“Today it seems to me the very survival of the Army, as we presently conceive it, is at stake.”
—General Lyman L. Lemnitzer, November 1955[1]
As the total number of Americans infected with COVID-19 steadily ticks up, the death toll continues to rise.[2] Aside from the catastrophic health impacts, the country is devastated by its impact on the economy.[3] With more than $3 trillion in federal bailouts and a soaring unemployment rate, the American economy may witness Great Depression level lows.[4] The impact to the economy may worsen in the coming months and years. Economic losses may surpass $19 trillion over the next decade.[5]
The U.S. defense budget in 2021 and beyond, already projected to flatten and then trend downward, is certain to take a measurable hit as result of the pandemic. The U.S. Army, in particular, may be a target, with the potential to witness a breathtaking budget and force size reduction, especially should the Pentagon decide to continue to prioritize new technology, new equipment, and new domains.[6] With some analysts projecting a loss of approximately $500 billion over 10 years in U.S. defense spending, decision makers may choose reductions in people—its largest defense expenditure—in favor of autonomous systems and new technology that requires a smaller human footprint.[7]
The U.S. Army will be forced to market itself as an establishment with a deep history of promoting American ideals while contributing to the national well-being and providing young Americans with critical skills, values, and characteristics. Adulation of the American soldier is likely to take a backseat to a national admiration of the generally unrecognized Americans who quietly operate the country’s health care and service industries. Healthcare workers, first responders, and delivery drivers are fighting on the front lines of today’s war. While soldiers serve in faraway countries, Americans throughout the homeland are risking their lives to keep the country afloat.
Debates about the appropriate size of the land force within multi-domain operations lie ahead. To best communicate its crucial role in future warfare, the U.S. Army would do well to look back to a period wherein its relevance was questioned in a time of changing technology.[8]
For example, in the mid-1950s, amidst a nuclear arms race with a near-peer, the United States invested in new technology, delivery systems, and atomic weapons. The U.S. Army budget saw significant reductions to offset increases in modernization and aerial systems. This period, and the manner in which the U.S. Army marketed itself within this epoch, may hold valuable lessons for the coming years.
To maintain consistent funding in the coming years, the U.S. Army must promote itself as a service that not only upholds the greatest virtues and characteristics of its countrymen but also appropriately contributes to the grand strategy of the nation and provides for the national defense. Marketing of the U.S. Army going forward should focus less on recruiting young Americans and more on promoting the Army as a critical component of national defense, necessary to support the country’s international interests. The focus, then, would turn from marketing the U.S. Army to high-school students and toward shaping a narrative appropriate for key decision-makers in Congress.
A New Look: The Rise of Nuclear Deterrence and Air Power
Admiral Arthur Radford meets Dwight Eisenhower in 1952. (U.S. Navy Photo/Wikimedia)
Before the Cold War, the U.S. Army worried little about its narrative.[9] The draft saw to it that military-aged American males filled the ranks when needed. The successful test of Soviet nuclear weaponry in 1949, however, ushered in a new kind of warfare, one in which many thought airpower and the atomic bombs would take precedence over a land force.[10] Admiral Arthur Radford, a naval officer selected by Eisenhower to serve as the nation’s top military officer, spoke for many senior defense officials when defining the military’s priorities: “Air power is the dominant factor in war...as far as we are concerned, it is a primary requirement, both offensively and defensively.”[11]
The strategy of avoiding nuclear catastrophe and defeating communism through a policy of global containment served to define American grand strategy in the final years of the Truman presidency and for decades to come.[12] Containment, first articulated in a 1946 telegram authored by George Kennan, the American charge d’affaires in Moscow, to the Department of State, advocated the employment of all instruments of national power to prevent the spread of communism abroad without engaging in an actual shooting war.[13] This idea was further developed in the April 1950 National Security Council Paper-68 (NSC-68), which advised a wide expansion of nuclear capabilities along with covert operations to contain communism throughout the world.[14] NSC-68 was accepted by Truman and became a foundational document in the development of American grand strategy.[15] To adjudicate this global competition, the United States adhered to what became known as the Truman Doctrine: America would assist any nation fighting communism while developing an arsenal capable of wiping out the Soviet Union.[16]
