John Allen Williams

The Postmodern Military: Armed Forces after the Cold War

Acknowledgements Contributors 1. Armed Forces After the Cold War 2. Toward a Postmodern Military: The United States as a Paradigm 3. United Kingdom: The Overstretched Military 4. France: In the Throes of Epoch-Making Change 5. Germany: Forerunner of a Post-National Military? 6. Netherlands The Final Professionalization of the Military 7. Denmark: From Obligation to Option 8. Italy: A Military for What? 9. Canada: Managing Change with Shrinking Resources 10. Australia and New Zealand: Contingent and Concordant Militaries 11. Switzerland: Between Tradition and Modernity 12. Israel: Still Waiting in the Wings 13. South Africa: Emerging from a Time Warp 14. The Postmodern Military Reconsidered

The U.S. and Soviet Navies: Missions and Forces

The United States Navy is structured to carry out its most demanding potential assignment: confrontation with the Soviet navy in waters near the Soviet Union. The result is an emphasis on battle groups centered around large aircraft carriers, including sophisticated systems for fleet defense. The Soviet navy is increasingly capable of extended operations far from home waters, in support of growing Soviet interests worldwide. Nevertheless, it does not yet match the U.S. Navy in offensive or defensive capabilities, and in time of war is most likely to pull back into waters nearer the Soviet Union to defend the homeland. These trends are likely to continue into the next century, barring the intervention of political or technological developments.

American Business Organizations and Redistributive Preferences

In 30 investigated cities, business groups tend not to support leaders who favor poor- oriented redistributive policies, but the degree to which this is so varies greatly from city to city. Although business groups tend to be less supportive of leaders favoring redistributive policies than other city groups are, business groups sometimes support more moderate leaders in cities where organizational opposition to redistributively oriented leaders is strong. This suggests that preferences of organizations in cities should not be assumed, but studied empirically. Only then can the influence of such organizations on policy outputs be determined for a particular case.

Defense Policy: The Carter-Reagan Record

Abstract Despite significant increases in military spending, the Reagan administrations national security policies are still remarkably similar to those that evolved in the Carter administration, and expectations of fundamental changes in U.S. defense policy raised by Reagans campaign pledge to “rearm America” have not been met.