a program to foster global trade in American foodstuffs. The act’s intention, according to President Dwight D. Eisenhower, was to “lay the basis for a permanent expansion of our exports of agricultural products, with lasting benefits to ourselves and peoples in other lands.” In 1961 President John F. Kennedy renamed the program Food for Peace, noting that “food is a helping to people around the world whose good will and friendship we want.” In 1966 Congress upgraded the act by passing the Food for Peace Act. With this law there was a shift from unloading surplus grain to promoting humanitarian aid. In 2008 the Food for Peace Act officially replaced the original Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act. production went from 19.1 million to 90.1 million metric tons. South Asia saw increases from 15.5 million to 63.5 million metric tons. The USDA’s active engagement in global agribusiness has brought the department its fair share of criticism. A 2004 report called “USDA Inc.” roundly condemned the USDA for working as a corporate handmaiden of a chemically driven and ecologically unsound approach to agriculture. The USDA’s direct and indirect support of agricultural biotechnology, concentrated animal feeding operations, and corporate consolidation has been met with substantial blowback from a sustainable food movement that is currently challenging USDA authority with calls for a national food policy. The USDA’s future is one in which it will have to balance the traditional demands of global agribusiness with the decentralized efforts of small farmers serving local markets through nonindustrial methods of production. Green Revolution; Point Four; United States Agency for International Development (USAID) SEE ALSO BIBLIOGRAPHY Conkin, Paul. A Revolution down on the Farm: The Transformation of American Agriculture since 1929. Louisville: University Press of Kentucky, 2009. Hurt, R. Douglas. American Agriculture: A Brief History. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 2002. Mattera, Philip. “USDA Inc.: How Agribusiness Has Hijacked Regulatory Policy at the U.S. Department of Agriculture.” Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First. 2004. http:// www.nffc.net/Issues/Corporate%20Control/USDA%20INC .pdf Other key developments ensured that the USDA remained a federal department with international influence. Kennedy furthered the USDA’s global focus when he created the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID works closely with the USDA’s Foreign Agricultural Service to foster global food security and in so doing “enable resilient, democratic societies to realize their potential.” This goal is pursued by bringing several USDA innovations—such as extension services, farmer loan programs, and developing food markets—to other parts of the world. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE, US Work supported by the USDA on wheat breeding in the 1940s helped make possible the work of the biologist Norman Borlaug (1914–2009) and the Green Revolution, an agricultural initiative starting in the 1960s that would dramatically increase crop yields throughout the developing world. In 1945 the USDA sent the agronomist Samuel Cecil Salmon (1885–1975), a wheat specialist, to Japan to deal with postwar food shortages there. Salmon’s work provided the bridge between the semidwarf Japanese wheat and the traditional wheat strains that breeders such as Borlaug would engineer to create unprecedented yield explosions. Between 1960 and 1990, China’s wheat The United States Department of Defense (DoD) is by far the largest of the fifteen cabinet-level departments of the executive branch of the US government. DoD is responsible for directing the armed forces of the United States as well as several defense-related agencies. DoD is headed by the secretary of defense, who is nominated by the president and confirmed by the US Senate. The DoD has an estimated 3 million employees, including members of the branches of the armed services. The DoD includes the three military services (army, navy, and air force), the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nine Combatant Commands, and seventeen individual agencies, the largest 272 James McWilliams Ingram Professor of History Texas State University, San Marcos AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 Department of Defense, US of which is the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA’s budget and number of employees are classified, but they are known to be significantly larger than those of the entire Department of State, including all of the latter’s embassies worldwide. Other sizable agencies within the DoD are the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency, and the Missile Defense Agency. Although the DoD’s official annual budget for 2015 was approximately $600 billion, this figure did not include numerous defense and military expenditures that are counted separately. An estimated total for all defenserelated expenses, including veterans’ affairs, supplemental budgeting for the war in Iraq, and payments on the national debt, brings the amount closer to more than $900 billion per year. HISTORY OF THE DOD Prior to the adoption of the National Security Act of 1947, the armed forces of the United States were divided between two cabinet-level