Upon assuming the presidency from Harry Truman in 1953, Dwight Eisenhower adopted many of the philosophical underpinnings of NSC-68 and containment. His sweeping New Look policy pivoted on the twin goals of maintaining a robust domestic economy capable of outlasting the Soviet empire and building an atomic capability so destructive it would prevent the Soviet Union from using its own.[17] An American defense industry facilitated both aims, pumping out jobs and money while shrinking the federal defense budget, and developing the latest in nuclear technology.[18]
Strategic Air Command became the New Look’s showpiece. Strategic Air Command, both a Department of Defense combatant command and a major command of the U.S. Air Force, could deliver atomic strikes and, therefore, held more of the deterrence capabilities deemed by decision makers necessary to keep the Soviets at bay. In its eighth year as a service independent from the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force represented the future of warfare.[19] With no land war looming, policymakers prioritized deterrence, and this deterrence mainly came from the sky.[20]
Resourcing reflected this dynamic. By 1956, the U.S. Air Force budget nearly doubled that of its sister service.[21] Following the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953, successive defense budgets cut the U.S. Army from a 1.5-million soldier, 20-division colossus to an 859,000-man force with 14-divisions by the time Eisenhower left office. The lack of a large-scale war left the U.S. Army’s purpose a bit uncertain; many divisions trained to seize terrain and secure limited resources, water, and energy, in a nuclear-devastated battlefield. Within most contemporaneous war plans, the actual fighting would have culminated by the time Army units arrived.[22]
Without a clear role in the New Look strategy, the U.S. Army was in a wilderness, fighting for relevance.[23] Morale and discipline plummeted.[24] Most conscripts departed the service after a single term. Enterprising American teens sought an Air Force commission over an Army commission. The image of the bumbling, unserious Master Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko in “The Phil Silver Show” resonated with many American audiences. To survive, the U.S. Army needed to turn to a new field just beginning to burgeon in response to post-World War II consumerism: mass marketing.
Marketing a Modern Force
U.S. Army Recruiting (Pinterest)
Beginning in 1956 and lasting through the end of the decade, the U.S. Army marketed itself to its countrymen and their elected officials as a future-looking force critical in atomic war.[25] Using a public relations campaign mirroring the booming Madison Avenue advertising industry, the service met its citizenry where they were: on television, at the movies, and in magazines.
The primary focal point for this campaign was the Army’s Office of the Chief of Information—analogous to today’s Office of the Chief of Public Affairs. The effort was vast: under the Office of the Chief of Information, the U.S. Army developed its own song, rolled out a new dress uniform, and produced television advertisements, brochures, film clips, and television programs promoting new experiences and career opportunities.
Not only was the life of a soldier a promising way to learn critical skills but also, according to this effort, a good deal of fun. No longer a dour, rigid experience, Army service was portrayed in marketing campaigns as enjoyable and exciting. Just like the men and women of today’s "What's Your Warrior" ads, the late-1950s American soldier was on the cutting-edge of technology. U.S. Army bands toured cities, and commanders encouraged soldiers to participate in the Hometown Release Program, which sent newsworthy information about troops back to their local newspapers.[26] The Office of the Chief of Information reached out to Hollywood to influence the depiction of the service in movies such as the 1956 drama The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, about a World War II veteran adjusting to a peaceful world, and GI Blues, a 1960 musical comedy starring Elvis Presley as a disciplined but fun-loving tank gunner with a golden voice.[27]
Another component of this multi-layered public relations campaign was U.S. Army training. The U.S Army of the late-1950s developed extravagant, division-level training events that served more as public theater than preparation for an actual war.[28] Posts shuttled in observers, community leaders, and local press to observe operations involving helicopters, enormous maneuver formations, and newly fielded rocket launchers.[29]
These exercises matched with the U.S. Army's focus on rebranding. The image of the World War II Army was a vision of a particularly American kind of brawler: a dirty, freezing soldier fighting his way onto Omaha Beach, a hell-raiser no one would want to cross in a bar fight, a scrappy fighter who crawled through mud to kill Nazis in close combat. By contrast, the new soldier was much less grit and more glamour.[30] The new professional-looking Joe was an immediate priority for General Lyman Lemnitzer upon assuming duties as Chief of Staff of the Army from his predecessor, General Maxwell D. Taylor. On military posts and television and movie screens, Americans saw uniformed men and women who were mounted, educated, and surprisingly clean.[31]
Flexible Response
