The State of the National Security State

Abstract

1947 National Security Act established the basis for the American national state in the Cold War. fundamental framework of state still exists over a decade after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Should it continue, particularly in the aftermath of the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks? If not, why not, and how should it be altered? purpose of this article is to set the stage for answering these questions. Two themes dominate. first involves the proper mix of change and continuity, a key concern in a transitional period. This theme is examined against the backdrop of three interconnected aspects of American history since 1945: core US national interests; the concept of US national and its foreign and domestic components envisioned as serving those interests; and the US grand strategy designed to support the concept of national security. second theme is on the form and function of government: well since the onset of the Cold War has the form of US government functioned in order to meet the requirements of US grand strategy designed to further America's core interests? Cold War National Interests and National Security Lord Palmerston described core national interests in 1848 as the eternal and ultimate justification for national policy. (1) United States has three such interests: physical security, promotion of values, and economic prosperity. (2) Physical entails protecting the territory and people of a nation-state against attack in order to ensure survival with fundamental values and institutions intact. It was the core interest most often associated in the early decades of the republic with the concept of national security. James Madison referred in Federalist to security against foreign danger as the primary reason for shifting power to the central government. (3) In the 19th and 20th centuries, the concept of national came to include the other two core interests as well--promotion of values and economic prosperity. (4) During and after World War II, US leaders expanded the concept of national and used its terminology for the first time to explain America's relationship to the world. For most of US history, the physical of the continental United States had not been in jeopardy. But by 1945, this invulnerability was rapidly diminishing with the advent of long-range bombers, atom bombs, and ballistic missiles. A general perception grew the future would not allow time to mobilize, preparation would have to become constant. For the first time, American leaders would have to deal with the essential paradox of national faced by the Roman Empire and subsequent great powers: Si vis pacem, para bellum--If you want peace, prepare for war. Allied to the concept of preparedness was the emerging idea national required all elements of national power, not just the military, to be addressed in peace as well as war. We are in a different league now, Life magazine proclaimed in 1945. How large the subject of has grown, larger than a combined Army and Navy. (5) A year later this was echoed by Ferdinand Eberstadt, a key architect of the emerging institutional changes in Washington, who observed most policymakers dealing with national believed that foreign policy, military, and domestic economic resources should be closely tied together. (6) This linkage of national to so many interdependent factors, whether political and economic or psychological and military, expanded the concept, with the subjective boundaries of pushed out further into the world, encompassing more geography and thereby more issues and problems. In this context, developments anywhere could be perceived to have an automatic a nd direct impact on US core interests. By 1948, President Truman was applying to the entire world the words directed in earlier times to the Western Hemisphere: The loss of independence by any nation adds directly to the insecurity of the United States and all free nations. …