Andrew Preston: Total Defense, Kartoniert / Broschiert

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ANew YorkerBest Book of the Year

The story of how FDR and fellow New Dealers created the idea of national security, transforming the meaning of defense and vastly expanding the US government's responsibilities.

National security may seem like a timeless notion. States have always sought to fortify themselves. Yet in fact it has a very particular and very American history.

The concept of national security originates with the FDR administration, in response to the rise of fascism. Before, national self-defense was defined in terms of protecting sovereign territory from invasion. But FDR and his circle worried that Americans, comforted by two vast oceans, did not take seriously the long-term risks posed by hyper-militarization abroad. New Dealers developed national security, Andrew Preston argues, to supplant the old idea of self-defense: Now even distant threats were to be understood as harms to be combated, while ideological competitors were perilous to the "American way of life."

Total Defenseshows it was no coincidence that a liberal like Roosevelt promoted this vision. National security, no less than social security, was a New Deal promise: The state was obliged to safeguard Americans as much from Nazi Germany and imperial Japan as from unemployment and poverty in old age. The resulting shift in threat perception-among policymakers and ordinary citizens alike-transformed the United States, spearheading government expansion and placing the country on a permanent war footing.