After eight years, the 70-year-old Dwight Eisenhower left the presidency, and Washington, D.C. altogether, on January 20, 1961. With him went his New Look doctrine of massive retaliation for nuclear war. Out was the Pentagon’s blinding faith in deterrence. Replacing Eisenhower was the 43-year-old John F. Kennedy. Kennedy felt Eisenhower’s approach was simplistic, unable to swiftly react to aggression beneath the level of global conflict. Moreover, Eisenhower’s grand strategy, and the associated marginalization of the U.S. Army, left the nation with no reasonable option outside of nuclear force or catastrophic defeat—the sobering contemporary phrase was “suicide or surrender.”[32]
President John F. Kennedy visits 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, in 1961. (Cecil Stoughton/John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)
Kennedy’s policy of flexible response would require a disparate Army capable of triumph across the full spectrum of armed conflict. Again, the U.S. Army would remake itself, this time into a force capable of guerilla warfare, counterinsurgency fights, support to host nation militaries, up to and including a traditional face-off with the Soviets. In an attempt to glamorize ground forces, and over internal U.S. Army objections, Kennedy approved Special Forces wear of green berets early in his administration, a move Eisenhower had long rejected.[33]
The Army’s New Marketing Focus
One of the primary failings of the Army’s new marketing campaign was that it declined to communicate to key members of Congress and audiences capable of influencing those members. Ultimately, those decision makers determined the level of the U.S. Army budget. Lacking a compelling narrative that communicated the relevance and appropriateness of a larger land force, the Senate Armed Services Committee members saw to it that the systems, technology, and troop strengths necessary for large-scale land operations received limited funding.[34]
Beginning in the early 1960s, the U.S. Army’s marketing effort under top generals George Decker and then Earle Wheeler focused on the utility of ground forces in a nuclear war. Lemnitzer restructured the force into a group of small organizations able to operate dispersed across a wide open and potentially devastated battlefield, thereby providing an unprofitable target for a Soviet atomic strike. These forces were armed with tactical nuclear weapons.[35]
In addition, the Army under President Kennedy could respond to the kind of small conflicts beneath the threshold of nuclear war that national security officials believed more likely than a major theater fight with the Soviets. Under Kennedy’s new American defense strategy, in which ground forces would respond to conflict short of nuclear wear, the U.S. Army was marketed to communicate relevance appropriate to the nation’s grand strategy needs. Suddenly, a large ground force was again perceived as necessary to support the containment of communism.
Selling the All-Volunteer Army
By 1971, the long, unpopular Vietnam War, with accusations of drug use and atrocities by American soldiers, darkened the Army’s reputation within many parts of the United States.[36] With the end of the Vietnam War and the end of the unpopular draft, the country was moving to an all-volunteer military. The U.S. Army again had a serious problem with its brand. Morale and discipline in many units were low, and the Army was not considered a viable career opportunity for many Americans.[37] Even President Richard Nixon conceded to West Point cadets, “It is no secret that the discipline, integrity, patriotism, self-sacrifice, which are the very lifeblood of an effective armed force…can no longer be taken for granted in the Army.”[38] The U.S. Army needed a new narrative, one that could be communicated to high-school graduates throughout the country.
To rebuild its credibility and restore its prestige, U.S. Army leaders once again rebranded the service, this time as a welcoming institution with an improved quality of life and relaxed discipline. A Philadelphia-based advertising firm was brought on to advertise the program as a move toward a less strict, more welcoming military force.[39] Here the audience was not just Congressional leaders, but also the American citizenry who would send its sons and daughters to volunteer for its Army.
The U.S. Army presented itself as an opportunity to learn new skills with high job satisfaction. Advertisements displaying troops with long-ish hair, riding motorcycles in their free time, and non-combat opportunities overseas presented a group that encouraged individuality. The new logo, “Today’s Army Wants to Join You,” depicted a force changing with the times.
This new campaign was a great success, allowing the U.S. Army to rapidly transition to one representative of the country it defended.[40] The program reestablished the U.S. Army as a relevant, modern force and a respectable option for American youth.[41]
Be All You Can Be
The U.S. Army’s marketing ever since has maintained a consistent message. The best Army marketing campaign in this writer’s estimation, the “Be All You Can Be” campaign of the 1980s, presented the Army as critical to national defense as well as an opportunity for personal and professional growth. This campaign presented the service’s role in American grand strategy, but also in shaping new technology, new ideas, and new principles.
