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In the Shadow of the Garrison State
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 rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly available archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist the Soviet Union.
Friedberg's analysis of the U. S. government's approach to taxation, conscription, industrial planning, scientific research and development, and armaments manufacturing reveals that the American state did expand during the early Cold War period. But domestic constraints on its expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. The strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s was functional as well as stable, enabling the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit unduly the political, personal, and economic freedom of its citizens.
Political scientists, historians, and general readers interested in Cold War history will value this thoroughly researched volume. Friedberg's insightful scholarship will also inspire future policy by contributing to our understanding of how liberal democracy's inherent qualities nurture its survival and spread.
Friedberg's analysis of the U. S. government's approach to taxation, conscription, industrial planning, scientific research and development, and armaments manufacturing reveals that the American state did expand during the early Cold War period. But domestic constraints on its expansion--including those stemming from mean self-interest as well as those guided by a principled belief in the virtues of limiting federal power--protected economic vitality, technological superiority, and public support for Cold War activities. The strategic synthesis that emerged by the early 1960s was functional as well as stable, enabling the United States to deter, contain, and ultimately outlive the Soviet Union precisely because the American state did not limit unduly the political, personal, and economic freedom of its citizens.
Political scientists, historians, and general readers interested in Cold War history will value this thoroughly researched volume. Friedberg's insightful scholarship will also inspire future policy by contributing to our understanding of how liberal democracy's inherent qualities nurture its survival and spread.
416 pages, Hardcover
First published March 27, 2000
88 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 18, 2017
The author argues that the American tradition of anti-statism led the U.S. during the Cold War to pursue a "flexible response" strategy. This moderate position kept the U.S. from bankrupting itself during the Cold War. The Soviet Union's "full warfighting/nuclear stalemate" strategy eventually bankrupted the Soviet system, causing the Soviet Union to fall/collapse. Well-written, well-argued, and a joy to read.
July 9, 2023
I think Friedberg only did two decent books, even though he believed in some pretty ridiculous stuff in the 1990s.
But then again, Friedberg was Mitt Romney's Kissinger, and he does get better with age.
---
Friedberg offers an important corrective to our tendency to assume that events had to turn out as they did by analyzing why the United States did not turn into a 'garrison state,' as many feared at the start of the Cold War. The research is meticulous, the story fascinating, and Friedberg's explanation in terms of the power of anti-state actors and ideology is convincing.
Robert Jervis, Columbia University
[Jervis is always worth listening to]
---
This is one of the most exciting books I've read in years. Friedberg is putting forth a sweeping and fundamental reassessment of the American military-industrial complex during the Cold War. It is historical revisionism in its very best sense: clearly written, thoroughly documented, and overwhelmingly convincing. Aaron Friedberg will emerge, with this book, as one of those rare scholars whose work redefines an entire field.
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
---
Amazone
The Cold War as the Engine of American State-Building
8/10
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."
According to Friedberg: "The widespread animosity to statism that characterized the early post-war period...played a critical role in blocking the creation of new, powerful governmental industrial planning institutions."
Friedberg explains: "Even in the face of an enemy, and to a remarkable degree even in wartime, the American system has proven itself to be highly resistant to centralized industrial planning."
Friedberg writes: "[T]he push for privatization, and the ideological language in which it was couched, also raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the military's large-scale industrial activities, even those with long traditions. In the context of a worldwide contest with communism, private ownership of the means of production came to be regarded...as morally superior to any alternative form of economic organization."
According to Friedberg: "The postwar privatization of American arms production was the end result of a protracted process of debate and political struggle...At the most general ideological level the burgeoning anti-statist sentiments in the 1940s and 1950s tended to strengthen the hands of the privatizers and to discredit those who advocated anything that savored of socialism."
In discussing the structure of the U.S. research and development system and its performance during the Cold War, Friedberg asserts that the "large, open, and loose-limbed American system was well suited for promoting innovation, and it tended over time to outperform its more rigid, closed, and hierarchical Soviet counterpart."
According to Friedberg: "[F]or nearly a half century, the pursuit of qualitative superiority [in military technology] was a central, persistent feature of the entire American defense effort."
Friedberg explains: "Before the Second World War had ended and the Cold war began, senior American scientists and top military planners were already agreed that the preservation of a 'preeminent position' in weapons technology must be a central goal of peacetime defense policy."
"The clear emergence of the Soviet Union as the most likely enemy in any future war added urgency and a clear focus to the discussion of the role of technology in American strategy."
Friedberg reports: "'Atomic weapons used tactically are the natural armaments of numerically inferior but technologically superior nations,' declared one congressional enthusiast in 1951."
He explains: "The Eisenhower administration elevated the substitution of firepower for manpower to the position of key organizing principle of national strategy. Atomic and thermonuclear weapons of every conceivable yield were...at the heart of Western defenses;" and "For the West, by the mid-1950s, preserving technological supremacy had become even more essential and urgent than it had appeared only a few years before."
