Today there's no force like the United States military on planet earth.
Modern American military doctrine has for decades dictated the requirement to fight
and win two simultaneous wars against major military powers, a capability which no other
force on the planet doubts it is capable of achieving.
While low-intensity conflicts against terrorist and insurgent forces have repeatedly dragged
the United States into decade-plus long wars, these conflicts don't accurately represent
the US's military might as they are very low in intensity and involve a war of attrition
where victory is achieved by slowly winning hearts and minds.
Yet in a kinetic war against another nation's military, there is no nation or group of nations
that can match America's might- especially when it is backed up by the strength of its
closest allies.
But it wasn’t always the titan it is today.
Let’s take a look at the size of the US military throughout its history.
The US military got its official start with its war for independence in 1776, though it
wouldn't be until the establishment of the Department of War- today known as the Department
of Defense - in 1789 that official records were to be kept, and that the US military
was formally recognized as a standing military force.
During the Revolutionary War the American military was largely made up of volunteer
soldiers known as Minutemen, for their ability to be ready for combat within a minute of
being roused from their homes.
The American Marine Corps got its start along with the US Army during the war of independence,
but they would be deactivated after the war and not reappear as a fighting force until
Congress authorized the construction of the American Navy in 1794.
Official records were not kept until the establishment of the Department of the Army, and in 1789
the American military officially numbered at just 718 soldiers.
This is a stunning figure considering that around the same time the British military
numbered at around 200,000.
The young nation was not only financially poor, but still trying to learn the business
of self-governance, and thus America was for many of its early years defended by volunteer
soldiers which made up militias.
Each militia was tasked with defending its own city or village, and in case of war, such
as the War of 1812 against the British and their Indian allies, the militias would fall
under the command of regular army generals.
Without a sizable manpower pool until the late 1800s, the American military was hard-pressed
to defend the young nation, and thus relied heavily on local militias for collective defense.
This is why American fascination with gun ownership may seem so strange for citizens
who have enjoyed the protection of a strong, well-established military for many centuries
while Americans were for the first hundred years of their existence forced to defend
themselves in case of war.
At its formation in 1794 the United States Navy had an estimated 1,856 sailors, and the
American Army numbered at 3,813.
While the United States Marine Corps was re-established along with the Navy in 1794, it wouldn't be
until 1798 that the first 83 official Marines were available for duty.
The United States would retain a fairly small fighting force through until the war of 1812
against Britain, when the American military numbered at 6,686 soldiers, 5.452 sailors,
and 493 marines.
During the war, which for Britain was a minor action on the greater theater of the Napoleonic
wars, the American military would peak in 1814 at 38,000 soldiers, 8.000 sailors, and
648 marines.
This would be the largest the American military would be until the Mexican-American War of
1846.
At the outbreak of the war the American military numbered at 28,000 soldiers, 10.000 sailors,
and 1100 marines, but by the end of the war two years later the US military would consist
of 47,000 soldiers, 11,000 sailors, and 1,700 marines.
Once more the US military would shrink down to an active duty force of about 20,000 men
until the start of the American Civil War in 1861.
With the rebellious south wishing to break off from the American union so they could
continue to practice the horrors of slavery, the northern states were called to arms and
the American military increased from just 28,000 men the year prior, to 217,000 at the
start of the war.
In this figure American military numbers are only for the northern states, as the secessionist
confederates were, and remain, not true Americans in any sense of the word and are thus not
included in these figures.
Four years later and the northern states had raised an army over one million strong to
teach the southern rebels how to respect human life.
After their defeat, the southern rebel states were re-admitted into the union and then spent
the next hundred years building participation trophies for themselves to remember the war
they had lost trying to keep people enslaved.
After the war American military strength was once more reduced, though over 76,000 active
duty troops remained activated in order to bring law and order back to the defeated southern
states.
Over the next ten years American military strength would once more slowly decline to
just shy of 40,000 active duty personnel, and remain that way until the American-Spanish
war of 1898.
Hostilities between Spain and the US had long been simmering, and when the USS Maine was
sunk by a mine in Havana harbor, the Spanish government quickly declared war on the US.
The US immediately bolstered its armed forces to over 235,000 active duty troops, which
included 22,500 sailors and 3,500 marines- the largest the American navy or Marine Corps
had ever been.
The war signaled a radical shift in American military might, and with the total defeat
of Spanish forces in Cuba and the Philippines, a stunned world welcomed the United States
as a world power.
Spain lost the remaining New World colonies it still held, and the age that would come
to be known as the American Century began two years later in 1900.
Flexing its military muscles on the world stage for the first time in history, the American
military began to establish the professional doctrines that it adheres to this day, and
moving away from a force of reservists which would be called up in time of crisis to bolster
a much smaller force of active duty soldiers.
After the war the American military became a professional fighting force with a large
standing army.
With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the United States wished to remain neutral.
Seen as a European conflict, America was leery of being dragged into one of Europe's incessant
wars, and fierce isolationism prevented the United States from joining the war when propositioned
by Britain and France.
Yet despite chilly relations with Britain, the United States did send material support,
and would end up officially joining the war in 1917, when its military swelled to over
643,000 men.
One year later the United States mustered up the largest military force it had ever
commanded in its history until that point, with 2,400,000 soldiers, 449,000 sailors,
and 53,000 marines.
These numbers would once more plummet after the war, but wary of yet another international
conflict, the United States maintained an active duty force of around 250,000 until
1936, when it became clear that a new war was brewing in Europe.
In 1945 the United States fielded the largest military it would ever command, with a total
force of over 12,000,000 soldiers, sailors, and marines.
Wary of Europeans once more starting up their favorite hobby of launching world wars, the
United States was quick to fill the power vacuum caused by the collapse of Europe's
long-time empires in the aftermath of the second world war.
It would maintain a force of about 1.5 million active duty forces in order to ensure peace
during the difficult years after world war two, but the launch of the Korean War in 1951
would see the US double the size of its military to over 3 million.
After the war American military strength dipped below the 3 million mark once more until the
war in Vietnam, after which it would once again dip down to under 2 million.
Today the American military maintains a peacetime force of 1.2 million personnel, every single
one of them professional volunteer soldiers.
Its air power, spread out across the US Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps, features over
13,000 aircraft, the largest concentration of air power in the world.
It also maintains a fleet of 415 vessels, backed up by 24 aircraft carriers each loaded
with up to 80 aircraft.
A far cry from its roots as a volunteer force of a few thousand, the United States military
is the preeminent global fighting force, though its true strength lies in its close ties with
allies such as Australia, Britain, France, Germany and Japan- some nations which it found
itself locked into mortal war just decades earlier.
The strength of America's alliances far more than its military might alone is what makes
the United States military the strongest in the world, and the close cooperation of alliances
such as NATO have helped ensure that the wars of yesterday have not repeated in eighty years.
Do you think the US and its allies can really prevent another major war?
Let us know in the comments!
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