departments of the executive branch: the Department of War (for practical purposes the command of the US Army and the Army Air Forces) and the Department of the Navy (including the Marine Corps). Separate laws enacted by the Continental Congress in 1775 created the original army, navy, and Marine Corps of the United States. In the decade following the conclusion of the Revolutionary War, the three military services largely fell into disuse. When the First Congress convened in New York in 1789, one of its first acts was to create a cabinet-level War Department whose secretary would be responsible for overseeing all the equipment and personnel from the three armed services. A decade later, with Congress having become increasingly displeased with the War Department’s management of the fledgling navy, a law was enacted that created a new and separate Navy Department and that placed the Marine Corps under its purview. Thus, between 1798 and 1947, the War Department (effectively the army) and the Navy Department were two separate cabinet-level departments of the executive branch that operated independently, albeit under the ultimate authority of the president. The divided military command between the War Department and Navy Department historically was marked by bouts of rivalry (symbolized in sport by the annual Army-Navy football game), jealousy, and sometimes hostility, although during the 1920s and 1930s the two departments developed a joint-action plan to be used in the event of war (known as FTP-155). In 1941, with World War II already raging in Europe and the Pacific, but prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, military leaders developed plans through which the two rival armed forces might better coordinate to strengthen the defensive capabilities of the United States in the event of war. The military adopted in 1941 (and revised in 1942) a system of regional “Defense Commands” that divided the US mainland into four territories (Western Defense Command, Central Defense Command, Northeast Defense Command, and Southern Defense Command). The navy’s Atlantic and Pacific fleets (based in Norfolk, Virginia, and San Diego, California, respectively) fell under separate commands. The experiences of World War II prompted the movement toward a more integrated battle command structure. Although the army (including the Army Air Forces) and the navy (including the marines) were not themselves united under a joint American command, they were placed under the authority of a “supreme” commander who had authority over the armed services of all allied nations in specific theaters of operation. The most famous (but not the sole) example during the war was that of General Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) as the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force for the invasion of Normandy in 1944. In this position, Eisenhower held combined command authority over the British and American navies, armies, and air forces. The Pentagon building, the construction of which began on September 11, 1941—sixty years to the day before it was attacked in 2001—is today the physical and symbolic headquarters of the US Department of Defense. It was built on land once owned by Confederate general Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) that was located between what later became Arlington National Cemetery and the Washington National Airport. The Pentagon, built in only seventeen months, is the largest office building in the world, boasting more than seventeen miles of corridors and three times as much office space as the Empire State Building. The outermost corridor of the building, E Ring, is almost a mile in circumference. Because of the uneven terrain beneath the building, it alternates between four and five stories in height. The Pentagon was originally designed to house between twenty thousand and thirtyfive thousand employees. During World War II, the Pentagon housed only the War Department (i.e., the US Army and the Army Air Forces). The navy and marines continued their operations from other facilities in the Washington, DC, area. THE POST–WORLD WAR II ERA In the two years following the war, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972) proposed that the American military be reorganized in order to facilitate better coordination in military planning, operations, intelligence gathering, and weapons acquisition. Seizing on the examples of supreme commanders from the war, and recognizing the increasingly significant global role of the AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 273 Department of Defense, US US War Department Defense Commands (1941) Western Defense Command Central Defense Command Northeast Defense Command Southern Defense Command SOURCE: © 2015 Eric Ross Figure 1. With World War II already raging in Europe and the Pacific, but prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, military leaders developed plans through which the US Army and Navy might better coordinate to strengthen US defensive capabilities. The military adopted a system of regional “Defense Commands,” dividing the mainland into four territories, with the Navy’s Atlantic and Pacific fleets under separate commands.  