National Security

Melvyn P. Lemer

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Every year scores of books and hundreds of articles appear on the topic of national
security. Yet only recently have historians and political scientists begun to use the
concept of national security to develop an overall interpretive framework for
studying American diplomatic history or international politics. In the most sophisti-
cated theoretical analysis of the concept of national security, Barry Buzan points out
that in the scholarly literature, concerns about security often have been obscured
by realists who focus on power and by idealists who dwell on peace. In the most
influential syntheses of American foreign policy, security considerations also have
been overshadowed by the emphasis either on morality and legality or on territorial
expansion and commercial empire. That is not to say that those interpretations do
not deal with security matters; they simply do not make them central to their
analyses.l
National security policy encompasses the decisions and actions deemed impera-
tive to protect domestic core values from external threats. 2 The national security ap-
proach provides an overall interpretive framework for studying foreign policy be-
cause it forces historians to analyze the foreign as well as domestic factors shaping
policy. If the inputs from both sources are faithfully studied, a great divide in the
study of American diplomatic history might be overcome. Realist historians believe
that diplomatic behavior responds (or should respond) mainly to the distribution
of power in the international system; most revisionist and corporatist scholars as-
sume that domestic economic forces and social structures are of overwhelming im-
portance. A synthesis should study the dynamic interaction between the two sources
of foreign policy behavior. By relating foreign threats to internal core values, the
national security approach facilitates such assessment.
It does more. The national security approach acknowledges that power plays a
key role in the behavior of nations and the functioning of the international system.
Proponents of that approach believe that a nation's power depends on its political
stability, social cohesion, and economic productivity as well as the number of its

Melvyn P. Leffler is professor of history at th~ University of Virginia. He wishes to thank Roben McMahon, Samuel
Walker, and John Lewis Gaddis for their comments and suggestions.

1 Barry Buzan, People, States, and Fear: The National Security Problem in International Relations (Brighton,

1983), 4-9. See, for example, George Frost Kennan, American Diplomacy (Chicago, 1951); William Appleman
Williams, Tragedy of American Diplomacy (Cleveland, 1959).
2 This working definition emerges from the writings of P. G. Bock and Monon Berkowitz. See, for example,
P. G. Bock and Monon Berkowitz, "The Emerging Field of National Security," World Politics, 19 (Oct. 1966),
122-36.

The Journal of American History June 1990 143

troops, tanks, planes, ships, missiles, and nuclear warheads. It recognizes that an
overarching synthesis must integrate political economy, military policy, and defense
strategy. It assumes that fears of foreign threats are a consequence of both real
dangers in the external environment and ideological precepts, cultural symbols, and
mistaken images.
To be sure, national security, as Arnold Wolfers wrote many years ago, is an ambig-
uous symbol. Security is used to encompass so many goals that there is no uniform

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agreement on what it encompasses and hence no universal understanding of the
concept. Certainly it involves more than national survival. But just what is involved
is often left vague and indeterminate. 3 Although the ambiguity presents formidable
problems to policy makers and contemporary analysts, it should not handicap the
work ofhistorians. Indeed, it should focus attention on central questions: How have
policy makers assessed dangerous threats? How have different executive branch
officials, government agencies, legislative committees, political parties, economic
interest groups, and ethnic communities defined core values?
External dangers come in many varieties. The historian of United States foreign
policy must appraise the intentions and capabilities of the nation's prospective foes.
But that step is only the beginning. Views of a potential adversary, after all, are
heavily influenced by perceptions ofother variables such as the impact of technolog-
ical change, the appeal of one's own organizing ideology, and the structural patterns
in the international system itself. 4 Perceptions of the international system, for ex-
ample, were probably more important in determining the policies of the United
States in 1946-1947 than were assessments of Soviet behavior. In other words Daniel
Yergin's dichotomy between the proponents of the Yalta and Riga axioms, between
those who saw the Soviet Union as just another great power and those who saw it
as an aggressive ideological foe bent on revolutionary change, constitutes only part
of the perceptual story. The other part was the dangerous connotation imparted by
American officials to developments within the international system, like the
proliferation of bilateral trade agreements and exchange controls, the political insta-
bility within European governments, and the rise of revolutionary nationalist move-
ments, especially in Asia. Soviet actions in late 1946 and early 1947 were no more
threatening than in 1945-1946, perhaps less so. But the structure of the interna-
tional system seemed much more ominous nonetheless. 5
In studying the systemic sources of foreign policy behavior, the national security
approach demands that analysts distinguish between realities and perceptions. This
task, as simple as it sounds, is fraught with difficulty because it is often harder for
historians to agree on what constituted an actual danger than on what was a per-
ceived threat. For example, the very different interpretations ofAmerican diplomacy

