Uncertain Warriors : The United States Army between the Cold War and the War on Terror

This book shows how the US Army – disoriented by the end of the Cold War and struggling to appease domestic culture wars – spent the 1990s suffering from an identity crisis. This unique work will interest students and scholars of contemporary American military history.

In an era where 'history' had supposedly ended, what was an Army for? This question confronted the US Army at the end of the Cold War. Although public support for the military remained high, fewer were sending their children to enlist and questions were raised about the uncertainty of future operations: How would Army leaders prepare soldiers for difficult peacekeeping operations that called for a more human-oriented approach in light of the promises of high-tech warfare? How best to navigate the broader debates about changing gender and sexual norms in American society? Pulled in different directions, the Army struggled to put forward a compelling vision of who and what the American solder should be. In Uncertain Warriors, David Fitzgerald reveals how, in response to this uncertainty, they eventually fell back on an older vision of martial masculinity, embracing a 'warrior ethos' that was meant to define the contemporary American soldier.