New article: "The US Army’s Domestic Strategy 1945-1965"

Thomas Crosbie, "The US Army’s Domestic Strategy 1945-1965", Parameters, 44.4 (2015): 105-118.

Just published in Parameters, the scholarly journal of the U.S. Army War College.

In the article, I argue that in the post-WWII era, several high-ranking officers in the Army dramatically misjudged the future place of the military in American society, anticipating a militarized culture with mass conscription, universal military training and the like (think Israel today). I describe this set of assumptions about civil-military relations as "Army Utopianism" and trace its emergence through operational policy (i.e. planning on how to wage war) and information policy. The information policy component draws from new historical documents that I don't think have been studied before, including two public relations plans detailing all sorts of strange ways that the Army could promote itself to its many publics.