Found a good article by Michael Ginsberg to use as a source. He is an attorney in Washington DC for a defense contractor and a 2002 graduate of Harvard Law School.
Following the Great Depression the US turned to a policy of isolationism. People did now want anything to do with another war. Internal bickering between political parties assured that politicians would never come to agreement on entering any new conflict. All of our money was being spent to pull us out of the depression.
As a result. The US, still traumatized by the First World War and focused on disarmament, feared taking on the growing evil of the Nazis expanding throughout Europe.
So, as Germany rearmed, France, Britain, and the United States were too concerned about the pressing economic problems of the Depression to take vigorous action.
In the early 1930s, the United States was eager to wash its hands of world problems and take a domestically focused approach to its economic woes – leaving the gold standard, raising tariffs, and launching enormous public works programs like the WPA, CCC, and TVA programs.
Sound familiar? In this weakened state, we found ourselves incapable of pushing back against Germany, Italy, and Japan, allowing them to grow into the threats they became.
Germany then, like today’s China and Russia, took advantage of the situation and used it to rectifying historical grievances and losses of territory.
In the 1930s Germany pushed for the recovery of territory lost to Poland in the First World War and ignored the requirements put on them by the Treaty of Versailles. Italy sought the glory and empire it felt Versailles denied it as a victor of the war and launched a military campaign in North Africa.
Today China has swallowed Hong Kong whole and is making ever more threatening noises about Taiwan.
President Xi Jinping’s plan is to reverse the centuries of humiliation, both real and imagined, China suffered at Western powers’ hands.
Russia, too, seeks a remedy to historical grievances and the piecemeal reassembly of the Soviet empire, whether in Central Asia, Ukraine, or the Baltics.
Empowered by the West’s internal squabbling during the 1930s, Adolf Hitler continued to press his advantages – remilitarizing the Ruhr region, the Austrian Anschluss, and the partition of Czechoslovakia through the Munich Pact.
In each case, the trauma of the First World War, the economic stresses of the times, and the lack of an allied vision led the West to seek alternatives to confrontation.
This was the age of appeasement. Hitler and Mussolini both saw it and took advantage of the situation.
If the western powers weren’t willing to stop the small things they were doing, why not start taking bigger steps. That is exactly what happened. Japan, sitting on the sideline, saw this as well and took its first step by invading Manchuria in northern China. Again, the US did nothing.
It was not until the invasion of Poland that Britain and France finally were stirred to act against Hitler. By then, it was too late.
Indeed, the Nazis used the West’s preference for diplomacy and endless discussions of disarmament to stall for time while it rebuilt its war machine.
At the start of WWII Hitler had all the men and equipment he needed to conquer Europe. The US was totally unprepared.
China has done much the same, quietly building its military force over the last two decades until today, when it feels much more prepared to dictate terms.
As in the 1930s, today, the every-man-for-himself mindset is strong.
America’s disastrous exit from Afghanistan without any collaboration with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies supporting the mission has fractured the alliance badly and called into question America’s appetite for defending the world order, just as in the 1930s.
Enemies and friends alike are now questioning whether the United States would come to the rescue of Taiwan, Ukraine, South Korea, Israel, or others.
To be sure, there are differences. Unlike the 1930s, economic ties among antagonists, particularly the United States and China, are big issues and conflict risks throwing both countries into economic turmoil. Whether that is enough to contain China’s aggression is unknown.
Today’s US situation is as it was in the 1930s. Then, the Germans dictated the sped of events until war became inevitable and Germany was strong enough to fight for six years.
Today, with the United States signaling its retreat and without the full support and confidence of our allies, China will gladly fill the vacuum with no resistance.
The questions now, as in the 1930s, will be these: Will Biden move to isolationism so he can focus on his domestic agenda? How far can China and Russia push before the US pushes back? And what will that pushback look like?
Here is something to think about folks.
Downsizing and budget cuts are nothing new to the military.
Following every major conflict there has come a time when the military has been forced to consolidate.
Even the global situation is not unique; drawdowns have come at times where the United States was still expected to project power and protect its interests at volatile spots on the globe.
World War I was a watershed moment for the Army. It mobilized active, National Guard, and draftee divisions; trained them; and put them overseas in France to carry out major campaigns — all in less than a year.
At its height, the Army of 1918 swelled to 2.5 million men and women. By 1920, however, the Army had dropped down to barely 200,000 men, with only 56,000 in the National Guard.
