ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the major features of United States defence policy and the considerations affecting its evolution throughout the post-war era. With such a view of the Soviet threat, military power could have only a limited role in containment. Until the Korean War, President Truman resisted all pressure for expanding the defence budget and has been criticized for allowing political commitments and military capabilities to become increasingly divergent. One commentator has claimed that ‘foreign policy and military policy were moving in opposite directions’ with American involvement in the world deepening while the defence budget was declining. The question of American participation also became bound up with the controversy over the respective roles of President and Congress in the making of foreign and defence policy. American defence policy since 1945 has undergone a process of constant evolution and adjustment during which many difficulties have been overcome.