U.S. Army Recruiting Campaign (U.S. Army)
The Post-COVID Army Faces an Uncertain Strategic Future
In order to maintain appropriate funding in the coming years, the U.S. Army must promote itself as a service that not only promotes the greatest virtues and characteristics of its countrymen and provides critical developmental opportunities for young Americans, but also an organization critical to defending America’s interests in an uncertain future. This communication must take into account that the U.S. Army must address multiple audiences simultaneously: from the would-be accessions, their families, local government officials, all the way to their elected representatives in our nation’s federal institutions. In the aftermath of the current global pandemic, in which interests are likely to move to domestic concerns and away from adversaries far from our borders, the U.S. Army would be wise to review its marketing plan. Should this be the case, the service’s marketing team may find that demonstrating the Army’s response to domestic emergencies, such as the ability to mobilize and establish field hospitals in crisis, respond rapidly to hurricane damage, and provide support to civil authorities elsewhere in America may better communicate the nation’s appropriate and enduring need for the U.S. Army into the future.
Promoting the utility of the U.S. Army, both to the country’s national defense and to her citizenry, must be selfless; it must not be a cynical attempt to hoodwink the very countrymen on whose behalf the organization serves. Army marketing is appropriate and necessary. Promotion of the values of service in one of the country’s grandest, most important institutions, in fact, is likely to become more challenging and crucial in a post-COVID competition for limited federal resources and attention. In the coming months and years, the service’s funding, recruiting, and image are likely to rely on its ability to communicate its worth to the people it serves.
Joe Buccino is an U.S. Army officer. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.
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Header Image: Soldiers at a nuclear test site. (New York Times)
Notes:
[1] Lemnizter, Lyman L. “This is a Significant Beginning,” The Army Combat Forces Journal 6 (November 1955), p. 62
[2] Elflein, John. “Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the U.S. - Statistics & Facts,” Statista https://www.statista.com/topics/6084/coronavirus-covid-19-in-the-us/
[3] Daniel, Shatz, Howard J., Kumar, Krishna B., Harshberger, and Ted. “Defense Budget Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” RAND Corporation, April 7, 2020. https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/04/defense-budget-implications-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.html.
[4] Brown, Ashley. “COVID-19 jobless rates will be comparable to Great Depression: Trump economic adviser.” ABC News, APril 26, 2020. https://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/covid-19-jobless-rates-comparable-great-depression-trump/story?id=70348765
[5] “COVID-19: Briefing Materials.” McKinsey & Company. March 25, 2020. https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/risk/our-insights/covid-19-implications-for-business
[6] Davis, Daniel L. “COVID-19′s Fiscal Impact Might Ironically Strengthen National Defense.” Defense News. Defense News, April 22, 2020. https://www.defensenews.com/opinion/commentary/2020/04/22/covid-19s-fiscal-impact-might-ironically-strengthen-national-defense/.
[7] Daniel, Shatz, Howard J., Kumar, Krishna B., Harshberger, and Ted. “Defense Budget Implications of the COVID-19 Pandemic.” RAND Corporation, April 7, 2020. https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/04/defense-budget-implications-of-the-covid-19-pandemic.html.
[8] See amongst others: Linn, Brian McAllister. Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016; Johnson, David E. Fast Tanks and Heavy Bombers: Innovation in the U.S. Army, 1917-1945. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003.;Winton, Harold R., and David R. Mets. The Challenge of Change: Military Institutions and New Realities, 1918-1941. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2000.; Curatola, John M. Bigger Bombs for a Brighter Tomorrow the Strategic Air Command and American War Plans at the Dawn of the Atomic Age, 1945-1950. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers, 2016.
[9] Bailey, Beth. "The Army in the Marketplace: Recruiting an All-Volunteer Force." The Journal of American History 94, no. 1 (06, 2007): 47-74. https://search-proquest-com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/224902993?accountid=4444.
[10] Kaplan, Edward. To Kill Nations: American Strategy in the Air-Atomic Age and the Rise of Mutually Assured Destruction. Cornell University Press, 2015.
[11] Laslie, Brian D. Architect of Air Power: General Laurence S. Kuter and the Birth of the US Air Force. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2017, 121.
[12] Casey, Stephen. 2005. "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51." Diplomatic History 29 (4): 655-690.
[13] Lucas, Scott and Kaeten Mistry. 2009. "Illusions of Coherence: George F. Kennan, U.S. Strategy and Political Warfare in the Early Cold War, 1946-1950." Diplomatic History 33 (1): 39-66.
