HIST 6571 - American Defense Policy and Military History from the Two World Wars to the Global War on Terror

Fall, Spring, Summer. 4 credits. Letter grades only.

Summer: Washington, D.C. Co-meets with GOVT 1571/HIST 1571.

D. Silbey.

America is finishing up two wars, one in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. They have been the longest wars in American history and have ended amid much ambivalence about the US engagement in each place and the results. They are part of a series of wars that America has fought as a global power, with a global reach, sending its forces thousands of miles from home. That global reach is not new, and goes back all the way to 1898 and the Spanish-American War. This course will look at the American military experience from our first tentative steps onto the global stage in 1898, to the earth-spanning conflicts of World War I and II, to the nuclear tension of Cold War conflicts, and finish with the current Long War against terrorism, and the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.