"Preston starts by pushing back at the idea that “national security” is a necessary fixture of American thinking, either because it is an eternal problem of states or because it dates to deep in the mist of the country’s history."
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"As he shows, the words “national security” had barely passed American lips before the 1930s, & the “catchy new term” did not “describe existing policies of national defense." Rather, it emerged when it did because Americans needed 'to describe a totally new way of thinking about national defense.'”
aug 31, 2025, 8:54 pm • 0 0 • view
And critically, "It was a mutation with enormous consequences for non-Americans on the receiving end of “total defense,” too."
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National Security as concept & as practice is far from timeless | Its creation transformed the meaning of defense + the role of the federal gov't. See Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security by Andrew Preston Harvard University Press🗃️ www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
aug 31, 2025, 8:54 pm • 1 0 • view