~ Arnold Wolfers, "'National Security' as an Ambiguous Symbol;' Political Science Quarterly, 67 (Dec. 1952),
481-502.
4 See Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory ofInternational Politics (Reading, 1979), 79-101.
5 Daniel Yergin, ShatteredPeace: The Origins ofthe Cold Jr.1r andthe National Security State (Boston, 1977);
Melvyn P. Leffler, "The American Conception of National Security and the Beginnings of the Cold War, 1945-48;'
American Historical Review, 89 (April 1984), 356-78.
 National Security 145

in the 1920s and 1930s between "realists" on the one hand and "revisionists" or "cor-
poratists" on the other hand rests in part on whether or not there were real threats
to American security during the interwar years. If there were no real threats before
the middle or late 1930s, then contemporary proponents of arms limitation treaties,
arbitration agreements, and nonaggression pacts might be viewed as functional
pragmatists seeking to create a viable liberal capitalist international order rather
than as naIve idealists disregarding the realities of an inherently unstable and omi-

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nous balance of power. 6
Perceptions of events abroad are themselves greatly influenced by the core values
of the perceiver. The national security approach demands that as much attention
should be focused on how the American government determines its core values as
on how it perceives external dangers. The term core values is used here rather than
vital interests because the latter implies something more material and tangible than
is appropriate for a national security imperative. The United States has rarely
defined its core values in narrowly economic or territorial terms. Core values usually
fuse material self-interest with more fundamental goals like the defense of the state's
organizing ideology, such as liberal capitalism, the protection of its political institu-
tions, and the safeguarding of its physical base or territorial integrity. N. Gordon
Levin,)r., has beautifully described how, when faced with unrestricted German sub-
marine warfare, Woodrow Wilson fused ideological, economic, and geopolitical
considerations. Together these factors became core values that influenced his deci-
sions for war, for intervention, and for the assumption of political obligations
abroad. 7
To determine core values, historians must identify key groups, agencies, and indi-
viduals, examine their goals and ideas, and analyze how trade-offs are made. Deci-
sion makers and interest groups will have different and sometimes conflicting in-
ternal and external objectives. Core values are the goals that emerge as priorities
after the trade-offs are made; core values are the objectives that merge ideological
precepts and cultural symbols like democracy, self-determination, and race con-
sciousness with concrete interests like access to markets and raw materials; core values
are the interests that are pursued notwithstanding the costs incurred; core values
are the goals worth fighting for. Different groups may have different core values or
different strategies for pursuing the same core values. The struggle between inter-
ventionists and isolationists on the eve of World War II illuminates how groups
sharing similar core values could disagree about strategies. Interventionists believed
aid to the Allies was essential to protect American liberal capitalism and the ter-
ritorial integrity of the United States; isolationists believed such aid would aggran-
dize the powers of the chief executive and the federal government, provoke the Axis
powers, and thereby endanger not only the nation's physical safety but also its polit-

6 For a reevaluarion of rhe relarive strength and efficacy of American military capabilities in the 1920s and early
1930s, see John Braeman, "Power and Diplomacy: The 1920s Reappraised;' Review of Politics, 44 (July 1982),
342-69.
7 Buzan, People, States, andFear, 36-72; N. Gordon Levin,]r., WOodrow Wilson and WOrld Politics: America's
Response to I¥iIr and Revolution (New York, 1968).
146 The Journal of American History June 1990

ical institutions and ideology. Explaining how core values are translated into policy
requires a careful investigation and a viable theory of the relationship between the
state and society. 8
The effort to show how core values emerge in the policy-making process forces
the diplomatic historian to study the importance of foreign policy goals in relation
to the officials' other objectives. As they seek to achieve diplomatic aims, officials
(and leaders of private organizations) may encounter costs that exceed the value of

