Keeping National Security Political: Activist-Scholars of Japan’s Beheiren and The United States’ Institute for Policy Studies in The Vietnam Anti-War Movement

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ABSTRACT This paper reassesses intellectual resistance to conflict by cross-examining the conceptual frameworks developed by activist-scholars leading Japan’s Beheiren (‘Japan “Peace for Vietnam!” Committee’) and the US-based Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Both groups critiqued the causes and impacts of American involvement in Vietnam, initiating a challenge to state-centred narratives of national security. Beheiren, led by Oda Makoto and Tsurumi Shunsuke, aimed to repoliticise Japan’s complicity in the conflict, questioning the nation’s pacifist image. In the United States, IPS’ founders Marcus Raskin and Richard Barnet provided a critical analysis of the ‘national security state’ for undermining democratic principles and reframing interventionist policies as essential for domestic security. This study demonstrates that a comparative analysis of these movements, despite their differences, uncovers a shared commitment to maintaining security at a ‘human’ scale and resisting the depoliticising effects of state-centric security practices. Their efforts pioneered a human-centric approach to security that gained prominence in the post-Cold War period. This demarks the role of the scholar in advancing civil resistance against state-led conflict by highlighting the need to expose and challenge ideologies that either seek to depoliticise security by excluding it from public debate or justify violence under the guise of national security.