In 77 Years, I Have Seen Only Four Years Without an American Military Operation Abroad
If you were born after 1979, you have never seen one.
A meme quoting Jimmy Carter made me curious. Carter once said the United States had enjoyed only 16 years of peace in its history. The exact number depends on what you call a war, but when I went looking, I found something almost as remarkable.
The nonpartisan Congressional Research Service maintains a history of occasions when American armed forces were used abroad in military conflicts, potential conflicts, or for purposes beyond normal peacetime activity. Its list contains hundreds of instances dating back to 1798. CRS cautions that they are not all wars: some were combat operations, while others involved evacuations, peacekeeping, protecting Americans, or responding to crises. (EveryCRSReport)
Using that list, only 19 years between 1798 and 2023 had no such deployment recorded. (WikiZero)
I was born in 1949.
In my entire lifetime, only four of those years occurred:
1957. 1961. 1977. 1979.
Think about that. In 77 years of living in the United States, only four calendar years did not include one of those military operations somewhere abroad.
Even more startling: 1979 was the last one. Anyone born in 1980 or later has never lived through a single calendar year without an American military operation abroad under this measure. And the streak clearly did not end after the CRS report stopped in 2023: American forces conducted strikes in Yemen, Iraq, and Syria in 2024; struck Iranian nuclear facilities in 2025; and in 2026 the United States is fighting Iran. (U.S. Department of War)
Carter called America “the most warlike nation in the history of the world.” You can argue over his wording, and you can argue over whether every deployment should count as war. (Common Dreams)
But the numbers leave one question that is harder to argue with:
How did a country that talks so much about peace become a country in which an entire generation has never experienced even one year without its military operating somewhere abroad?
But, a very big but.
The Congressional Research Service says its list is only a survey of notable uses of U.S. forces and specifically does not include routine military assistance or training, forces routinely stationed overseas, base agreements, occupation forces, or covert operations. CRS even warns that other lists will contain more or fewer incidents.
The Federation of American Scientists then looked at the gaps in that CRS list and wrote that there had been only 19 years since 1798 without U.S. military operations abroad. That is a much broader claim than the CRS data actually proves.
And when I checked the four supposed “quiet” years during your lifetime, every one starts falling apart:
1957: You were right about Vietnam. State Department records show 342 U.S. MAAG personnel plus 350 military personnel in the Temporary Equipment Recovery Mission in South Vietnam. MAAG was training the South Vietnamese military; TERM was handling military logistics.
1961: Even clearer. The Army says MAAG Vietnam had grown to about 685 U.S. military personnel, with advisers at training centers, military schools, and logistics depots. And in May 1961 there were approximately 350 U.S. military personnel in Laos assigned to MAAG Laos.
1977: This one surprised me. During Idi Amin’s confrontation with Americans in Uganda, the carrier USS Enterprise and its task group were ordered to remain on station off East Africa from February 25 to March 3 because of the crisis. That certainly looks like a foreign military contingency operation, even though CRS doesn’t list 1977.
1979: This destroys the “peaceful year” claim completely. After the Iran hostage seizure, Midway and Kitty Hawk carrier battle groups were sent into the Indian Ocean/Arabian Sea for contingency operations. Official Navy history says Navy carrier forces responded to five separate crisis situations during 1979.