"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.'”
And critically, "It was a mutation with enormous consequences for non-Americans on the receiving end of “total defense,” too."
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...