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the goals themselves. 9 For example, much as Republican officials in the 1920s
yearned for markets abroad, they were unwilling to forego the protection of the
home market; much as they wanted international financial stability, they were reluc-
tant to cancel the war debts or raise taxes; much as they sought good relations with
the Japanese, they were unwilling to eliminate discriminatory immigration laws. In
these cases the foreign policy benefits did not seem to outweigh the domestic costs.
Hence the diplomatic objectives, significant though they were, never became core
values.lO American history is replete with examples demonstrating a quest for terri-
tory, markets, and influence and with examples demonstrating restraint. An in-
terpretive framework for the study of American foreign relations must be able to
explain why Theodore Roosevelt sent troops to the Caribbean and Central America
and why Franklin Roosevelt did not; why Wilson hesitated to intervene in Europe
in 1914-1916 but chose to do so in 1917; why the United States resisted the role of
hegemon in the interwar years yet assumed it after World War II; why the United
States eschewed political commitments and strategic obligations in one era while
it welcomed them in another.
The protection and pursuit of core values requires the exercise of power. Power
is the capacity to achieve intended results. Power may be an end in itself as well
as a means toward an end. In the twentieth century, power (including military
power) derives primarily from economic capabilities. Power stems from the scale,
vigor, and productivity of one's internal economy and its access to or control over
other countries' industrial infrastructure, skilled manpower, and raw materials.
Power is relative,u
The chief characteristic of twentieth-century American foreign policy has been

8 One can choose from a variety of Marxist or pluralist approaches. One can see the state acting autonomously

or as a captive of particular groups or classes. See Ralph Miliband, The State in Capitalist Society: An Analysis
ofthe western System ofPower (New York, 1969); Charles E. Lindblom, Politics andMarkets: The World's Political
Economic Systems (New York, 1977); Peter J. Katzenstein, ed., Between Power andPlenty: Foreign Economic Poli-
cies ofAdvancedIndustrial States (Madison, 1978); and Charles Bright and Susan Harding, eds., Statemaking and
Social Movements: Essays in History and Theory (Ann Arbor, 1984).
9 Robert Gilpin, ~r and Change in World Politics (New York, 1981), 50-105.
10 Melvyn P. Leffler, "1921-1932: Expansionist Impulses and Domestic Constraints," in Economics and World

Power: An Assessment ofAmerican Diplomacy since 1789, ed. William H. Becker and Samuel F. Wells, Jr. (New
York, 1984), 225-75.
11 The definition of power comes from Bertrand Russell and was used by Paul Nitze's Policy Planning Staff in

the Department of State in the early 1950s. See Policy Planning Staff, "Basic Issues Raised by Draft NSC 'Reap-
praisal of U.S. Objectives and Strategy for National Security:" Uuly 1952), in Foreign Relations ofthe United States,
1952-54 (26 vols., Washington, 1979-1989), II, 61. Gilpin, ~r and Change, 67-68; Paul M. Kennedy, The Rise
and Fall ofthe Great Powers: Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York, 1987); Klaus
Knorr, Power and wealth: The Political Economy of International Power (New York, 1973).
 National Security 147

the willingness and capacity of the United States to develop and exert its power be-
yond its nineteenth-century range to influence the economic, political, and military
affairs o~ Europe and Asia. This trend has manifested itself in the evolution of the
Open Dbor policy, in the aid to the Allies in both world wars, in the wielding of
American financial leverage, in the assumption of strategic obligations, in the
deployment of troops overseas, in the provision of economic and military assistance,
in the undertaking of covert operations, in the huge expenditures on armaments,

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and in the growth of American multinational corporations. The national security
approach helps to make sense out of these developments. Alterations in the distri-
bution of power, changes in the international system, and developments in tech-
nology influence the perception of threat and the definition of core values and impel
American officials to exercise power in varying ways.
Notwithstanding the desire of American officials in the 1920s and 1930s to ex-
pand markets, stabilize European affairs, pursue investment opportunities, and gain
control over raw materials abroad, those goals did not become vital interests worth
fighting for until changes in the international system impelled American officials
to redefine them as core values. The Axis domination of much of Europe and Asia
in 1940 and 1941, for example, endangered markets and investment opportunities.12
But far more important, Axis aggrandizement enabled prospective adversaries of
the United States to mobilize additional resources, coopt other nations' industrial
infrastructure, and secure forward bases. Nazi conquests, moreover, raised the possi-
bility that Latin American countries, which had traditionally traded largely with the
European continent, would be sucked into the Axis orbit. To deal with autarkic and
regimented trade practices abroad and to protect the United States from the
growing military capabilities of the adversary, American officials felt they had to
mobilize, raise taxes, monitor potential subversives, and prepare to assist or perhaps
even take over the export sector of the American economy. Appropriate vigilance
against an external threat seemed to require new powers for the state as well as
higher taxes and restrictions on personal liberties. Even if the United States had not
been attacked, core values would have been at stake - not because the Axis powers
crushed the self-determination of other nations or jeopardized the world capitalist
system - but because foreign threats of such magnitude endangered the nation's
physical integrity, required a reordering of domestic political economy, and por-
tended additional restrictions on civil liberties and individual rights.13
After World War II the Soviet presence in Eastern Europe, the vacuums of power
in Western Europe and northeast Asia, and the emergence of revolutionary nation-
alism in the Third World created a similar specter. American core values were per-
ceived to be at risk. The Kremlin might have neither the intention nor the capability
to wage war effectively against the United States, but prudence dictated that the
United States mobilize and project its own power to protect its core values. If the
12 For this view, see Patrick]. Hearden, Roosevelt Confronts Hitler: America's Entry into World ~r II (DeKalb,

