Militarism - Bibliography
Coffin, Tristram. The Armed Society: Militarism in Modern America. Baltimore, 1964. Recounts the growing military influence.
Donovan, James A. Militarism, U.S.A. New York, 1970. Suggests a cut in military manpower and reduction in defense appropriations as the best means for controlling militarism.
Ekirch, Arthur A., Jr. The Civilian and the Military. New York, 1956. Notes the importance of antimilitarism in American history but sees the penetration of militarism through the technological implications of modern warfare and perpetual mobilization in the post-1945 world.
Gaddis, John Lewis, and Paul H. Nitze. "NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered." International Security 4 (spring 1980): 164–176. Comments on NSC 68, one by a historian of the Cold War and the other by the document's principal author.
Gholz, Eugene. "The Curtiss-Wright Corporation and Cold War-Era Defense Procurement: A Challenge to Military-Industrial Complex Theory." Journal of Cold War Studies 2 (winter 2000): 35–75. Questions whether the military-industrial complex protected its industrial components from going bankrupt by an examination of the Curtiss-Wright Corporation.
Hogan, Michael J. A Cross of Iron: Harry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954. Cambridge and New York, 1998. Describes how America prepared to fight the Cold War and tried to preserve traditional values and institutions.
Ignatieff, Michael. Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond. New York, 2000. Looks at the NATO action in Kosovo as a virtual war where technology allowed it to be fought with no deaths on the American side and was thus less than fully real to the United States. The author attempts to explain "why nations that have never been more immune from the risks of waging war should remain so unwilling to run them" by his examination of the new technology and the morality governing its use.
Kagan, Donald, and Frederick W. Kagan. While America Sleeps: Self-Delusion, Military Weakness, and the Threat to Peace Today. New York, 2000. Fears that the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century was emulating England in the 1920s in defense policy.
Knoll, Erwin, and Judith Nies McFadden, eds. American Militarism 1970. New York, 1969. A dialogue among politicians and intellectuals who bemoan then current trends in military and foreign policies and doubt if they are defending the basic values of American society.
Kolko, Gabriel. The Roots of American Foreign Policy. Boston, 1969. Emphasizes that the growing military establishment is a result of political policy not its cause.
Lauterbach, Albert T. "Militarism in the Western World: A Comparative Study." Journal of the History of Ideas 5 (1944): 446–478.
Leffler, Melvyn P. A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War. Stanford, Calif., 1992. How the Truman administration coped with legacies of World War II and took steps to contain the Soviet Union but at costs higher than necessary.
Leslie, Stuart W. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. New York, 1993. The influence of the Cold War on American scientific research. May, Ernest R. "The U.S. Government, a Legacy of the Cold War." In Michael J. Hogan, ed. The End of the Cold War: Its Meaning and Implications. Cambridge and New York, 1992. Does not look with regret at the militarization of American government during the Cold War but questions how this government structure will fare in the post–Cold War period.
Millis, Walter. Arms and Men: A Study of American Military History. New York, 1958.
——. American Military Thought. Indianapolis, Ind., 1966. An anthology.
Mills, C. Wright. The Power Elite. New York, 1956. Sees a unity of the power elite based on the coincidence of interests among economic, political, and military organizations.
Perkins, Dexter. The American Approach to Foreign Policy. Rev. ed. New York, 1968. Suggests that Americans on the whole have not been imperialistic and have not surrendered their essential liberties and democratic customs to demands of war.
Shaw, Martin. Post Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century. Philadelphia, 1991. An examination of the concept of post-military society, bringing not necessarily the end of militarism but the possibility of peace, and, despite contradictions, a period when militarism is less dominant of society.
Sherry, Michael S. Preparing for the Next War: American Plans for Postwar Defense, 1941–45. New Haven, Conn., 1977. An examination of military planning to shape post–World War II policies and attitudes.
——. In the Shadow of War: The United States Since the 1930s. New Haven, Conn., 1995. A history of militarization, "the process by which war and national security …shaped broad areas of national life."
Speier, Hans. "Militarism in the Eighteenth Century." Social Research: An International Quarterly of Political and Social Science 3 (1936): 304–336.
Sprout, Harold, and Margaret Sprout. The Rise of American Naval Power, 1776–1918. Princeton, N.J., 1969.
Vagts, Alfred. A History of Militarism, Civilian and Military. Rev. ed. New York, 1959.
Weigley, Russell F. Towards an American Army: Military Thought from Washington to Marshall. New York, 1962.
——. "The American Military and the Principle of Civilian Control from McClellan to Powell." Journal of Military History 57, no. 5, special issue (1993): 27–58. Suggests that the principle of civil control of the military in the United States has an uncertain future.
Yarmolinsky, Adam. The Military Establishment: Its Impact on American Society. New York, 1971. Describes the influence of the military in nonmilitary areas.
Yergin, Daniel. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston, 1977. Development of U.S. policy influenced by what the author terms the Riga axioms and the Yalta axioms—one distrustful, the other cooperative.