ERIC ROSS United States, the president, certain members of Congress, military leaders, and other prominent officials spent two years debating alternate plans to reorganize national defense. These combined efforts ultimately led to the adoption of the National Security Act of 1947, the single most important restructuring of the national security apparatus in American history. In addition to creating the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Council, the 1947 act significantly revised the military community. The law eliminated the cabinet-level positions of secretary of war and secretary of the navy and created the new position of secretary of defense with command authority over all of the armed services of the United States under a single cabinet-level department. (The new department originally was called the “National Military Establishment” before being renamed the 274 Department of Defense in 1949.) The 1947 act established three armed services within the Department of Defense: the US Army, the US Navy (including the Marine Corps), and a new US Air Force. During the following five years, the signals intelligence and cryptological activities of the military were reorganized within the Department of Defense, culminating in Truman’s signing in 1952 of the classified National Security Council Intelligence Directive No. 9, which created the NSA within the Department of Defense. With the adoption of the National Security Act of 1947, the new secretary of defense, former secretary of the navy James Forrestal (1892–1949), moved into the Pentagon and began the difficult process of attempting to bring the three rival armed forces under one roof. Two years later, with the appointment of a forceful new AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 Department of Defense, US secretary of defense, Louis Johnson (1891–1966), the navy leadership and the Joint Chiefs of Staff began to move into the third and fourth floors of the E Ring facing the Potomac River. Secretary Johnson commandeered Room 3E-880 for himself—a room that has been occupied by every secretary of defense since that time. In August 1949 the 1947 act was amended to further strengthen the authority of the secretary of defense over the individual armed services that increasingly occupied different sections of the Pentagon. The Marine Corps, however, did not begin its move from the nearby Navy Annex, built at the same time as the Pentagon in 1941, until 1996. (The Navy Annex, demolished in 2012 to make additional room for Arlington National Cemetery, is the site of the Air Force Memorial.) The National Military Command Center (NMCC), known in popular culture as the “War Room,” is located within the Joint Staff area of the Pentagon. The NMCC coordinates the military’s communications, command, and control systems and monitors events worldwide. Unlike the striking image portrayed in the film Dr. Strangelove, the NMCC (which has had different locations within the Pentagon over time) is a series of rooms filled with desks, computers, television screens, and electronic equipment. Following the Soviet Union’s detonation of an atomic bomb in 1949, concern increased regarding the potential vulnerability of the Pentagon to Soviet attack. The decision was taken to create a backup military command headquarters at Raven Rock Mountain in Pennsylvania (Site R), near Camp David, Maryland, that would become the alternate and emergency headquarters of the DoD in the event of war. (Site R was one of the “undisclosed locations” that Vice President Dick Cheney [b. 1941] repeatedly occupied following the attacks of September 11, 2001.) Additional “continuation of government” sites for other parts of the federal government were built in Virginia at Mount Weather and in an underground bunker for Congress at the Greenbrier resort. LATER REORGANIZATION The last significant legislative change to the DoD’s organizational structure to reduce the long-standing problem of interservice rivalry occurred with the adoption of the Goldwater-Nichols Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1986. The Goldwater-Nichols law increased the focus on what has become six regional Unified Combatant Commands (UCC)—US Africa Combatant Command, US Central Combatant Command, US European Combatant Command, US Northern Combatant Command, US Pacific Combatant Command, and US Southern Combatant Command— and three functional commands (Special Operations, Strategic, and Transportation). Each UCC is headed by a single combatant commander (CCDR), typically headed by the service that has a preponderance of forces in the region, who has combined authority over the army, navy, and air force personnel in the designated region. The chain of command now bypasses the three departmental secretaries (army, navy, and air force) as well as the chiefs of the four services (i.e., army and navy chiefs of staff, the commandant of the Marine Corps, and the chief of naval operations) and descends instead from the president, to the secretary of defense, to the CCDR. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs has no command authority but serves instead as the principal military adviser to the president, the secretary of defense, and the National Security Council. Thus, the military service leadership and their rivalries—a defining characteristic of the US military since the eighteenth century—has been cut out of the chain of command over soldiers and sailors in the field. By the 1990s, much of the Pentagon building was in a serious state of decay and the decision was made for it to undergo a thorough renovation. With an appropriation of $4.5 billion, work began in 1994 and was completed in 2011, interrupted by the attacks of September 11. In addition to its revamped offices and work spaces, the Pentagon now houses metro and bus stops, a post office, banks, more than a dozen fast-food restaurants and a cafeteria, a drugstore, a florist shop, clothing stores, a chocolate store, an electronics store, barbers and hair dressers, laundry and shoe repair services, and facilities for dental and eye care. THE DOD AND AMERICAN CULTURE The US military has played important roles in American culture since the 1940s. One institution within the DoD, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, was largely responsible for the early stages of development of the modern Internet, ARPANET (a packet-switching network), TCP/IP, and e-mail. The Pentagon also has been the subject of one of the most dramatic episodes in American history regarding secrecy in government and the deception of the American people. During the 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (1916–2009) ordered that a classified history of the Vietnam War be compiled. Daniel Ellsberg (b. 1931), who had contributed to the history, and his colleague Anthony Russo (1936– 2008), secretly made photocopies of the history and leaked them to the New York Times, Washington Post, and other newspapers. When the New York Times published portions of these documents, which became known as the Pentagon Papers, the administration of President Richard Nixon (1913–1994) went all the way to the US Supreme Court in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent further publication (New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 275 Department of Defense, US U.S. 713 [1971]). Although the secret history was completed before the beginning of the Nixon administration, its publication significantly undermined the credibility of the presidency and the Pentagon as it was revealed that the US government had systematically lied to the American people about the Vietnam War. themes in national security policy and American popular culture. Three of these interrelated and competing themes are considered here: American global military power, Americans’ self-image as exemplified by the military, and American violence. Because of its size and reach, the DoD played both real and symbolic roles in American cultural battles regarding nondiscrimination, particularly with regard to the racial integration of the military services in the 1940s and integrating women into the military academies and services. It has also been at the center of the hot-button culture-war issue of gays in the military, most notoriously with regard to the since-abandoned “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy instituted during the Clinton administration. AMERICAN GLOBAL MILITARY POWER The Pentagon is the quintessential symbol of the United States’ global military power and reach. There is a significant consensus in American politics, including both major political parties, that the United States should have a military “second to none.” For years the United States has spent almost as much on military operations as all other countries of the world combined. The nation possesses as many aircraft carriers as all other countries of the world combined. The US Navy has separate fleets permanently based in the Atlantic, Pacific, Mediterranean, and Persian Gulf and operates more than two dozen bases outside the United States. Aside from its organizational structure, the physical building, and the operations that take place within, the Pentagon both symbolizes and exemplifies competing US Department of Defense Unified Combatant Commands (2015) Europe USEUCOM Northern USNORTHCOM Central USCENTCOM Pacific USPACOM Africa USAFRICOM Pacific USPACOM Southern USSOUTHCOM SOURCE: © 2015 Eric Ross Figure 2. The increased global reach of American military power can be seen by contrasting the US War Department’s Defense Commands in 1941, which were centered on the continental United States (see figure 1), with that of the current Unified Combatant Commands system, which places the entire world within the Pentagon’s purview. In 1941, Central Command referred to fewer than ten states in the American Midwest. By 2015, Central Command oversees almost 20 countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf.  ERIC ROSS 276 AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 Department of Defense, US While the number of American soldiers in uniform is only the second largest in the world (after China), American military capacity is by far the most significant. While there are debates in the United States about particular weapons systems and strategies, virtually no prominent politicians openly challenge the consensus that the United States should have (and pay for) the most powerful military in the world. The accompanying map graphically illustrates how the US government in the twenty-first century perceives its global interests, reach, and military role. Whereas the War Department’s “Central Command” at the beginning of World War II referred only to nine states in the American Midwest, by 2015 