1986).
13 Melvyn P. Leffler, "Was 1947 a Turning Point in American Foreign Policy?" in Centerstage: American
Diplomacy since the Second World ~r, ed. 1. Carl Brown (New York, 1989).
148 The Journal of American History June 1990

country did not do so, if it withdrew to the Western Hemisphere, President Harry
S. Truman warned that the American people would have to accept
a much higher level of mobilization than we have today. It would require a strin-
gent and comprehensive system of allocation and rationing in order to husband
our smaller resources. It would require us to become a garrison state, and to impose
upon ourselves a system of centralized regimentation unlike anything we have ever
known. In the end, ... we would face the prospect of bloody battle - and on our

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own shores. The ultimate costs of such a policy would be incalculable. Its adoption
would be a mandate for national suicide.14

During the Cold War years, the perception of an external threat to core values
inspired American officials to mobilize American power in unprecedented ways.
The Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic 'freaty Organization (NATO) are two ex-
cellent examples. For the first time in American history the United States govern-
ment appropriated billions of dollars for the rehabilitation of European economies
and assumed obligations to protect European countries. In the 1920s Republican
policy makers also had been cognizant of the interdependence of the economies of
Europe and the United States.15 Nevertheless they had eschewed long-term govern-
mental aid and security commitments. How does one account for the willingness
of American officials to incur such financial sacrifices and strategic commitments
after World War II but not after World War I?
According to the national security approach, the answer rests primarily in the
ways American officials perceived external threats to core values. In the mid-1940s
the political and economic vulnerability of Western European governments, the
popularity of Communist parties in France, Italy, and Greece, the economic and
social problems beleaguering Germany adumbrated a possible significant strength-
ening of the Soviet Union. And if this happened, Truman and his advisers believed,
there would be profound repercussions in the way the United States government
would have to structure its domestic economy and conduct its internal affairs. Be-
cause the configuration of power in the international system was substantially
different in the mid-1920s, external developments did not pose as much danger and
hence did not justify the allocation of government aid and the assumption of
overseas strategic obligations.
Other approaches to American foreign policy, although sophisticated and inci-
sive, do not offer the same synthetic capacity both to interpret change and to explain
discrete decisions at given moments. In his books, articles, and contribution to this
round table, for example, Michael]. Hogan brilliantly shows how business corpora-
tions, private-public linkages, and supranational institutions served as policy instru-
ments. Continuities are emphasized; change minimized. But many students of

14 Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Harry S. Truman, Containing the Public Messages,
Speeches, and Statements ofthe President, January 1, 1952, to January 20, 1953 (Washington, 1966), 189.
Il Melvyn P. Leffier, The Elusive Quest: America's Pursuit ofEuropean Stability andFrench Security, 1919-1933
(Chapel Hill, 1979); Michael]. Hogan. Informal Entente: The Private Structure ofCooperation in Anglo-American
Economic Relations, 1918-1928 (Columbia. Mo.• 1977); Frank Costigliola. Awkward Dominion: American Polit-
ica/, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919-1933 (Ithaca. 1984).
 National Security 149

American history believe the Marshall Plan and NATO represented significant
change and want to know how to account for it. As splendidly as the corporatist
approach elucidates the tactical changes in policy, it is less successful in explaining
motivations. I remain unconvinced by the evidence purporting to show that the
New Deal coalition had a greater bearing on the formulation of the Marshall Plan
than did the drastically altered configuration of power in post-World War II Europe.
Corporatism has the capacity to show how American officials hoped to mold a

