Today’s Army faces challenges similar to those it has faced throughout history, and the force should learn from its past as it prepares for the future, according to a special report published by the Association of the U.S. Army.

“The rise to superpower status and the expansion of national interests to a global scale have added to the Army’s role and responsibilities, presenting a spectrum of potential conflicts in which the most dangerous contingencies are not necessarily the most likely, but for all of which the Army must prepare,” writes David Hogan Jr. “And it does so under the nuclear specter, an existential danger that constrains the full use of American power.”

In “To Build the Nation’s Might: Tradition and Adaptation in the U.S. Army, 1775–2025,” Hogan underscores how the Army has been shaped by cultural factors and adversary strategies and tactics that are still relevant to the service today. 

Hogan recently retired from his position as director of histories at the U.S. Army Center of Military History after 37 years with the organization. He has a doctorate from Duke University and is an expert in American military history.

Today, the Army faces the rise of its global competitors and is preparing for conventional conflict, just as it did against its adversaries during the 1970s. “With the rise of peer competitors in China and Russia, the Army again is preparing for high-intensity, conventional conflicts … as it tries to move on from Iraq and Afghanistan,” Hogan writes.

During the 1970s, the Army “focused on the war it wanted to fight”—conventional war, Hogan writes. “High-intensity conventional war in Europe of the World War II type would allow the Army to exploit its strengths of mechanization and technology,” Hogan writes, but the Army “had to adjust its training and doctrine to be able to fight outnumbered and win.”

Similarly, the Army is growing and evolving into a “new Army,” just as it did during the 1970s and 1980s by evolving its AirLand Battle doctrine, Hogan writes.

“As did Training and Doctrine Command in the 1970s and 1980s, Futures Command seeks to shape the new Army,” he writes. “The new approach required a high degree of competence in combined arms, and the Army instituted better, more realistic training, such as the National Training Center, where units maneuvered in the desert against a trained aggressor force.”

The Army’s current and future challenges are reflected in situations it faced across time, Hogan writes. “The Army will likely again find itself in protracted conflicts involving cultural factors and adversaries that use strategies or tactics to avoid American advantages in firepower and economic capacity,” he writes. “The Army must balance as best it can the preparation for these diverse missions with a cultivation of a willingness to adapt and innovate, as almost any type of conflict will raise unforeseen challenges.”

Read the full paper here.