Essay on The United States Military History

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Abstract.

The history of the military of the United States dates back to over two centuries ago, the military has evolved from an alliance of the British colonies (thirteen in number) to an independent military of a superpower nation in the twentieth and the twenty first centuries. It was not until the constitutional convention of the United States that the military became one, up until then, each was organized by independent states. As at 2008, the United States military consisted of the army, the Marine Corps and the air force, there was also the United States coast guard and this is controlled by the department of Homeland Security. The president of the United States is the commander in chief of all the armed forces and in national emergencies; he can assume control of the National Guard departments.

In the United States, the concept of citizen-soldier became more popular before the revolutionary War and was widely associated with colonial militia. In the Boston Massacre in 1770, the regular soldiers in the British Military killed five soldiers. At the onset of American independence, the citizen-soldier and the standing army became common in the struggle for political supremacy between the state and the central government. The federalist wanted a strong standing army to be established and be manned by the central government. Those against the idea argued that such an establishment would lead to the oppression of the populace and maintained state controlled militias of citizen soldiers would do. The main concern was that should the government be dislocated, the authority would be bestowed in the army and that would lead to oppression. Throughout history, the issue for citizen-soldier has been preferred for the sake of community defense (Raatma, 2008).

Being the world super power, the presence of the United Nations foreign policy is felt in the rest of the globe. The defense budget of the country totals to $711 billion and this is almost half the military budget of the whole world. The United States secretary of State is the minister of Foreign affairs and conducts the diplomatic negotiations between countries. The United States gets involved in territorial disputed matters quite often; these include those with Canada over the Dixon Entrance, Northwest Passage and the areas of the North Rock. Other interventions are like the United States role in the Guantanamo Bay dispute which is leased from the Cuban republic. The United States has made territorial claim of Antarctica and the foreign issues at Navassa Island, and the Marshal Island claim of the Wake Island (Beisner, 2003).

The victory of the United States army is evident in scores of wars that they won from the colonial wars to the war of independence, the American civil war, the cold war, the First World War and the Second World War just to mention but a few. In the First World War, the United States had to shield herself from the aggression of the Germans and from the Submarine attack. April sixth 1917 marked the first day that the United States declared war on Germany and by summer in 1918, one million of the American Military (the American Expeditionary Force) were deployed in Europe. During the attack, the United States deployed twenty five thousand soldiers every week, Germany exhausted their soldiers and their reserves and as such were not able to neither defend them nor deploy their own manpower.

The Second World War was the most extensive in the history of the United States, this officially begun in the 1941 Japanese attack of the Pearl Harbor. The country used the aircraft carriers and the submarine fleet. In 1943, the United States deployed millions of soldiers and thousands of planes to lead the bombing of Nazi Germany. What followed was the invasion of Germany, Soviet, France and Italy. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki led to the surrender of Japan and finally, the significance of the Military of the political prowess has shaped the whole world up to date and this victory in the Second World War can not be understated (Baker, 2004).