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modern, integrated industrial economy. But to be persuasive as an overarching syn-
thesis of American foreign policy, it must address matters of motivation as boldly
and provocatively as did an earlier generation of revisionists, and it must cast its net
just as widely. Either by self-definition or by habit, corporatist writers have not dealt
with threat perception, arms expenditures, military assistance, force deployments,
nuclear strategy, military alliances, political commitments to other nations, and
relationships with client states in the Third World - matters central to the study of
internatjonal diplomacy in the post-World War II era. Much to my own chagrin,
because I did not see how the corporatist model could explain many of those de-
velopments, I have relegated it to an instrumentalist, rather than an interpretive,
role in my writing on the Cold War, despite the great relevance that it had to my
analysis of American diplomacy in the 1920s.
Because it calls for integrating core values, power, and foreign threats, the na-
tional security approach forces historians to study geopolitical and strategic issues
in relation to political economy and ideology. Attention is focused on how policy
makers linked means and ends and on how they sought to balance commitments
and resources. In seeking to accomplish those tasks, scholars can and should use
techniques from other interpretive approaches and from other disciplines. In dis-
cussing threat perception, psychological approaches will help; in discussing core
values, theories of decision making and organizational behavior and an under-
standing of culture and ideology will be useful; in discussing the exercise of power,
corporatist, realist, and world systems approaches will be applicable.16
Heretofore the integrative potential of the national security approach has been
obfuscated by debates over revisionism and postrevisionism. john Lewis Gaddis,
the founder of postrevisionism, has sought to use the national security approach to
reduce the centrality of economic factors and to minimize American responsibility
for the Cold War. Gaddis argues that in responding to Soviet threats and to foreign
invitations for help, the United States exercised economic power for political pur-
poses, that is, to check Soviet advances, to create independent centers of power, and
to fashion a world of diversity. According to Gaddis, containment was motivated
neither by ideological nor economic factors, but by geopolitical considerations. In
its most successful stages, containment was infused with a sense of restraint, with
a focus on Western Europe, and with an acute awareness of the potential to split
Communist parties from the Soviet behemothP
16 See Ole R. Holsti, "Models of International Relations and Foreign Policy," Diplomatic History, 13 (Winter
1989), 15-43.
17 This too brief summary of Gaddis's stimulating work is based on John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies ofContain-
150 The Journal of American History June 1990

There is much that is captivating in this interpretation, but it is not the only one
that can flow from the national security model. One might wish to develop the per-
ception of threat by stressing not so much Soviet behavior as the interaction between
the vulnerabilities of the international system and the perceived capacity of the
Kremlin to take advantage of those vulnerabilities. One might discuss core values
not simply by alluding to a balance of power, but by elucidating how the configura-
tion of power sought by American officials was inextricably related to their image

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of the American state and to that state's organizing ideology, political institutions,
and physical base. And furthermore, one might conclude that the purposes of power
were, not balance and diversity, but hegemony and preponderance. When the
United States emerged from World World II, American policy makers were intent
on fashioning a viable international economy and were willing to have the nation
assume the role of hegemon. When Dean Acheson, Robert Lovett, Paul Nitze, and
most other influential policy makers (except for George Kennan) talked about
power, they meant "preponderant power." And preponderant power, in the words
of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, was designed to achieve "a hierarchy
of objectives, namely: a. strength at the center /Western Europe, West Germany,
and]apan/; b. strength at the periphery /Southeast Asia, Middle East, and North
Africa/; c. the retraction of Soviet power and a change in the Soviet system."18
Policy makers' belief that it was a vital American interest to integrate core and
periphery suggests that there should be a close convergence between the national
security approach to understanding American diplomatic history and the world
systems model outlined by Thomas]. McCormick in his contribution to this round
table. There are some important distinctions, however. I would agree that the Amer-
ican economy has always functioned as part of the world capitalist system, but only
occasionally has its participation in that system dictated critical foreign policy deci-
sions. For example, American officials rejected a hegemonic role for the United
States in 1919 and spurned responsibility for the effective functioning of the world
capitalist system during the Great Depression. When the United States did assume
the role of hegemon in the late 1940s, American policy makers were inspired as
much by their concern for America's long-term physical security and for its domestic
political freedoms and free enterprise economy as by solicitude for the world capi-
talist system itself. For while McCormick is right to say that the Truman administra-
tion faced a global, systemwide capitalist crisis in early 1950, policy makers neverthe-
less believed that the foundering of the system would redound to the benefit of the

