Kennedy vs. Shy: America's Experience With War Compared

Introduction

Which historian — David M. Kennedy or John Shy — best represents the American experience with war? While reading their respective essays, it is necessary to consider the context of the time in which each was written. Kennedy penned his essay in 1975, and Shy wrote his in 1971. In terms of world events subsequent to both essays — in particular the advent of terrorism on a colossal and destructive scale on September 11, 2001 — vast amounts of military and political change have since emerged.

Notwithstanding the tumultuous global changes since the 1970s, both essays remain timeless in their intelligent analysis and important in their forthright accuracy regarding U.S. history and war. They provide valuable reading for any student of the period. However, Kennedy's essay, in this writer's view, best reflects the broad picture of America — its peoples, its geography, its politics, and its wars. While Shy's writing is also informative, he tends to approach the subject from a theoretical point of view and spends too much time examining the mentality of the military, rather than presenting a balanced historical position. Further comparisons of the two essays are offered in the sections that follow.

David M. Kennedy's Essay

David M. Kennedy builds much of his essay's foundation around how fortunate America has been when it comes to war — specifically regarding the limited destruction of its homeland and the relatively lower casualties associated with its conflicts. Kennedy builds his case by pointing to the geographic realities of America's place in the world and how the United States' relative physical isolation from much of the conflict it has engaged in — with the Indian Wars and the Civil War as exceptions — has kept it safe from outside harm for the most part.

"The accident of geography," Kennedy writes, provided America with "free land." He quotes Alexis de Tocqueville as saying that "fortune, which has conferred so many peculiar benefits upon" Americans "placed them in the midst of a wilderness… [where] they have no neighbors." That theme also meant that the U.S. had no need for "constant military preparedness," in Kennedy's words.

Examples of how small American armies were compared to those in Europe are offered: in 1897, when the French Army of conscripts numbered more than half a million and the German Army of conscripts numbered just under half a million, Americans maintained an army of only 27,000 volunteers. Until World War I, the U.S. Army was entirely volunteer-based — and the stark comparison with Europe's standing armies makes Kennedy's point about geography isolating America from conflict.

Kennedy further develops this point by noting that between 1820 and 1900, average annual military expenditures in France, Germany, and Britain ranged between $3 and $6 per capita; in the U.S., that figure fluctuated between $0.70 and one dollar. This may come as a surprise to those who have always believed the myth that America has perpetually been poised and ready for war, backed by a massive army of highly trained professionals.

Kennedy goes on to shatter more myths, noting that by 1937, per capita annual military spending was $58 in Germany, $22 in France, and $27 in England — contrasted with a relatively minuscule $7 per capita in America. He further notes that between 1815 and 1917, the U.S. fought no wars with any major foreign power.

Given that this nation has not had to defend its own borders for the most part, Americans developed an attitude, Kennedy asserts, of believing that when the United States goes to war, it totally defeats the enemy with massive force — as was especially the case in World War II, symbolized by the massive landing at Normandy, France. That attitude of decisive annihilation was part of the reason, Kennedy believes, that the "search and destroy" missions in Vietnam and the limited engagement policy in Korea led to frustration and humiliation — not only for the U.S. military, but for the public back home, who had expected overwhelming victory only to be disappointed by inconclusive results.

Even when America was forced, or morally obliged, to go to battle on a massive scale — World War I being one example — the U.S. lost only a fraction (approximately 100,000) of the number that Europeans lost (10 million European dead, 21 million wounded). Additionally, the U.S. lost not a single civilian in that conflict, nor in World War II; whereas of the 30 million dead in Europe following World War II, half were civilians. The 400,000 American soldiers killed is certainly no small number, but it pales in comparison to the European toll.

And while the U.S. homeland remained free of the bloodshed that drenched Europe during both world wars, the American economy was booming. Real growth from the production of wartime hardware put everyone to work and money in bank accounts. The exact opposite was happening in Europe, where economies were devastated by the war. Kennedy's point about how comparatively fortunate the U.S. has been is thus reinforced by the contrast between European death counts and America's surging wartime economy.

Whereas 19th-century Americans saw war as a "promising arena for personal fulfillment," Kennedy writes that Americans have since "lost all illusions about the heroic possibilities of war." One key reason for the absence of further romanticizing of war following Vietnam — though Kennedy does not explicitly say so — was that television coverage brought up-close-and-personal images of war's bleak and bloody realities into living rooms for the first time. Through daily, enormous body counts and the seemingly endless parade of negative reports from frontline journalists, Americans had seen enough of the glamorous war imagery that movies had long depicted.

Kennedy placed the cost of the Vietnam War at approximately $352 billion — for a conflict that lasted more than ten years. Writing in the mid-1970s, Kennedy called those figures staggering. He also alludes to the "massive diversion of resources" directed toward the Vietnam effort. His observations about limited war frustrating a public conditioned to expect total victory remain among the most enduring insights in his essay.

Conclusion

Both Kennedy and Shy offer thoughtful, historically grounded essays on the American experience with war. Kennedy's broader, geography-anchored perspective ultimately provides a more balanced and illuminating account of how war has shaped American identity. His use of concrete data — army sizes, per capita military spending, casualty comparisons — grounds his argument in verifiable history, while his reflections on Vietnam and the changing American attitude toward armed conflict remain prescient decades after they were written. Shy's contributions are not without merit, but his theoretical orientation and the misstep in his "Further Reflections" addendum weaken the overall impact of his work.