In the Shadow of the Garrison State: America's Anti-Statism and Its Cold War Grand Strategy

by Aaron L. Friedberg

Book Overview

War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0691048908
• ISBN13: 9780691048901
• Release Date: March 2000
• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Length: 416 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Hope for America in Iraq that militarism will fade . . .

Harold Lasswell developed the idea of the garrison state in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He proposed that "under conditions of continual crisis and perpetual preparedness for total war, every aspect of life would eventually come under state control." In 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times asked whether the United States could "prepare for the next, truly total war...without becoming a garrison state." George Orwell popularized the notion with his 1949 release of 1984, a harrowing view of totalitarian control by the garrison state. To a large extent, these arguments fuel Aaron Friedberger's premise that "war and the threat of war required the creation of military power, and, over time, the creation of military power led to the construction of strong, modern states." (3) From this premise Friedberg contends that the growth of the American state was held in check during the Cold War by a tradition and ideology of anti-statism. The Cold War produced pressures for the permanent construction of a powerful central state. "In the American case," Friedberg argues, "these pressures came comparatively late in the process of political development... they were met and, to a degree, counterbalanced, by the strong anti-statist influences that were deeply rooted in the circumstances of the nation's founding. (3-4) Friedberg identifies the mechanisms for state growth between 1945 and 1960 as "the product of a collision between these two sets of conflicting forces." (4) He effectively demonstrates that the apparatus of the American state grew less during the early years of the Cold War than might have been have been expected. Friedberg examines "five main mechanisms of power creation: those intended to extract money and manpower and those designed to direct national resources toward arms production, military research, and defense-supporting industries." (5) In each of these areas he finds anti-statist influences holding state-building in check. "Mounting popular and congressional resistance to taxes and controls compelled the Truman administration to lower its sights and to accept the necessity of a slower and, in the end, smaller military buildup." (121) Friedberg concludes "Eisenhower's commitment to holding down defense spending was a logical outgrowth of his essentially anti-statist philosophy of political economy." (127) Friedberg finds that "in the absence of sustained public opposition, the pressures for universal military training would probably have proved overwhelming," except that it raised doubts over legitimacy. (167) Like the rejection of universal military training, Friedberg also identifies the demise of centralized defense industrialization policy as "at least as much a product of domestic anti-statist influences" as a "logical, inevitable response to the advent of nuclear weapons." (199) Anti-statist influence not only resisted centralized planning and industrial dispersal, but it also streng

INSTANT CLASSIC

Friedberg has written the best book on international relations since John Gaddis' "Strategies of Containment". Like Gaddis, Friedberg is one of a handful of authors who possess a sophisticated knowledge of both American diplomatic history and modern theories of international relations.With the aid of his groundbreaking archival research, Friedberg shatters existing paradigms by showing that American culture played a leading, perhaps dominant role in the forging of the United States' Cold War grand strategy.Friedberg's book is indispensable reading for every scholar and student of international relations. It is a classic that will be read and reread for generations.

The Cold War as the Engine of American State-Building

In 1947, Hanson Baldwin, the military correspondent for The New York Times asked whether the United States could "prepare for the next, truly total war...without becoming a `garrison state.'" According to Princeton Professor Aaron Friedberg, by the middle of the 20th, "the imminent threat of war produced pressures for the permanent construction of a powerful central state." Friedberg argues, however, that the size and scope of the federal government was held in check during the Cold War by a tradition and ideology of anti-statism. Although this book merely synthesizes previously- published works, it effectively argues that the apparatus of the American state grew less during the Cold War than might have been have been expected. Friedberg examines "five main mechanisms of power creation: those intended to extract money and manpower and those designed to direct national resources toward arms production, military research, and defense-supporting industries." Friedberg explains: "In the span of only two decades the United States was engulfed in three waves of crisis as depression, world war, and cold war followed each other in rapid succession. The onset of each emergency produced a powerful impetus toward state-building." The early-Cold War debate about defense spending demonstrates Friedberg's point. He writes that "the American people wanted a state that was strong enough to defend them against their foreign enemies but not strong enough to threaten their domestic liberties," defending the country was expensive. In 1949, when President Truman wanted to hold defense spending for the next fiscal year, to $14.4 billion, the Secretary of Defense instructed the service chiefs to base their estimates "on military considerations alone," which resulted in a "wish list with a staggering $30 billion price tag." Truman's final budget message estimated the annual cost of sustaining his planned long-term force posture to be $35 to $40 billion. According to Friedberg, President Eisenhower's "commitment to holding down defense spending was a logical outgrowth of his essentially anti-statist philosophy of political economy," and, in June 1954, he warned that a massive new buildup would involving transformation of the United States into "a garrison state." In 1960, John Kennedy asserted that Eisenhower's "excessive attention to the budget" had "resulted in a serious weakening of the nation's defenses." Compulsory military service also generated intense debate. Senator Robert Taft warned that the adoption of universal military training would transform the United States into a "militaristic and totalitarian country." According to Friedberg, "the strongest and most consistent congressional opposition to came from the Republican party, and in particular from its conservative midwestern wing. It was in this part of the country that principled anticompulsion arguments struck their most responsive chord." Accor

Shedding light on the Cold War Milieu

For those interested in the dynamics and interplay of domestic and national security issues, this book is fantastic. Friedberg frames and then details key power transforming institutions and elements such arms, technology, supporting industrial complex, money and manpower, and how they formed the basis of both a powerful deterrence and a relative stable, non-garrison state that excelled economically. Not a book for all readers, but for those pundits and novices of national security or Cold War history, this is a must have book. Sure to become required reading for top notice public policy and political science departments in leading universities.