A01=Aaron L. Friedberg
Anti-statism
Austerity
Autarky
Author_Aaron L. Friedberg
Ayn Rand
Brookings Institution
Budget
Category=JPA
Category=NHK
Cold War
Cold War (1985-91)
Conscription
Containment
Counterforce
Dean Acheson
Defense industrial base
Defense Production Act
Demobilization
Disarmament
Distrust
Draft evasion
eq_bestseller
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Ernest May (historian)
Failed state
Flexible response
Gaither Report
George F. Kennan
Harry S. Truman
Henry A. Wallace
Hidden welfare state
Ira Katznelson
Ira Magaziner
Isolationism
John Lewis Gaddis
Limited government
Louis Hartz
Maginot Line
Martin Shefter
Maury Maverick
Mercantilism
Militarism
Military occupation
Missile gap
National Policy
National security
Obsolescence
Orwellian
Peacetime
Power vacuum
Protectionism
Recession
Selective Service System
Shortage
Slighting
Slowdown
Smithsonian Institution
State actor
State-building
Statism
Stephen Skowronek
Superiority (short story)
Tax
The Garrison State
The Power to Destroy
The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers
The Road to Serfdom
The Soldier and the State
Total war
War
Warfare
What Happened
William L. Borden
World War II
Write-off
Product details
- ISBN 9780691048901
- Weight: 567g
- Dimensions: 197 x 254mm
- Publication Date: 16 Apr 2000
- Publisher: Princeton University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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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 rival: 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.
Aaron L. Friedberg is Professor of Politics and International Affairs and Director of the Research Program in International Security at Princeton University. He is author of The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895-1905 (Princeton).
