U S Army War College

The Melting Pot U S Army War College

America has long been known as a great melting pot in which people of various ethnic heritages and cultures have melted into a common American culture and national identity. We derive our national interests from our national identity. Our national interests are manifested in our national political ideology, national policies, and in our National Security Strategy. We sustain the continuity of our national political ideology and our national interests by refreshing our society with the integration of newcomers, and melting them into our American society. Over the past few decades, societal elites and political activists have challenged the melting pot model claiming that the various cultural differences in society are valuable and should be preserved, not diluted into a homogeneous culture. They purported an America that would be made up of separate and disparate multicultural groups without any responsibility to assimilate to the American way of life. If history is any indicator of the future, then it is absolutely essential to our national security that we continue our societal melting pot if we are to retain the universal principles contained in our founding documents within our collective psyche.