ment: A Critical Appraisal ofPostwar American National Security Policy (New York, 1982); John Lewis Gaddis,
The Long Peace: Inquiries into the History of the Cold war (New York, 1987); and John Lewis Gaddis, "The
Emerging Post-Revisionist Synthesis on the Origins of the Cold War," Diplomatic History, 7 (Summer 1983),
171-90.
18 Policy Planning Staff, "Basic Issues," [July 1952], in Foreign Relations of the United States, 1952-54, II,

62-63. Although Gaddis borrows heavily from the insights and vocabulary of political scientists, the notion of
hegemon, so pervasive in the works of political economy, rarely appears in his interpretation. On hegemony, see
Charles P. Kindleberger, The World in Depression, 1929-1939 (Berkeley, 1973); Gilpin, war and Change, 173-75;
David P. Calleo and Benjamin M. Rowland, America and the World Political Economy: Atlantic Dreams and Na-
tional Realities (Bloomington, 1973), 71-72; and Robert o. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord
in the World Political Economy (Princeton, 1984).
 National Security 151

Kremlin. If the Soviet Union could attract part of the periphery or lure Germany
or Japan into its orbit, Soviet strength would grow and the power of the Western
alliance would erode. Eventually, the Kremlin might gather enough resources, in-
dustrial infrastructure, military capabilities, and self-confidence to challenge more
vital American interests and to wage war effectively if it should erupt through mis-
calculation or accident.
According to official Washington, prudence dictated that the United States inter-

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vene on the periphery, rearm Germany, and militarize its foreign policy. If the
Truman administration did not do so, it might subsequently encounter even greater
dangers. It might then have to multiply its defense expenditures, raise taxes, inter-
fere in the marketplace, and infringe on individual rights in ways that far exceeded
the possibilities contemplated in NSC 68 and the worst excesses of the McCarthy
era. The real threat therefore emanated, not from the malfunctioning of the capi-
talist system, but from the Kremlin's ability to capitalize on it; the core values that
were endangered were not markets, raw materials, and overseas investment opportu-
nities, but political liberty and free enterprise at home. Truman, Acheson, and
Nitze wanted to integrate core and periphery, as McCormick incisively argues, but
for more complex reasons (related to strategy, geopolitics, and ideology) than the
world systems approach allows for.
Preponderance and hegemony, as Paul M. Kennedy and Robert Gilpin have
written, confer advantages and impose costs. If threats are exaggerated and commit-
ments overextended, if one's credibility is vested in the achievement of too many
goals, one's relative power will erode and one's core values may become imperiled.
There is an ominous dynamic influencing the behavioral patterns of great powers.19
Whether or not the United States will succumb to it will depend on whether groups,
bureaucracies, and individual policy makers can find a means of restoring a viable
equilibrium between threats, core values, and the exercise of power.
The national security model can and should serve as a framework for studying
the history of American foreign policy in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries
as well as the twentieth. For although changing perceptions of space and time
caused by technological change made it imperative to integrate policy in a more
timely manner after World War II, the use of power to overcome threats and defend
core values has been an enduring element of the American diplomatic experience.
ThomasJefferson andJames Madison, after all, sought to use economic leverage and
then went to war to protect neutral rights, foster trade, and demonstrate the via-
bility of the republican form of government. Only recently, however, have several
historians begun to apply the national security model to the pre-atomic era. 20 Al-
though that model is not well designed to evaluate and measure the impact of
American policies on foreign countries, it is eminently well designed to study policy

19 Gilpin, Wzr and Change; Kennedy, Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
20 Thomas H. Buckley and Edwin B. Strong, Jr., American Foreign and National Security Policies, 1914-1945
(Knoxville, 1987); James Chace and Caleb Carr, America Invulnerable: The Quest for Absolute Security from 1812
to Star Wzrs (New York, 1988).
152 The Journal of American History June 1990

formulation at any given period of time. And it can be used in a comparative frame-
work to study the behavior of foreign governments as well as that of the United
States. Not the least of the advantages of the national security model is that it en-
compasses diverse variables, allows for different weights to be assigned to them, and
constitutes the basis for synthesis without imposing rigidity and uniformity.

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