Congressional Research Report on Uses of Armed Forces

I have recently been perusing the Congressional Research Report on Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798-2019, updated July 17, 2019. It is here: https://fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R42738.pdf

I do have some real heartburn with this report. For example, for the period from 1950-1959 they report six incidents of the use of U.S. armed forces. They are Korean War (1950-53), Formosa (1950-55), China (1954-55), Egypt (1956), Lebanon (1958) and The Caribbean (1959-1960). No Vietnam.

On 23 October 1954 President Eisenhower offered military aid to Vietnamese tin-pot dictator Prime Minister Diem. From 1957 through 1959 the United States had around 700 troops deployed to Vietnam. In 1957 we suffered our first casualties in 1959 lost our first two soldiers in Vietnam. Yet their first listing for Vietnam starts in 1964.

It does appears that the report uses very different standards over reporting for instances from decade to decade. For example, from 1950-1959 they report six uses of U.S. armed forces abroad, while in 2000-2019 they report 108. Many of the type of instances they report later in their list do not appear to be reported in the previous decades.

For example, the last instance listed on page 45 is the signature of a “defense-cooperation agreement” with Lithuania for 2019. Yet, the list does not record the United States joining NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization), which eventually grew to 29 members (including Lithuania). It is clear that we have signed dozens of these types of agreements from 1945-1979, and yet they are not listed back then, but are now being listed in 2019.

In another extreme example, they only have three instance reports for Vietnam, one covering 1964-1973 and two reports for 1975. Yet they have 32 instances for Bosnia from 1993-2006.

It is clear that different standards and levels of research are being used for events in the last few decades on that list than are used for events in the first few decades.

It appears that the list over time has been updated with considerable detail over the last couple of decades without a corresponding backdating to make sure that the listing is reporting the same type of events in the same detail from 1945-1979. Therefore, one cannot directly compare the number of instances from previous decades to the more recent decades because they are based upon a different standard and detail of reporting.

Around 2000, the report also appears to start listing the instances in more detail, and in 2014, they start footnoting the source for each of their listings. So the report is clearly expanding in scope and improving in detail, but this means that it cannot and should not be used for comparisons over time. Still, the absence of major events like the involvement of the United States armed forces in Vietnam before 1964 is a major shortfall. It is clear that this report needs to be properly updated for past events.

As this is the tax payer funded, government supervised Congressional Research Service report, I really do expect better from them.

Share this:
Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
...
Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
...
His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
...
Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

Articles: 1552

3 Comments

      • Yep, usually, people think that “the best defense is a good offense!”

        (Of course, I’m more inclined to go for the best defense being a good ambush followed by a good counter-attack : – )

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *