Bøger af Donita M Moorhus

For more than four decades after the end of World War II in 1945, the security interests of the United States focused on tensions with the Soviet Union. The contest, which became known in 1948 as the Cold War, pitted two fundamentally opposed ideologies and political systems against one another across the so-called Iron Curtain in Europe. As tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union mounted, the United States increased its overseas military presence. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), established in 1949, created an alliance led by the United States for the mutual defense of Western Europe. NATO embodied the two foreign policy cornerstones of the United States-deterrence and containment of Soviet expansion of influence and control. The attack in June 1950 by North Korea on its neighbor, South Korea, prompted the United States to extend its policy of geographic containment of Soviet ambitions. Through negotiations with several Mediterranean countries, the United States established air bases that placed U.S. military aircraft in position to strike the Soviet Union should any conflict of arms threaten world stability. This history examines the work of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in military construction in the Mediterranean Basin (including northern and northeastern Africa) and the Middle East, which created the infrastructure that made the policies of deterrence and containment possible. This work included not only construction in support of the U.S. Army and U.S. Air Force in these areas but also work executed on behalf of our Middle East allies paid for with funds they provided. A remarkable story in its own right, the history becomes even more important, given events in the region since 1990, by providing a background understanding of the present role and position of the United States in that vital region.

Most of the large wars between the end of World War II in 1945 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 were fought in Asia and the Middle East. Europe, where no war was fought, ironically was the epicenter of the Cold War. The stakes were highest there for both sides as two fundamentally opposed ideologies and political systems confronted each other across the so-called Iron Curtain. Both sides saw war in Europe as an Armageddon that could bring total victory or catastrophic defeat, and both sides focused and shaped their strategies and military forces to fight that war. By the time the Cold War ended in 1989 with the destruction of the Berlin Wall-the Iron Curtain incarnate-both sides had spent huge sums of money and devoted vast human resources to preparing for a war that never came. A major fraction of the resources expended during the Cold War were devoted to the physical infrastructure that housed, trained, fed, armed, protected, and diverted the soldiers of the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) for almost half a century. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers played a central role in building and maintaining that infrastructure. This history examines the engineers' work in detail, chronicling their design and construction activities in support of the U.S. and NATO forces that stood on the front lines of the Cold War. "Building for Peace" tells the story of the often unglamorous but nevertheless critical missions of engineer officers and civilians and private contractors. It reflects the twists and turns of the Cold War's history and the effect these had on the engineering itself. Engineers, like their counterparts in other branches and services, worked tirelessly and often against great odds to defend the West.