Introduction

Abstract

Abstract The Introduction describes growing racial tension and violence in the ranks of the US Army in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It presents the book’s key argument: at a time when escalating Cold War tensions and increasing instability in the Middle East were exacerbating an already dangerous and volatile strategic environment, key US Army leaders came to believe that the Army’s growing racial crisis undermined its ability to fulfill its mission of national defense. The belief that racial conflict threatened military efficiency shaped how the army, as an institution, defined the problem and the solutions it attempted to “the problem of race.” The chapter also argues that US institutions play critically important roles in the process of social change and introduces the concept of “Institutional Logic.”