By Tom Kando
America’s active participation in World War Two began 72 years ago, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Since then, the country has been at war about half of the time if you only count hot wars, or 85% of the time if you include the Cold War. (See: List of wars involving the United States)
America’s active participation in World War Two began 72 years ago, after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Since then, the country has been at war about half of the time if you only count hot wars, or 85% of the time if you include the Cold War. (See: List of wars involving the United States)
Here is a list of our wars over
the past 72 years:
Hot Wars: (Note that there have been overlaps. Often, there were
several simultaneous wars or campaigns.)
1
|
World War Two
|
December 1941 to September
1945
|
3 years and 10 months
|
2
|
Korean War
|
June 1950 to July 1953
|
3 years and 1 month.
|
3
|
Invasion of Lebanon
|
July 1958 to October 1958
|
3 months.
|
(4)
|
Invasion of the Dominican
Republic
|
April 1965 to September 1966
|
1.5 years. However, I didn’t
count this, because it occurred during the Vietnam War, and I didn’t want to
double count).
|
5
|
Vietnam War
|
April 1963 to April 1975
|
12 years.
|
6
|
Invasion of Grenada
|
October and December 1983
|
2 months.
|
7
|
Invasion of Panama
|
December 1989 and January 1990
|
2 months.
|
8
|
Gulf War/Desert Storm
|
August 1990 to February 1991
|
6 months.
|
9
|
Somalia
|
1992 through 1994,
intermittently
|
2 months?
|
10
|
Bosnia and Kosovo
|
1993 through 1995; 1999,
intermittently
|
6 months?
|
11
|
Misc. other short campaigns
|
Haiti (1994-95); Sudan (1998);
etc.
|
6 months?
|
12
|
War on Terror: This includes
|
October 2001 to present
|
12 years
|
The Iraq War
|
From March 2003 to December
2011
|
8 years and 9 months
|
|
The Afghanistan War
|
October 2001 to the present
|
12 years
|
|
The 2011 Libyan campaign
|
6 months
|
||
Total amount of time at
war: 33 years and 2 months = 46% of
the past 72 years.
|
|||
America at peace during the past 72 years:
1
|
From the end of World War Two
to the beginning of the Korean War
|
September 1945 to June 1950
|
4 years and 10 months.
|
2
|
From the end of the Korean War
to the invasion of Lebanon
|
July 1953 to July 1958
|
5 years
|
3
|
From the invasion of Lebanon
to the beginning of the Vietnam War
|
October 1958 to April 1963
|
4.5 years
|
4
|
From the end of the Vietnam
war to the invasion of Grenada
|
April 1975 to October 1983
|
8.5 years
|
5
|
From the invasion of Grenada
to the invasion of Panama
|
December 1983 to December
1989.
|
6 years
|
6
|
From the invasion of Panama to
the Gulf War
|
January 1990 to August 1990
|
7 months
|
7
|
Intermittently
|
Between Feb. 1991 and October
2001
|
9.5 years.
|
Total amount of time at peace:
35 years and 10 months = 54% of the past 72 years.
|
|||
If you include the Cold War:
The Cold War lasted from 1947 to 1991, including the Berlin Blockade
(1948-49), the Bay of Pigs (1961), the
Cuban Missile Crisis (1962) and other flashpoints: It lasted 44 years. This
raises the amount of time America has been at war between 1947 and 1991 by 27
years and 10 months.
If you include the Cold War in
the total amount of time America has been at war since 1941, that total becomes
61 years, i.e. 85% of the time.
The only times when America was
clearly NOT at war were the 1945-47 years and, intermittently, the 1991-2001
decade (Clinton, essentially). This means that we have enjoyed 11 years of
peace in nearly a century.
© Tom Kando 2014
leave comment here
I vote to count the Cuban Missile Crisis (would add 1962). My earliest memory is being out with my mom and seeing Nike Missiles set up on their launch assemblies. Some of the forest preserves near us in park Forest IL were built around missile bases. We could see the tops of missiles over the trees.
ReplyDeleteLooked like real war at the time.
I also vote to add the U.N. mission in Kosovo and ex-Yugoslavia as a war.
ReplyDeleteWhenever any of my many relatives get sent to a war zone (had two in Kosovo), I figure we're in a war. Their moms' worries are the same. Although Kosovo was a U.N. operation, one could say the same about Korea.
Not a great record, is it? I remember---with shame and chagrin---our invasion of Grenada and Panama.
ReplyDeleteThanks, guys.
ReplyDeleteI agree with all the comments. That’s why I included the events mentioned by Steve in at least some versions of my calculations.
As to Grenada and Panama (Scott): Well, that’s the sort of thing we used to do a lot - intervening in small places where the chances of success were high: Lebanon, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Kosovo, even Kuwait and the Gulf War, etc.
The big ones is where we failed over and over again: Korea was a draw. Vietnam was a dismal failure. Iraq and Afghanistan will also no doubt be tallied as failures/defeats.
I’m not even touching on the moral aspects of American intervention overseas. Imperialism for US profit, as the left claims? Helping to defeat dictators and to spread democracy, as the right claims? Policing the world? This is a can of worms which I don’t want to open at this time.
My main point is simply that the abomination of nearly PERMANENT WAR - as predicted by Orwell! - has been a bloody, costly, unrewarding and stupid mess, the road to perdition for ALL PARTIES.