American Military History, Volume 2

Army accomplishments over the years between the end of the Vietnam War and the end of the 1980s were impressive. By 1990 the claim could be made reasonably that the service had arrived at a sound doctrine, the proper weapons, an appropriate organi- zation, and a satisfactorily trained, high-quality force to fight the intense war for which Generals DePuy and Starry and their successors had planned. Inter- national developments in the first half of the year seemed, however, to have made the Army's modern- ization unnecessary.

The apparent collapse of Soviet power and withdrawal of Soviet armies into the Sovi- et Union itself, the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact and even the dismemberment of the Soviet Union, and the pending unification of Germany removed almost all the justifications for maintaining a power- ful presence in Europe. In view of all these develop- ments, the immediate political question was whether the nation felt it needed to maintain such a large and expensive Army.