Army Aunts

The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, by Dana Priest (Norton, 384 pp., $26.95)

FROM the late 1940s until the end of the 1980s, a single unambiguous mission concentrated the minds and energies of America’s armed forces. The U.S. military existed to deter and, if necessary, defeat The Threat—aggression by the Soviet Union or by Soviet pawns and proxies. For Americans in uniform, of course, the Cold War was by no means a “simpler time.” An era that included the bloody frustrations of Korea and the agonizing failure of Vietnam was anything but simple. Still, the overriding imperative of defending the Fulda Gap imparted to the business of soldiering a remarkable clarity of purpose.

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Andrew J. Bacevich

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The Mission: Waging War and Keeping Peace with America’s Military, by Dana Priest (Norton, 384 pp., $26.95)

FROM the late 1940s until the end of the 1980s, a single unambiguous mission concentrated the minds and energies of America’s armed forces. The U.S. military existed to deter and, if necessary, defeat The Threat—aggression by the Soviet Union or by Soviet pawns and proxies. For Americans in uniform, of course, the Cold War was by no means a “simpler time.” An era that included the bloody frustrations of Korea and the agonizing failure of Vietnam was anything but simple. Still, the overriding imperative of defending the Fulda Gap imparted to the business of soldiering a remarkable clarity of purpose.