The concept of the “Plan Anaconda” was to strangle the Southern States in a tight spiral similar to the hunting strategy of the Anaconda snake. General Scott’s idea was to set a large scale siege of all the Confederate States by deploying a maritime blockade of the Virginia, Carolinas and the Florida’s harbours and coast to the East and a fluvial cordon of armed floaters on the Mississippi to the West. The criticism were principally logistics. The Union did not have a fleet capable of enforcing the naval blockade, nor did it have enough barges adequate to patrol hundreds of […]

It assumed that it would destroy both the infrastructure and morale of North Vietnam and its people. It failed on both counts. Operation Rolling Thunder was one of many examples where it was assumed that the massive use of military might, in this case bombing would lead to a quick victory. Instead it had the opposite effect. An earlier example wold be the Blitz of London and other British cities during World War 2. Despite Goering’s grandiose claims it failed to break the spirit of the British and in fact strengthened their resolve against the Nazis. Similarly through operations such […]

The Gulags, apart for their basic finality of reclusion sites and forced labour reservoirs, had an innovative (even if somehow tragical) component of re-educational purpose. The main difference between, say, a Nazi concentration Camp (lager) and a Soviet gulag was the fact that the inmates of a lager were not supposed to come out alive or come out at all while the inmates of gulags were there only for a period of time after which (theoretically) they could go back into society. In Soviet Russia an inmate of a Gulag was there to spend a certain period of time (given […]

The Monroe Doctrine The corollary allowed that the United States should intervene in disputes between European and Latin American countries in order to legitimize European claims, consistent with Roosevelt’s characteristic “big stick” ideology. The Monroe Doctrine had stated that any European efforts to colonize or interfere with American land would be met by intervention from the United States, so the Roosevelt Corollary saw the other side to the Doctrine.

Quite simply, to retaliate against a possible USSR attack on Europe and/or America. After WW2, European nations grew increasingly speculative of the USSR, which stood alongside United States as the sole power. As a bastion for communism, the USSR takes dangerously risky moves, such as the closure of Berlin (which leads to the Berlin Airlift). The USSR also developed nuclear weaponry, which gave West Europe enough to worry about their power-hungry Eastern ‘foe’. NATO was formed in 1949 to combat a possible USSR attack on Europe and/or America. An American idea at first, NATO pools several nations in Europe and […]