the DoD’s Central Command referred to almost twenty countries in the Middle East, Central Asia, and the Persian Gulf. This modern consensus in favor of a global military presence is relatively new in American history. For the greater part of US history, the consensus was opposed to a large military. The leading statement of the original consensus was the Farewell Address of President George Washington (1732–1799), who warned of “entangling alliances” and standing armies and who advocated commerce and trade with nations as the path to prosperity. While there certainly were significant exceptions to this long-standing preference for a small military, most notably with regard to westward expansion, the Mexican-American War of 1846–1848, the Spanish-American War, and the recurrent use of gunboat diplomacy (particularly in the Western Hemisphere), the United States was a much more reluctant actor with regard to colonialism than any other comparably powerful country. The United States was an active supporter of disarmament during the interwar period and entered into World War I and World War II relatively late. After both world wars, the United States immediately and massively demobilized. With the beginning of the Cold War, however, particularly in 1947, the United States abandoned its long-standing belief in maintaining only a small military presence in peacetime and in eschewing military alliances in peacetime. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), and the Rio Pact (more formally, the InterAmerican Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance) became new models for peacetime military alliances. After a dramatic decline in the number of soldiers in uniform from 1945 to 1947, the trend reversed. The United States increasingly saw itself as the bulwark against worldwide communism and sought to make its military second to none. Even with the end of the Cold War by 1991, the new consensus was not abandoned and is now a foundational principle in American politics. THE PENTAGON AND THE MILITARY AS THE EMBODIMENT OF POSITIVE AMERICAN IDEALS AND VALUES In political speeches and commercial advertising since the 1980s, the US military has been broadly depicted as embodying positive American values. American soldiers are typically portrayed as being heroes who are strong, brave, religious (“there are no atheists in foxholes”), clean-cut, responsible, honor-bound, self-sacrificing, and the protectors of “our freedoms” and the “American way of life.” The military can be trusted to “carry out its mission,” act decisively, and “get the job done.” This official depiction of the US military is reinforced in movies, television shows, and novels. In the popular media that supports this vision of the military, even the soldiers who disobey orders, or who show some lack of discipline, or who behave as mavericks, ultimately will come to have the greater interests of their country and comrades at heart and can be trusted in the end to do their duty and become heroes. Since the beginning of cinema, the US military and Hollywood have collaborated on films that portray the military and American servicemen in this positive and heroic light. The War Department provided equipment and technical advice for the first film to win the Academy Award for Outstanding Picture, Wings (1927), which told the fictional story of two Army Air Corps pilots in World War I. At the beginning of World War II director Frank Capra (1897–1991) made a series of seven short films titled Why We Fight that explained the importance of the free peoples’ of the world (identified as Americans, the British, the Russians, and the Chinese) taking up arms against the governments that enslaved people (Germany, Japan, and Italy). The first of the Why We Fight films quotes Vice President Henry A. Wallace (1888–1965): “This is a fight between a free world and a slave world.” During World War II several major films were released that depicted heroic, freedom-loving Americans at war against the barbarians of the East and West, including A Yank on the Burma Road (1942), Wake Island (1942), Gung Ho! (1943), Bataan (1943), Guadalcanal Diary (1943), Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (1944), The Fighting Seabees (1944), Marine Raiders (1944), and God Is My Co-pilot (1945). The fact that Hollywood produced flattering images of the US military at war does not mean that the American public was unaware of the darker and less inspiring aspects of military life. Immediately after World War II, the American military was widely denounced in the American press, particularly by religious leaders, because of its corrupting influence on the moral life of soldiers. In 1947, as American troops were continuing AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 277 Department of Defense, US their occupation of Europe and Japan, President Truman sent a fact-finding commission to determine the accuracy of press claims about alcoholism and decadence in the military. The commission and its individual members reported the pervasiveness of alcohol; prostitution; syphilis; gambling; vulgarity; and the crimes of rape, assault, and theft. The war and the military experience were seen as having undermined young men’s moral values. Military life did not build character; it undermined it. When veterans returned to America, a tidal wave of syphilis spread across the country, just as it had after World War I. The very successful film The Best Years of Our Lives (1947) touched upon the difficulties of the postwar period and treated returning veterans not as conquering heroes but as wounded and sometimes bitter human beings undergoing the painful steps of readjustment. In response to such reports, in the late 1940s the military began an ideological campaign to promote greater morality in the military. Booklets were prepared for servicemen that stressed religious and moral values. Many evangelical Christian groups that had long been pacifist or antimilitary took upon themselves the new mission of promoting religion in the military and focused their efforts particularly on the new US Air Force and its new academy: Colorado Springs became a headquarters not only for the Air Force Academy and the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) but also for the American evangelical community. During the 1950s, an active campaign both within and outside the Pentagon promoted the link between God, the United States, and the military. Rather than being perceived as a threat to the moral values of young men, as was the case during and immediately following the war, the military increasingly came to be seen as a character-building institution where troubled youth could be sent to learn self-discipline. When the American public responded critically to the Ribbon Creek incident in 1956 on the marine base at Parris Island, South Carolina, where a drunken drill instructor negligently caused the deaths of six recruits, Hollywood responded with the film The D.I. (1957), which omitted the actual incident that prompted the making of the film and praised instead the characterbuilding role of Marine Corps drill instructors on undisciplined youths. The final credits of the film state: “We wish to express our gratitude to the United States Marine Corps—not only for their assistance in the making of this film, but for … Tripoli, Belleau Wood, Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima, Korea.” The actual problem was swept under a metaphorical rug. Only two feature films released during the 1950s and 1960s depicted the Vietnam War. The first, The Quiet American (1958), was in theory based on the Graham Greene novel of the same title that described Vietnam 278 during the last days of French occupation and the arrival of American intelligence officials. Like The D.I., The Quiet American completely inverted the meaning of the original. In the Hollywood version, Americans are portrayed as a positive moral force in a poor country struggling against communism, unlike Greene’s novel, which presented Americans as naive, moralistic, and dangerous. John Wayne’s The Green Berets (1968), a prowar film, was produced with the assistance of the Pentagon. During the 1960s and early 1970s, the positive values of military life continued to be conveyed in the American media. Some films raised the specter of the dangers of nuclear war, including highly successful films in 1964 that raised the possibility of an accidental nuclear war (Fail Safe and the dark comedy Dr. Strangelove), as well as the potential threat to the Republic from a charismatic military leader as depicted in Seven Days in May. Nevertheless, most of the films about the military from the 1950s to 1970 continued to be nostalgic, and many used the “good war,” as World War II was called, as the topic of the film: From Here to Eternity (1953), The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Longest Day (1962), PT-109 (1962), Merrill’s Marauders (1962), The Dirty Dozen (1967), and Patton (1970). Although documentary films questioning the Vietnam War appeared in the 1960s, it was not until the 1970s that a series of films appeared that used humor to challenge the premises of prior American military actions with veiled references to Vietnam: Little Big Man (the US Cavalry at the Battle of Little Big Horn), M*A*S*H (the Korean War), and Catch-22 (World War II). After the Vietnam War ended in 1975, several films were released that probed the darker, morally destructive, and violent aspects of the war, including, most famously, The Deer Hunter (1978), Apocalypse Now (1979), Platoon (1986), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). These films, among the first direct motion-picture attacks on the US military, received many artistic awards. In an effort to burnish the image of the military after Vietnam, the Pentagon’s Office of Public Affairs (as had its predecessors) used its liaison relations with Hollywood and provided logistical assistance for several films and television programs that depicted the military in a favorable light and that emphasized the military values of honor, duty, and accountability. Examples of such films and television programs that have received technical and logistical support from the DoD since the 1980s include Top Gun, Black Hawk Down, The Hunt for Red October, Pearl Harbor, Zero Dark Thirty, Thirteen Days, Patriot Games, An Officer and a Gentleman, Clear and Present Danger, and JAG. While the American public is sharply divided about the use of the military to solve challenging political and AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 Department of Defense, US security dangers from