Further cuts in 1922 and 1923 left the Army at 133,000.
What happened?
Three things: a wave of pacifism and isolationism following the massive casualty lists from World War I, a national security strategy that relied heavily on the Navy for national defense, and the National Defense Act of 1920.
Out of these, the most important was the NDA of 1920. It was the first time that the president took an active role in “declaring a military policy for the United States,” as a New York Times article stated. The new policy cut the Army’s personnel heavily, moved qualified officers who no longer had a position in the Army to the National Guard and the newly-created reserves, expanded the reserve components, and placed the remaining Army units in a state of high readiness for mobilization.
President Warren G. Harding envisioned a regular Army that could deploy quickly and a reserve force of shell divisions that could be recruited to full strength in the event of war.
Although the regular Army was smaller, they were able to spend more money on professional schooling for officers and noncommissioned officers across all Army components.
Education and training became the focus, which paid dividends when the Army mobilized in 1940–1941 for World War II.
Professionally trained officers and noncommissioned officers were available from all three components to man and train new units.
However, the real gap was in research and development of new weapons and technology.
Army Chief of Staff Gen. Douglas MacArthur wrote in 1933 that the Army’s tanks were useless on a modern battlefield. The Army continued to rely on their stocks of war materiel from World War I up until the beginning of World War II, severely hampering overall wartime readiness.
That the U.S. Army could continue on this track well into the 1930s — when Japan and Germany were militarizing, communism and nationalism were tearing Spain apart, and Italy was invading Ethiopia — was only made possible by the isolationist direction of U.S. foreign policy.
It was a widely held belief that the arms race had brought about World War I, so a large number of arms control treaties marked the interwar years.
As long as the great powers (U.S., Britain, France, Germany, and Japan) abided by these treaties, then global aggression could not bring about another world war.
The U.S. also pursued good diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union and passed several neutrality acts in the 1930s to make it clear that it wanted no part in a European conflict.
Defense spending was, therefore, purely for defensive purposes, not the two-front offense that World War II would bring.
It was not until 1939, when Britain and France declared war on Germany, that the U.S. government made significant changes to boost defense spending and authorization.
While Biden and his administration would like to go down the path of traditional isolationism, the U.S. populace remains committed to the idea of American military power being used as a force for good in the world.
There is division and debate over how to use our military in an unstable Middle East, to counter Russian aggression in Ukraine or face down an ever expanding Chinese influence in the world.
Obviously, we can now clearly see that our military and the Biden administration do not agree on our current policies when it comes to using force.
Where the Army was in a defensive posture for the continental United States in 1920-1940, the current Army is tasked with containing global threats before they reach the homeland.
As stated in the 2015 National Security Strategy, the military will “conduct global counterterrorism operations, assure allies, and deter aggression through forward presence and engagement.”
That same document goes on to say, “Although our military will be smaller, it must remain dominant in every domain.” That is a tall order in an age of terrorists, proxy wars, ever-growing cyber threats, and increased weapons proliferation.
As we now focus on a $3 trillion domestic infrastructure program that includes a focus on climate change and the expansion of government domestic programs, the military will be stretched thin to meet the challenges it will face in a very dangerous world.
The following quote attributed to Scottish history professor Alexander Tyler in 1787 University of Edinborough, seems to portray an accurate reflection of what we are facing as a nation today:
“A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.”
We are now with a world every bit as dangerous as the one our parents and grandparents faced in the years between the two World Wars.
During that time, the world saw the United States as weak.
Bear in mind, we sat on the sidelines when Hitler and Hirohito launched their campaigns for domination.
It was a full two years before we entered the war and then, it took the attack on Pearl Harbor to get our politicians to wake up and realize that diplomacy and negotiation are not the only answer when your nation is being threatened.
Peace through strength has proven to be effective throughout history.
The road to destroyed nations has been paved for thousands of years with broken treaties.
Professor Tyler went on to tell us what we can expect if we don’t get our act together.
“The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, these nations always progressed through the following sequence:
- From bondage to spiritual faith;
- From spiritual faith to great courage;
- From courage to liberty;
- From liberty to abundance;
- From abundance to complacency;
- From complacency to apathy;
- From apathy to dependence;
- From dependence back into bondage
“These words were written two years before George Washington became our first President.
It is time that we learned from our past.