Faith and Fear America's Relationship with War since 1945

In this groundbreaking reflection on America's relationship with war in the modern era, Gregory A. Daddis explores the deep-seated tension between faith in and fear of war that has shaped US grand strategy and helped militarize US foreign policy with great costs at home and abroad.

How have Americans conceptualized and understood the "promise and peril" of war since 1945? And how have their ideas and attitudes led to the ever-increasing militarization of US foreign policy since the end of World War II?

In a groundbreaking reassessment of the long Cold War era, historian Gregory A. Daddis argues that ever since the Second World War's fateful conclusion, faith in and fear of war became central to Americans' thinking about the world around them. With war pervading nearly all aspects of American society, an interplay between blind faith and existential fear framed US policymaking and grand strategy, often with tragic results. These inherent tensions--an unwavering trust and confidence in war coupled with a fear that nearly all national security threats, foreign or domestic, are existential ones--have shaped Americans' relationship with war that persists to the current day.

A sweeping history, Faith and Fear makes a forceful argument by examining the tensions between Americans' overreaching faith in war as a foreign policy tool and their overwhelming fear of war as a destructive force.

Gregory A. Daddis is Professor of History at San Diego State University, where he holds the USS Midway Chair in Modern US Military History. A retired US Army colonel, he deployed to both Operations Desert Storm and Iraqi Freedom. Daddis specializes in the history of the Vietnam Wars and the Cold War era and has authored five books, including Pulp Vietnam: War and Gender in Cold War Men's Adventure Magazines and Withdrawal: Reassessing America's Final Years in Vietnam. He also has published numerous journal articles and several op-ed pieces commenting on current military affairs, including writings in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The National Interest. He is the recipient of the 2022-2023 Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award, Pembroke College, University of Oxford.