Monsters Everywhere: A Genealogy of National Security

Andrew Preston, "Monsters Everywhere: A Genealogy of National Security", Diplomatic History (2014)   38  (3):  477-500.

 

Abstract

This article, based on the 2014 Stuart L. Bernath Lecture, traces the emergence of “national security” as a foreign policy doctrine that came to define the safety of the United States in extremely broad terms, both geographically and ideologically. Doing so reveals that “national security” has its own history. The concept was invented by fusing long-standing, traditional concerns about U.S. territorial sovereignty with a newer, thoroughly revolutionary desire to protect and promote America’s core values on a global scale. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s legacy looms large in the history of American foreign relations, but it was his use of fear to invent the modern doctrine of national security that is possibly its most consequential aspect. After a couple of false starts, a fusion of geographical and ideological security took place during the world crisis of the late 1930s and the world war that followed. The results have defined U.S. foreign policy ever since.