Who's Thinking about National Security?

Worldview ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 21-23
Author(s):  
Garry D. Brewer ◽  
Paul Bracken
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Think Tanks ◽  
Rand Corporation ◽  
World War ◽  
Interesting Phenomenon ◽  
Security Issues ◽  
Financial Base

Prior to World War II, American national security policy was formed by a loosely connected elite that generally operated from a business-financial base in the northeastern United States. It was from this group that secretaries of state and war were drawn and among this group that serious long-range thinking on important security issues was undertaken. The power of this community continued after the war, probably reaching its zenith in the 1950s, when an important change occurred. Unversities like Harvard, Yale, and Chicago gained prominence at this time, but the more interesting phenomenon was the emergence of so-called "defense intellectuals" at places like the Rand Corporation and other think tanks.

Dreams of Freedom, Temptations of Power

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-280
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
September 11 ◽  
World War ◽  
Memory Culture ◽  
The World ◽  
September 11 Attacks ◽  
The Cold War

This chapter considers the end of the Cold War as well as its implications for the September 11 attacks in 2001, roughly a decade after the Cold War ended. While studying the Cold War, the chapter illustrates how memory and values as well as fear and power shaped the behavior of human agents. Throughout that struggle, the divergent lessons of World War II pulsated through policymaking circles in Moscow and Washington. Now, in the aftermath of 9/11, governments around the world drew upon the lessons they had learned from their divergent national experiences as those experiences had become embedded in their respective national memories. For policymakers in Washington, memories of the Cold War and dreams of human freedom tempted the use of excessive power with tragic consequences. Memory, culture, and values played a key role in shaping the evolution of U.S. national security policy.

Safeguarding Democratic Capitalism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melvyn P Leffler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
World War I ◽  
National Security ◽  
Security Policy ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
National Security Policy ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Global War

This book gathers together decades of writing by the author, to address important questions about U.S. national security policy from the end of World War I to the global war on terror. Why did the United States withdraw strategically from Europe after World War I and not after World War II? How did World War II reshape Americans' understanding of their vital interests? What caused the United States to achieve victory in the long Cold War? To what extent did 9/11 transform U.S. national security policy? Is budgetary austerity a fundamental threat to U.S. national interests? The wide-ranging chapters explain how foreign policy evolved into national security policy. The book stresses the competing priorities that forced policymakers to make agonizing trade-offs and illuminates the travails of the policymaking process itself. While assessing the course of U.S. national security policy, the author also interrogates the evolution of his own scholarship. Over time, slowly and almost unconsciously, the author's work has married elements of revisionism with realism to form a unique synthesis that uses threat perception as a lens to understand how and why policymakers reconcile the pressures emanating from external dangers and internal priorities.

II. Policy Formulation for National Security

1949 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 534-543 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidney W. Souers
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
National Security ◽  
Economic Effect ◽  
Armed Forces ◽  
Executive Branch ◽  
Policy Formulation ◽  
Military Operations ◽  
World War ◽  
War Aims ◽  
Military Campaign

The National Security Council, created by the National Security Act of 1947, is the instrument through which the President obtains the collective advice of the appropriate officials of the executive branch concerning the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security. An outline of the genesis of this new governmental agency will indicate in part its present rôle.Even before World War II, a few far-sighted men were seeking for a means of correlating our foreign policy with our military and economic capabilities. During the war, as military operations began to have an increasing political and economic effect, the pressure for such a correlation increased. It became apparent that the conduct of the war involved more than a purely military campaign to defeat the enemy's armed forces. Questions arose of war aims, of occupational policies, of relations with governments-in-exile and former enemy states, of the postwar international situation with its implications for our security, and of complicated international machinery.

The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945–1948

2019 ◽  
pp. 117-163
Author(s):  
Melvyn P. Leffler
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Cold War ◽  
National Security ◽  
Military Officers ◽  
World War ◽  
Military Conflict ◽  
Civilian Leaders ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
Political Ferment

This chapter considers how the concept of national security evolved. It demonstrates that U.S. military officers and their civilian leaders did not think that the Kremlin was poised to engage in premeditated military aggression during the Cold War. They did not think Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin wanted to begin another war. They grasped Stalin's view of his own military vulnerabilities and intuited that he wished to avoid military conflict. Nonetheless, U.S. officials felt threatened. They felt threatened precisely because of the lessons they had learned from World War II itself and the definition of America's vital interests that waging World War II had taught them. They had learned that an adversary, or coalition of adversaries, that conquered other countries could assimilate their resources into their own military machine, wage aggressive war, and challenge America's vital interests. Although the Kremlin seemed unlikely to wage war, it nevertheless had the capacity to gain indirect leverage or control over many countries in Europe and Asia because of the political ferment, economic chaos, social strife, and revolutionary nationalist fervor that existed in the aftermath of war.

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