The American Republic, Executive Power and the National Security State: Hannah Arendt's and Hans Morgenthau's Critiques of the Vietnam War

Abstract

There is nothing new or even faintly original in the neoconservative foreign policy vision. It simply recycles the old national security ideology for a post-Cold War era. Consistent with this ideological agenda, conservatives have also been advancing the case for the strong executive who operates above the law. In championing the principle of the strong executive, they are seeking to re-define the meaning of modern republicanism around this principle. During the 1960s Hannah Arendt and Hans Morgenthau developed a broad critique of the national security state and its ideology in their opposition to the Vietnam War. This essay examines their critique, and the alternative conception of republicanism they developed as part of this critique.