[14] Fletcher, Luke. 2016. "The Collapse of the Western World: Acheson, Nitze, and the NSC 68/Rearmament Decision." Diplomatic History 40 (4): 757.
[15] Casey, Steven. "Selling NSC-68: The Truman Administration, Public Opinion, and the Politics of Mobilization, 1950–51." Diplomatic History 29, no. 4 (2005): 655.
[16] McCullough, David G. Truman. Norwalk, CT: Easton Press, 1994. 771-772.
[17] Zum Hofe, Timothy John. "Eisenhower's Shift in Containment Policy: How the "New Look" Ensured Victory in the Cold War." Order No. 10982314, Southeast Missouri State University, 2018. https://search-proquest-com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/2175792644?accountid=4444.
[18] Baritz, Loren. Backfire: A History of How American Culture Led Us into Vietnam and Made Us Fight the Way We Did. Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1998. 76-77.
[19] Linn, Brian McAllister. Elvis’s Army: Cold War GIs and the Atomic Battlefield. Cambridge, Ma: Harvard University Press, 2016. 41 - 54.
[20] Linn, Brian MacAllister. Elvis’s Army: Cold War G.I.s and the Atomic Battlefield. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2016. 192.
[21] Annual Budget Message to the Congress: Fiscal Year 1956 | The American Presidency Project, January 17, 1955. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/annual-budget-message-the-congress-fiscal-year-1956
[22] Gibbons-Neff, Thomas. "Declassified: 1950s U.S. Nuclear Plans." The Washington Post, January 2, 2016. https://search-proquest-com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/1753062981?accountid=4444
[23] Carter, Donald A. The U.S. Army Before Vietnam, 1953–1965, Washington, DC: U.S. Army Center of Military History, 31 – 46.
[24] Bacevich, A. J. The Pentomic Era: The US Army Between Korea and Vietnam. Washington, DC: 1986, 61 – 63.
[25] Padilla, Peter Anthony. 1997. "A Content Analysis of United States Army Recruiting: 1915-1990." ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
[26] Treadwell, Mattie E. The Women’s Army Corps. Washington: Center of Military History, United States Army, 1995. 41.
[27] Gordon, Marsha. Film Is like a Battleground: Sam Fullers War Movies. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2017.
[28] Carter, Donald Alan. 2007. "Eisenhower Versus the Generals." The Journal of Military History 71 (4): 1179.
[29] Despite the public image enhancement, these exercises generally served as readiness detractors. See Roman, Peter J. Eisenhower and the Missile Gap. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995. 67-71.
[30] Mundey, Lisa M. "Images of the Armed Forces in American Popular Culture, 1945–1970." Order No. 3223385, Kansas State University, 2006. https://search-proquest-com.usawc.idm.oclc.org/docview/305316235?accountid=4444.
[31] Binder, James L. Lemnitzer: A Soldier For His Time. Lincoln, Nebraska, 1997. 104.
[32] Behen, Scott M. 2007. "Eisenhower's Failed Warning: Cold War Agitation, Air Force Ascension, and the Establishment of the Political Military-Industrial Complex." ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
[33] Moore, Robin. The Green Berets: the Amazing Story of the U.S. Army’s Elite Special Forces Unit. New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2016. 53.
[34] Matloff, Maurice. American Military History. Washington: Office of the Chief of Military History, U.S. Army; 1973.
[35] Bacevich, A.J. The Pentomic Era: The U.S. Army between Korea and Vietnam. Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1986. 103 - 107.
[36] Bailey, Beth. 2007. "The Army in the Marketplace: Recruiting an all-Volunteer Force." The Journal of American History 94 (1): 48 - 50.
[37] Rostker, Bernard. I Want You: The Evolution of the All-Volunteer Force. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation. doi:10.7249/mg265rc.
[38] Bailey, Beth. 2007. "The Army in the Marketplace: Recruiting an all-Volunteer Force." The Journal of American History 94 (1): 14.
[39] Ghilani, Jessica Lynne. 2013. "Selling Soldiering to Consumers: Advertising, Media, and the Volunteer Army." ProQuest Dissertations Publishing.
[40] Griffith, Robert K. The U.S. Army’s Transition to the All-Volunteer Force, 1968-1974. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1996. 41 - 48.
[41] Bicksler, Barbara A., Curtis L. Gilroy, John T. Warner, and Donald Rumsfeld. The All-Volunteer Force: Thirty Years of Service. Washington, D.C.: Brasseys Inc., 2004. 73 - 77.