Mass Armies and the Cold War: Institutional Post-Heroism?

Abstract

At the end of the Second World War, the atom bomb placed into doubt the utility of land forces in future wars. Yet throughout the Cold War the superpowers and their allies maintained mass armies as well as nuclear arsenals, and today’s wars still appear to require armed forces that combine technology, individual skill and mass despite the promises of a second revolution in military affairs based on information technology. How much did nuclear weapons and concepts of deterrence and of limited war change the understanding of warfare within armies in the western world? Did the Cold War represent a transition from heroic to post-heroic wars, the latter characterized by conflict management and casualty aversion?¹ Following the closing argument of John Keegan’s landmark study The Face of Battle, we might say that heroic understandings of battle died in the world wars of the twentieth century.² But can the same be said about an institutional vision of war? It is worth considering that while managerial concepts of deterrence governed military policies of the great powers, more heroic notions of warfare survived in the ‘small wars’ of the Cold War era. This essay discusses the political, strategic and institutional visions of war and of deterrence in the US army as an example for coping with war in the nuclear age. It shows how the army found its place in that brave new world.