abroad, the military has been very successful in helping to shape a broadly positive image of itself at home. Whatever public disagreements politicians on the political left and right may have about the use of the military abroad, they compete with each other in their praise for soldiers, who are universally described as being heroic, freedom-loving, and positive role models for society. AMERICAN VIOLENCE AND THE AMERICAN PURSUIT OF GLOBAL MILITARY POWER Many American presidents, including Truman, John F. Kennedy (1917–1963), Nixon, Ronald Reagan (1911– 2004), George H. W. Bush (b. 1924), and George W. Bush (b. 1946), typically before sending troops off to combat, referred to Americans as being a “peaceful people.” Wartime propaganda films repeat the same trope to emphasize American reluctance to engage in combat and the belief that war for Americans is always a last resort. Outside of the United States, however, there is a widely accepted counterstereotype that Americans are particularly prone to violence and are warlike, as exemplified in the American gun culture, murder rate, imprisonment rate, gangsters, and violent movies. One of the salient symbols of American violence for foreigners is the Pentagon. Many Americans find military briefings in wartime to be reassuring, as exemplified during the First and Second Gulf Wars in spokesmen Norman Schwarzkopf (1934–2012), Colin Powell (b. 1937), and Donald Rumsfeld (b. 1932), who spoke calmly and assuredly about precision-guided missiles, minimal collateral damage, and “shock and awe.” Others, however, saw such briefings as glorifying violence while deliberately obfuscating the misery that occurs on the ground. In addition to the Pentagon’s role in sponsoring the violence of war, it is also perceived as being responsible for promoting, encouraging, and supporting violence throughout the world through its support of repressive and violent regimes. The most notorious example is the DoD’s School of the Americas (renamed in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) at Fort Benning, Georgia, which has long been portrayed as a school for the training of foreign soldiers in methods of torture and assassination. While the extent to which its sixty thousand graduates have engaged in torture, gratuitous violence, or assassination might be debated, there is no question that many of its alumni, including Manuel Noriega (b. 1934), Roberto D’Aubuisson (1944–1992), Hugo Banzer (1926–2002), Vides Casanova (b. 1937), and Héctor Gramajo (1938–2004), have been shown to be responsible for murders, assassinations, death squads, and torture. Because of its symbolic role as a center of American violence, the Pentagon has been an obvious symbolic target for opposition to perceived American militarism. Three particularly salient protests have been directed specifically at the Pentagon. The first was an anti– Vietnam War protest by a Quaker named Norman Morrison (1933–1965) in 1965. As had some pacifist Buddhist monks in South Vietnam, Morrison poured kerosene over his body and lit himself aflame under the window of Secretary of Defense McNamara. Two years later, on October 21, 1967, a mass rally of tens of thousands of opponents of the war in Vietnam marched from the Lincoln Memorial to the Pentagon. The DoD braced itself for the demonstration by stationing more than two thousand soldiers inside the walls of the Pentagon. Hundreds of demonstrators, including Norman Mailer (1923–2007), were arrested. The March on the Pentagon was one of the first mass rallies in protest against the escalation of the war in Vietnam. The most famous attack on the Pentagon was, of course, that of September 11, 2001, staged by al-Qaeda. Although Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) did not state explicitly why the Pentagon had been his target, the world certainly perceived it as both a symbolic and actual attack on the center of American military power. For many, the subsequent abuses by American soldiers at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq and the Haditha massacre in November 2005, also in Iraq, simply confirmed the stereotype. THE “MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX” AND PENTAGON WASTE In popular culture and the political world, the Pentagon is frequently seen as a symbol of the “military-industrial complex” as well as of waste. Although scandals erupt from time to time over grossly inflated prices for items such as wrenches or toilet seats, or the enormous cost overruns for weapons systems, including the now infamous examples of the M-14 rifle, the Bradley Fighting Vehicle, the M-247 Sergeant York air defense artillery, and the Lockheed Martin F-35, there has been no political will to systematically and definitely bring the waste under control. Apart from the US president and the White House, the DoD and the Pentagon are the most striking and visible symbols of the United States throughout the world. Air Force, US; Army, US; Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); Department of Homeland Security; Department of State; Deterrence; Joint Chiefs of Staff; Military-Industrial Complex; National Security Agency (NSA); National Security Council (NSC); Navy, US; Nuclear Weapons; World War II SEE ALSO BIBLIOGRAPHY Bacevich, Andrew J. The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005. AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210 279 Department of Foreign Affairs Bacevich, Andrew J., ed. The Long War: A New History of U.S. National Security Policy since World War II. New York: Columbia University Press, 2007. Burton, James G. The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1993. Fussell, Paul. Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Goldberg, Alfred. The Pentagon: The First Fifty Years. Washington, DC: Historical Office, Office of the Secretary of Defense, 1992. Greenfield, Kent Roberts, and Robert R. Palmer. Origins of the Army Ground Forces General Headquarters U.S. Army, 1940– 1942. Washington, DC: Historical Section, Army Ground Forces, 1946. Gunn, T. Jeremy. Spiritual Weapons: The Cold War and the Forging of an American National Religion. Westport, CT: Praeger, 2009. Koppes, Clayton R., and Gregory D. Black. Hollywood Goes to War: How Politics, Profits, and Propaganda Shaped World War II Movies. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990. Suid, Lawrence H. Guts and Glory: The Making of the American Military Image in Film. Rev. ed. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2002. Vogel, Steve. The Pentagon: A History: The Untold Story of the Wartime Race to Build the Pentagon—and to Restore It Sixty Years Later. New York: Random House, 2008. T. Jeremy Gunn Professor of Political Science and Law International University of Rabat, Morocco DEPARTMENT OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS The establishment of a successful foreign policy, especially as it related to commerce and national security, mattered deeply to the men of the American Revolution. On January 10, 1781, two years before the fledgling United States achieved its formal independence, the Congress under the new Articles of Confederation established a “Department for Foreign Affairs” with a secretary elected as administrator. The secretary’s role included handling the correspondence of American diplomats abroad and foreign ministers resident in Philadelphia, as well as attending Congress and keeping that body informed as to recent international developments. After contentious debate and considerable intrigue, Robert R. Livingston (1746–1813) was chosen as the first secretary, his tenure lasting from August 1781 to August 1783. The thirty-four-year-old prominent New Yorker had served with distinction in the Continental Congress. A lawyer by profession, he focused on financial matters in the Congress, and developed close relations with the 280 “nationalist” faction. These ties produced enemies among the “states’ rights” element. Virginian Arthur Lee (1740– 1792) competed equally with Livingston for the post, until the French minister, the Chevalier de la Luzerne (1741–1791), intervened, claiming he used loans and bribes to secure the votes needed to elect Livingston by the narrow margin of one state. Livingston’s major contribution focused on his role in guiding the American commissioners negotiating the Peace of Paris with Great Britain in 1782 to 1783. He offered advice on topics ranging from protecting the Florida boundary and guarding fishing rights to opposing the repatriation of Loyalists. The secretary also embarked on the unrewarding task of establishing a bureaucracy and order in a new department, creating systems of filing information, and developing lines of communication within the government. A meddlesome Congress and poor salary likely prompted his resignation in December 1782. When Livingston finally departed the office in May 1783, Congress left the post in a vacant and confused state until selecting another New Yorker, John Jay (1745– 1829), in July 1784. Jay, who served through March 1790, dealt with numerous problems with only a dozen staff members, including a doorkeeper, messengers, and clerks. Major issues existed with Britain, including the payment of prewar debts, persistence of Crown garrisons in the Old Northwest, restrictions of trade, and compensation for Loyalists. These would go unresolved in spite of the exertions of John Adams (1735–1826), appointed as first minister in 1785. In a treaty with Spanish diplomat Diego de Gardoqui (1735–1798) in 1786, Jay agreed to limited restrictions on navigation of the Mississippi River in exchange for a commercial treaty, a proposal rejected by the Congress. The Barbary corsairs complicated matters by commencing attacks on American shipping in 1784. A treaty with Morocco was quickly signed, but Jay wanted war with troublesome Algiers. Congress refused, and the pirate problem persisted until 1815. Capable Secretaries Livingston and Jay experienced limited success. A feeble Congress, military, and image of the United States abroad hindered their work. The department did, however, lay the groundwork for a new, stronger iteration under the Constitution. SEE ALSO Department of State; Jay, John BIBLIOGRAPHY Bemis, Samuel Flagg. Pinckney’s Treaty: A Study of America’s Advantage from Europe’s Distress, 1783–1800. Rev. ed. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1960. Dangerfield, George. Chancellor Robert R. Livingston of New York, 1746–1813. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1960. AMERICA IN THE WORLD, 1776 TO THE PRESENT COPYRIGHT 2016 Charles Scribner?s Sons, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210