According to Friedberg: "Critics and enthusiasts alike agree that the American research and development system was highly productive of technological advances, that it tended over time to outpace its Soviet counterpart, and that the superior performance of the American system was connected in some way to its structure."
Was there ever a real likelihood that Cold War America would turn into a "garrison state?"
The clear answer is: No. References to the garrison state were rhetorical devices used most often by congressional opponents of the concentration of power in the executive branch in Washington, D.C.
But Friedberg is absolutely correct that anti-statist rhetoric had powerful antecedents in American history and, therefore, resonated deeply with the public. The specter of creating a garrison state was ominous, even when it was intentionally exaggerated.
Steven S. Berizzi
But then again, Friedberg was Mitt Romney's Kissinger, and he does get better with age.
---
Friedberg offers an important corrective to our tendency to assume that events had to turn out as they did by analyzing why the United States did not turn into a 'garrison state,' as many feared at the start of the Cold War. The research is meticulous, the story fascinating, and Friedberg's explanation in terms of the power of anti-state actors and ideology is convincing.
Robert Jervis, Columbia University
[Jervis is always worth listening to]
---
This is one of the most exciting books I've read in years. Friedberg is putting forth a sweeping and fundamental reassessment of the American military-industrial complex during the Cold War. It is historical revisionism in its very best sense: clearly written, thoroughly documented, and overwhelmingly convincing. Aaron Friedberg will emerge, with this book, as one of those rare scholars whose work redefines an entire field.
John Lewis Gaddis, Yale University
---
Amazone
The Cold War as the Engine of American State-Building
8/10
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."
According to Friedberg: "The widespread animosity to statism that characterized the early post-war period...played a critical role in blocking the creation of new, powerful governmental industrial planning institutions."
Friedberg explains: "Even in the face of an enemy, and to a remarkable degree even in wartime, the American system has proven itself to be highly resistant to centralized industrial planning."
Friedberg writes: "[T]he push for privatization, and the ideological language in which it was couched, also raised troubling questions about the legitimacy of the military's large-scale industrial activities, even those with long traditions. In the context of a worldwide contest with communism, private ownership of the means of production came to be regarded...as morally superior to any alternative form of economic organization."
According to Friedberg: "The postwar privatization of American arms production was the end result of a protracted process of debate and political struggle...At the most general ideological level the burgeoning anti-statist sentiments in the 1940s and 1950s tended to strengthen the hands of the privatizers and to discredit those who advocated anything that savored of socialism."
In discussing the structure of the U.S. research and development system and its performance during the Cold War, Friedberg asserts that the "large, open, and loose-limbed American system was well suited for promoting innovation, and it tended over time to outperform its more rigid, closed, and hierarchical Soviet counterpart."
According to Friedberg: "[F]or nearly a half century, the pursuit of qualitative superiority [in military technology] was a central, persistent feature of the entire American defense effort."
Friedberg explains: "Before the Second World War had ended and the Cold war began, senior American scientists and top military planners were already agreed that the preservation of a 'preeminent position' in weapons technology must be a central goal of peacetime defense policy."
"The clear emergence of the Soviet Union as the most likely enemy in any future war added urgency and a clear focus to the discussion of the role of technology in American strategy."
Friedberg reports: "'Atomic weapons used tactically are the natural armaments of numerically inferior but technologically superior nations,' declared one congressional enthusiast in 1951."
He explains: "The Eisenhower administration elevated the substitution of firepower for manpower to the position of key organizing principle of national strategy. Atomic and thermonuclear weapons of every conceivable yield were...at the heart of Western defenses;" and "For the West, by the mid-1950s, preserving technological supremacy had become even more essential and urgent than it had appeared only a few years before."
According to Friedberg: "Critics and enthusiasts alike agree that the American research and development system was highly productive of technological advances, that it tended over time to outpace its Soviet counterpart, and that the superior performance of the American system was connected in some way to its structure."
Was there ever a real likelihood that Cold War America would turn into a "garrison state?"
The clear answer is: No. References to the garrison state were rhetorical devices used most often by congressional opponents of the concentration of power in the executive branch in Washington, D.C.
But Friedberg is absolutely correct that anti-statist rhetoric had powerful antecedents in American history and, therefore, resonated deeply with the public. The specter of creating a garrison state was ominous, even when it was intentionally exaggerated.
Steven S. Berizzi
May 27, 2024
Very helpful details on early Cold War legislative and political fights, haunting conclusion on China and a type of market authoritarianism not marching the USSR's excessive statist weaknesses. Suggests initial anti-statism weakened over time (with gesture to LBJ), yet % GDP collected in tax revenue has held basically constant since Korea. A useful libertarian angle on the story of Cold War liberalism overall.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews