1945: National Security State

Summary

History As It Happens: Episode Summary – "1945: National Security State"

Release Date: August 15, 2025
Host: Martin DeCaro
Guest: Daniel Besner, Historian of U.S. Foreign Policy and Co-host of the American Prestige Podcast

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Introduction: The Birth of the National Security State

In the fourth installment of the five-part series commemorating the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, host Martin DeCaro engages in a profound discussion with historian Daniel Besner about the emergence and implications of the United States' national security state. The conversation delves into how the aftermath of World War II did not usher in universal peace but instead gave rise to the Cold War, reshaping American institutions and foreign policy.

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The Dawn of the Cold War and the Truman Doctrine

At the heart of the discussion is the pivotal year 1947, marked by significant legislative and ideological shifts that entrenched the United States into a prolonged state of geopolitical tension with the Soviet Union.

Key Points:

• Stalin's Support for Greek Communists: Daniel Besner points out that in early 1947, Stalin began supporting communist insurgencies in Greece, prompting a strategic response from the U.S.

  "Stalin starts supporting the Greek communist insurgency, I believe in early 1947. In March 1947, Truman responds with his speech. Becomes known as the Truman Doctrine speech."
  (Daniel Besner, [01:50])

• The Truman Doctrine Speech: President Harry Truman's address to Congress, commonly referred to as the Truman Doctrine, sought to contain the spread of communism by providing aid to Greece and Turkey. This speech is widely regarded as the moment the Cold War became institutionalized in U.S. foreign policy.

  "Historically, this is usually pointed to as a moment when the Cold War really begins to take off, that it's institutionalized in US Foreign policy in a way that it wasn't before this March 1947 speech."
  (Daniel Besner, [24:54])

• Establishing a Permanent Security Bureaucracy: The necessity to combat the burgeoning Soviet threat led to the creation of enduring institutions like the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the National Security Council (NSC) through the National Security Act of 1947.

  "Before 1947, the United States never had a peacetime intelligence gathering agency like the CIA. Foreign policy was made on an informal basis."
  (Martin DeCaro, [02:25])

---

Creation and Impact of the National Security Act of 1947

The National Security Act fundamentally restructured the U.S. government's approach to foreign policy and military affairs, laying the groundwork for the national security state.

Key Points:

• Institutional Reorganization: The Act established the CIA, NSC, and eventually led to the formation of the Department of Defense, centralizing and expanding executive power over war and peace decisions.

  "The National Security Act basically establishes a National Security Council, it establishes a Central Intelligence Agency, and it establishes what will eventually become the Department of Defense."
  (Daniel Besner, [26:51])

• Permanent Armaments Industry: Dwight D. Eisenhower highlighted the dramatic shift from a country with minimal military-industrial presence to one reliant on a vast, permanent armaments industry.

  "Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions."
  (Dwight D. Eisenhower, [02:25])

• Entrenchment and Expansion: These institutions became deeply ingrained and resistant to dismantling, perpetuating a cycle of increased military involvement and expenditure.

  "These institutions wind up coming together. States accrete power. This is one of the fundamental lessons of the literature on state making or American political development."
  (Daniel Besner, [28:15])

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Eisenhower’s Warning: The Military-Industrial Complex

Former President Dwight D. Eisenhower's farewell address serves as a critical reflection on the implications of the national security state's growth.

Notable Quote:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex."
(Dwight D. Eisenhower, [01:00])

Key Points:

• Unchecked Power and Influence: Eisenhower warned that the intertwining of the military and industrial sectors could wield disproportionate influence over national policy, potentially endangering democratic processes and liberties.

  "The total influence economic, political, even spiritual is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government."
  (Dwight D. Eisenhower, [03:25])

• Long-Term Implications: Despite his warnings, the national security state continued to expand, often at the expense of American democratic ideals and accountability.

  "That was 64 years ago. The warning still applies."
  (Martin DeCaro, [08:51])

---

The Evolution of U.S. Foreign Policy Institutions

Besner elaborates on how U.S. foreign policy became increasingly centralized and dominated by executive power, diminishing the role of traditional institutions like the Department of State.

Key Points:

• National Security Council (NSC) Growth: Initially modest, the NSC grew into a powerful policymaking body, especially under leaders like Eisenhower, overshadowing the State Department.

  "Under Eisenhower, the NSC becomes what it becomes, which is basically a centralized policy-making body that is going to eventually replace the Department of State."
  (Daniel Besner, [30:15])

• Covert Operations and CIA Expansion: Early CIA actions laid the foundation for extensive covert operations, often bypassing democratic oversight and violating international norms.

  "Martin raises how NSC 1042 allows the CIA to conduct guerrilla activities."
  (Martin DeCaro, [27:53])

---

Impact on American Democracy and Society

The national security state's growth had profound effects on American democracy, including reduced transparency, increased secrecy, and diminished public accountability.

Key Points:

• Centralization of Power: Power became highly concentrated within the executive branch, limiting checks and balances essential for democratic governance.

  "Foreign policy is now essentially made by the President, centralizing authority in the executive branch."
  (Daniel Besner, [30:30])

• Lack of Accountability: Institutions like the CIA and NSC operated with excessive secrecy, undermining public knowledge and involvement in critical decisions.

  "The secrecy gets worse and worse and that's built in."
  (Martin DeCaro, [32:39])

• Perpetual Militarism: The national security state's logic led to continuous military engagements and interventions, as seen in actions from Iran in 1953 to modern-day conflicts, often justified by the need for national security.

  "We've got the drone strikes, assassinations... It's just empire, the same exact thing, subject to absolutely no democratic accountability."
  (Martin DeCaro, [40:36])

---

Modern Implications: The "Deep State" and Political Polarization

The legacy of the national security state persists in contemporary politics, influencing debates around the "deep state," military spending, and American hegemony.

Key Points:

• Perception of the Deep State: Figures like Donald Trump have leveraged the concept of a "deep state" to critique entrenched institutional powers, though historians like Besner argue that such structures are resilient and indifferent to presidential rhetoric.

  "We're in a strange place in our politics right now with this... we're in control of these structures, but the structures influence the president."
  (Martin DeCaro, [39:20])

• Continuing Expansion: From Cold War interventions to post-9/11 policies, the national security state's reach has only broadened, often at odds with public welfare and democratic principles.

  "The national security state and US Hegemony is unrelated to that, about life here getting just decreasingly worse, living through a period of decay and dissolution."
  (Daniel Besner, [41:18])

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Conclusion: Reflecting on the Lasting Legacy

As the episode wraps up, both host and guest reflect on the enduring nature of the national security state and its implications for American society and global politics.

Notable Quote:

"We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes."
(Dwight D. Eisenhower, [34:34])

Final Thoughts:

• The national security state's foundations laid in the 1940s continue to shape U.S. foreign and domestic policies, often sidelining democratic accountability.
• Addressing these deeply entrenched institutions remains a complex challenge, as they have become normalized and resistant to reform.
• The necessity of transforming American self-perception and its role in the world is crucial for fostering a more accountable and democratic society.

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Looking Ahead: Final Episode Teaser

In the concluding fifth episode, historian David M. Kennedy will join to discuss "America's Global Age and Whether It's Coming to an End," providing a comprehensive closure to the series on the national security state's historical trajectory.

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For more insights and updates, subscribe to Martin DeCaro's newsletter on Substack by searching for "History As It Happens."

Transcript

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[Martin DeCaro]

History as it happens. August 15, 2025. The national security state.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

The terms and conditions upon which surrender of the Japanese Imperial forces is here to be given and accepted are contained in the instrument of surrender.

[Daniel Besner]

Now before you, I am fully aware.

[Harry Truman]

Of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey. And I shall discuss these implications with you at this time.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex.

[Martin DeCaro]

The outcome of the Second World War was not peace in much of the world and it was not an end to conflict for the United States because a new war emerged, a Cold War against the Soviet Union. And it was waged by the US With a reorganized military, permanent new agencies, congressional appropriations, and laws designed to defend national security. Did it all come at the expense of American democracy? That's next as we report history as it happens. I'm Martin DeCaro.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

We face a hostile ideology, global in scope, atheistic in character, ruthless in purpose and insidious in method.

[Daniel Besner]

So basically, Stalin starts supporting the Greek communist insurgency, I believe in early 1947. In March 1947, Truman responds with his speech. Becomes known as the Truman Doctrine speech. And historians generally point to that speech as quote, unquote, globalizing the Cold War away from the European heartland. He's asking Congress to fund Greek basically anti communists and Turkish anti communists. Congress does wind up doing that, and essentially this is usually pointed to as a moment when the Cold War really begins to take off.

[Martin DeCaro]

Before 1947, the United States never had a peacetime intelligence gathering agency like the CIA. Foreign policy was made on an informal basis. There was no National Security Council. Even during the Second World War in the US Military, inter service cooperation was voluntary. The army and Navy competed for resources. A unified command structure seemed necessary. The National Security act reorganized the government's foreign policy and military establishments. It created a CIA and NSC expanding executive branch power over decisions of war and peace. It would be permanent, expensive, often unaccountable, and steer our country into avoidable disasters. Over the decades.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

If we are driven from the field in Vietnam Then no nation can ever again have the same confidence in American promise or in American protection.

[Martin DeCaro]

This is the fourth episode in my five part series marking the 80th anniversary of the Second World War. Historian Daniel Besner will be here to talk about the origins of the national security state. It is hard to overstate its importance. A lot was happening in 1947 when large bipartisan majorities in the House and Senate passed the legislation. The Cold War was hardening into an intractable conflict, necessitating the creation of some kind of permanent national security bureaucracy in Washington. And this was two years before the Soviets tested the bomb, before Mao's communists prevailed in China and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. But already ideas mattered anti communism and the perception that Stalin was an expansionist menace in Eastern Europe and elsewhere mattered. Here's President Harry Truman in his landmark address to Congress in 1947, the so called Truman Doctrine of Containment, calling for aid to Greece and Turkey, explaining why Americans should care about what's happening in those two countries.

[Harry Truman]

I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey. And I shall discuss these implications with you at this time. One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will, will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will and their way of life upon other nations. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples by direct or indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States. At the present moment in world history, nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, as odd Arne Wested writes in the Cold A World History, Truman's second term foreign policy was marked by increasing tensions with the Soviets, the collapse of a US supported government in China and the outbreak of the Korean War. This was the time when the Cold War was militarized both from a Soviet and American perspective. Truman's administration struggled to put together a comprehensive and global strategy for fighting what everyone hoped would remain a shadow war with the Soviets. There was never much doubt in the President's mind, says Westad, that the struggle was against both the Soviet Union and communism globally. And he had little time for those among his own advisors, such as George Kennan, who warned against a global militarization of the conflict. Kennan was replaced as director of the State Department's policy planning staff in 1949, and his successor, the more hawkish Paul Nitze, put together a document that attempted to set out a US Cold War strategy later known as NSC 68. The paper was radical in its recommendations and would probably not have come to reflect the administration's policies if it had not been for the outbreak of the Korean War three months after it presented so. Ideas are important, but also the institutions, the tools that Washington now had at its disposal to wage a cold war to protect national security. But it did not take long for the new national security state to become entrenched, almost untouchable. As he left office in 1961, President Dwight Eisenhower warned about its dangers to our democracy, even though Ike also, of course, believed the military industrial complex was necessary.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. How to do this? Three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security alone more than the net income of all United States corporations. Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence economic, political, even spiritual is felt in every city, every state house, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development, yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.

[Martin DeCaro]

That was 64 years ago. The warning still applies. Daniel Besner is a historian of US Foreign policy at the University of Washington, but you probably know him best as the co host with Derek Davison of the American Prestige Podcast. Our conversation Next History is defined by.

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[Martin DeCaro]

Daniel Besner, welcome back.

[Daniel Besner]

Thank you very much for having me.

[Martin DeCaro]

Again, Martin Why do you believe World War II still fascinates us? Or why do you think it's still important to pay attention to this, this anniversary?

[Daniel Besner]

I mean, it's a good question. I think to a really significant degree, we're still living in the post World War II era. The institutions that define international and domestic politics, even the framework of what it means to be an American, really emerged from World War II. Beyond that, it's the war that Americans generally point to to justify their global hegemony. It was the quote, unquote, good war. It was the war when the United States was almost totally on the side of unalloyed good, regardless of whatever atrocities someone like Curtis LeMay might have committed in Toky, the dropping of the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that despite those terrible crimes, all told, the United States was the one to defeat Nazi Germany. So it was probably the last time that the United States, at least in part of the conflict, was certainly on the side of unalloyed unquestionable good. And I think that really does continue to shape American self perceptions of who they are in the world, despite the many, many things that have gone wrong since 1945.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, you're a bit younger than I am. I'm Generation X, so I grew up with this stuff. It's how I started reading history books. I was given John Keegan's the Second World War and I watched movies. I think all of us have watched plenty of World War II movies. Most men our ages at some point in their life start to read lots of World War II books. I don't know if that's really a thing, but that's what I've read. But anyway, I mean, this has just been a big part of my life, so I think about it a lot. I don't know if younger generations do, but I think they should.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, I mean, it's a very important moment. I actually don't know the degree to which Gen Z and Emergence Gen Alpha pays attention to or thinks about World War II. I mean, for the millennials, of course, the big moments were the late 1990s and the early 2000s with the release of Saving Private Ryan and then Band of brothers right after 9, 11. I think a lot of millennial men in particular really started encountering and thinking about World War II, especially as the result of Saving Private Ryan. So if there hasn't been a gigantic pop cultural product, it might not be as present in people's lives like it was for people of my generation in those waning days of the mass culture.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, the relevance of the necessity of building a new order after the cataclysms of 1939 to 1945. You know, the necessity is itself evident. But of course, that was always aspirational. And the United States did a lot to undermine the liberal world order post 1945. We're going to get into that now. But first, Daniel, before the Second World War, how was US Foreign policy conducted? This was pretty informal, right?

[Daniel Besner]

Relatively informal. The State Department is much smaller. I actually just finished the piece. It's not in front of me where I had the numbers, but there's a significant almost exponential growth over the course of World War II in the late 1940s and early 1950s of the size of the State Department. The United States didn't really have a number of institutions that would do things like intelligence gathering. There is no Central Intelligence Agency. There's no really machinery within the White House like the National Security Council to organize American foreign policy. There's no permanent propaganda apparatus like the Office of War Information. Foreign policy was made in a much more ad hoc manner. Still, the president very influential in foreign policymaking, though the Senate did continue to exert influence on its structure. But the way that I think about it is that the institutions of national security and foreign policymaking just really didn't exist until the late 1940s in a modern form. The American state itself was quite immature before World War II, owing to obviously, legacies of federalism, legacies of small c. Conservatism and skepticism of American power. Of course, that state had grown significantly since 1776, particularly during moments of war. The two great moments of state building before World War II were, of course, the Civil War, where Lincoln really does centralize power in the executive to a degree that hadn't existed. The presidency is a much different institution pre Lincoln than it is post Lincoln is much more powerful. Post Lincoln, but still not overwhelmingly powerful. Congress is still quite important. And then, of course, the Great Depression, which wasn't technically a war, but was oftentimes envisioned as a war. And during that moment is when FDR really begins to create the modern machinery of state, primarily focused, though on the domestic sphere. And one thing that I've been arguing in my own work is that in the late 1940s, you have essentially the extension of the domestic New Deal about Alphabet soup institutions designed to manage the domestic economy. Those are extended to manage the international hegemony or the search for international hegemony. The United States isn't quite hegemonic yet. So World War II really does transform the structure of the American state, making it much more expensive, much more complex, and much more powerful.

[Martin DeCaro]

My structures are important. We're talking about institutions, but also ideas. Ideas changed were in flux as well. 1898 is an important hinge point as well, where the US for the first time becomes what you might call an overseas empire, not just a continental one. I'm not sure the United States could be described as isolationist before World War II, but sure, there were plenty of neutrality laws.

[Daniel Besner]

Well, isolationist only if you don't count the Western Hemisphere. Yeah, that's a pretty big space. Half the world.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes, exactly. But the US had always been a neutral power, at least when it came to Europe. World War I was a huge change.

[Daniel Besner]

Politically and militarily neutral. So I think the United States is always economically involved in Europe and is really economically involved in Europe. In the 1920s with the Dawes Plan and the Young Plan and the various attempts to try to manage these international flows of capital, with the UK and France owing the US war debt and Germany owing reparations, and the United States having to deal with that Also in the 20s, New York slowly begins to displace London as the center of the international financial economy. But when it came to. To political and military affairs, the United States did remain relatively aloof, even though not totally right. Woodrow Wilson sends troops to try to put down the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War. So, you know, there's always exceptions. And as you mentioned correctly, the war of 1898, you get the seizure of colonies in the Philippines, in Puerto Rico, Guam, though those to me are almost the exception that prove the rule. The United States really does approach international relations before World War II differently than European powers did.

[Martin DeCaro]

But after 1945, forget about neutrality. The lessons are apparent after Pearl harbor and all this. Right. However.

[Daniel Besner]

However, I think actually Wertheim is really correct on this. He shows in his book that the fall of France is really crucial.

[Martin DeCaro]

Oh, Stephen Wertheime, yes.

[Daniel Besner]

In his book Tomorrow the World, I think he really centers the importance of the fall of France even before Pearl harbor, because that begins to set the stage for. For, by the way, not only Pearl harbor, but Pearl harbor, the Philippines and elsewhere. But really sets the stage for Americans being like, oh, no, we need to really step onto the world stage immediately after the war.

[Martin DeCaro]

President Truman's initial position had been like past presidents, if you will, the United States doesn't necessarily have to stay in Europe. We know that that idea fell away and we did stay. And also that the US did not need a permanent peacetime national security state. So what happens here? Obviously, Truman and the rest, they change their minds. Any of the doubters about this?

[Daniel Besner]

They changed their minds relatively quickly. I think that there is this notion after World War II pretty much for everyone, that the United States really isn't able to return home like it had after World War I, which is. You just had Sergei Rodchenko on. I mean, that's what Stalin expected. That's what a lot of people within the European establishment expected. But very quickly, the liberal establishment, which is really governing the government at that point, which is in control of American governance since 1933 and remains so did think that the United States needed to adopt a new position in world affairs, that, that the nation was in control of progress in history and that if they didn't assume significant power in the international arena, then something like Nazi Germany could happen. They relatively quickly transfer their anxieties about the Nazis onto the Soviets through the discursive frame of totalitarianism. You know, even though the Nazis are, quote, unquote, far right and the Soviets are quote, unquote, far left. I only use the quote unquote because it's really only in the 40s, during World War II especially, that this political spectrum of right and left starts to be used in the United States. The far left, Soviets, the far right Nazis are analogous totalitarian regimes, and that you couldn't allow totalitarian regimes to dominate in international affairs. And that happens relatively quickly. I mean, by 1946, the latest.

[Martin DeCaro]

I was curious as to whether there was a debate, because prior to the First World War and during the First World War, there was a ferocious debate in this country about whether the United States should be at war in Europe. There was a real peace movement because, you know, we take it for granted today, Daniel, that we have to have all of this stuff. And even the one that was established, talking about the national security state now called the Blob, often, the one that was established in the 40s was tiny compared to the what you have today. We'll get to that. We'll. We'll go, you know, in a chronology here. So it sounds like there wasn't really that much of a debate, at least at the highest levels of government, over whether to do this.

[Daniel Besner]

No, there was very little debate. I mean, like someone like Henry Wallace, FDR's vice president replaced by Truman in 44, then the secretary of Commerce. I mean, he was articulating a different approach to world affairs. But he's out. Yes, he's out by September 1946. And so that's Usually taken as a moment when people who wanted to adopt a different non hegemonic approach to world affairs and probably more akin to what FDR wanted to adopt with his four policeman model. That was done the autumn of 46 at the latest.

[Martin DeCaro]

Man, this kicks off bureaucratic battles tussle for congressional appropriations. You start to see the origins here of what is again called the Blob today. There are many pillars to this structure.

[Daniel Besner]

Right.

[Martin DeCaro]

Congressional appropriations is a big one.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, Congressional appropriations is a very big one. And one of the things that the Cold War did, someone like Anders Stevenson argues, but I mean I think a lot of historians have actually argued this is that it allows, it provides a logic for permanent military mobilization and a permanent American presence overseas. It essentially makes any criticism of that position anathema by the early 1950s. And sort of the other moment that people, people point to is when Robert Taft loses the Republican presidential nomination, I believe in 52 to Dwight D. Eisenhower. And so that sort of small C. Conservative skepticism, Charles Beardian esque skepticism of US global hegemony goes away in the right. Anti New Deal Right. Kind of accepts American military hegemony in a way that they didn't earlier.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, and you mentioned how I had Sergey on recently. He and Vladislav's Zubak and I discuss the origins of the Cold War and US domestic politics was important. But there's also reactions to what's going on on the global stage as well. You do have the start of the Cold War over Germany in Europe. But as the 1940s and the 1950s the Soviets get the bomb and the Chinese Communists win the Civil War in 49 and 1950 the Korean War starts and then you get the McCarthy age.

[Daniel Besner]

Rodchenko was interesting because I read his book as basically saying the US started the Cold War. And then he says that no, you should blame the Cold War on Stalin because Stalin forcibly communized Eastern Europe. What Rodchenko says is that there was a legitimate need for security buffer by the Soviet Union. Obviously they were invaded twice in a generation. Then they go back to Napoleon. But then he says he should have allowed Eastern Europeans to choose their own destiny, which on one hand I agree from a humanistic perspective, but from another perspective that seems a little unrealistic, especially given that the United States has its own sphere of influence. So like in the actual world, why would you expect Stalin not to pursue his own sphere of influence? But I am firmly on the Stevensonian side that the Cold War was primarily an American project. I mean, as Rodchenko shows in his Book. Stalin was willing to deal. Stalin was realist. You know, he did not want global communist revolution. He did not expect it. He wanted to do kind of a quid pro quo with the United States. Marenko emphasizes the importance of. Of legitimacy and psychological legitimacy, which is fine. Let's. Let's just accept that as fine. But either way, Solomon was willing to make a deal. The United States was not. So given that reality that the United States basically viewed the Soviet Union as fundamentally illegitimate, that to me, seems to be the origin point of the Cold War more than the communization of Eastern Europe, because spheres of influence are a reality of international relations. And the United States expected people to, you know, respect their own sphere of influence. So, yeah, it does seem to me like it was more the United States than the Soviet Union as the cause of the Cold War.

[Martin DeCaro]

Well, yeah, you're right. Stalin did not, for instance, support the Chinese revolution. He did not support Mao's revolution. Without getting into the debate over the origins of the Cold War again, I do think Stalin does bear some responsibility. I think both sides do. Whatever the case, these events. I mentioned the bomb in 49 in the Soviet Union.

[Daniel Besner]

Well, I actually think it's actually important. I think it was more American, a lot more American. Because I think it's the American view of international relations that is also now going to affect the US Relationship with China. Right. I think it's a particular approach to the world that is really salvationist, really messianic, quite universalist, that basically expects other nations to respect the American sphere of influence. But the United States does not respect other spheres of influence as legitimate. And I think that's really a profound problem to the way the United States approaches the world. So. Yeah, but we don't have to talk about it. But that's my take.

[Martin DeCaro]

No, that's a legit point. And you can see that reflected in the early CIA as we're talking about the origins of the national security state. Early CIA covert operations of paratrooping people in behind the Iron Curtain who are.

[Daniel Besner]

Just, you know, who are immediately executed.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes. Captured.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah. Really.

[Martin DeCaro]

Because they knew they were coming. But, you know, these events, though, harden the positions in the United States for establishing a national security state. Now we're into the Cold War. The Miller center at University of Virginia stresses ideas and institutions. Just reading from a blurb they have online. During and after the war, the US grew into an international arsenal of democracy. This required tremendous institutional expansion of the executive branch, economic arrangements, including income taxes on individuals, high levels of corporate taxes, too, and ideological Commitments to internationalism and the policy of containment as famously outlined in the 1950 National Security Council report, which is gone down.

[Daniel Besner]

NSC 68.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yes, NSC 68. That is a hugely important document here. 1947, though, in the Truman Doctrine, that speech aid to Greece and Turkey. That's very important here too, isn't it, Daniel?

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah. So basically, Stalin starts supporting the Greek communist insurgency, I believe, in early 1947. In March 1947, Truman responds with his speech, becomes known as the Truman Doctrine speech. And historians generally point to that speech as, quote, unquote, globalizing the Cold War away from the European heartland. He's asking Congress to fund Greek, basically anti Communists and Turkish anti Communists. Congress does wind up doing that, and essentially this is usually pointed to as a moment when the Cold War really begins to take off, that it's institutionalized in US Foreign policy in a way that it wasn't before this March 1947 speech. Then later on in that summer is when the National Security act is passed. And so we could talk about that too, if you want to get there.

[Harry Truman]

This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples by direct or indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States. The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation in violation of the Yata agreement in Poland, Romania and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments. At the present moment in world history. Nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, that's an important piece of legislation, 1947, that establishes all these bodies that are still around today. The National Security Agency came a little bit after that.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, that was in the Korean War. Nsa. So the National Security act basically establishes a National Security Council, it establishes a Central Intelligence Agency, and it establishes the world, what will eventually become the Department of Defense. So it's a really important rejiggering of American institutions, basically, again, this sort of New Deal type approach to progressive management of governance. But instead of managing governance in the domestic sphere, it's to manage in the form of international American pursuit of hegemony. It's very liberal, really, imagining that you're able to do things like create complex bureaucratic institutions that are able to rationally manage affairs, almost. Second New Deal.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah. And I just want to raise this point from Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes, he says here the National Security act said nothing about secret operations overseas. It simply instructed the CIA to correlate, evaluate and disseminate intelligence and to perform, quote, other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security. So that was a loophole through which.

[Daniel Besner]

And then the CIA is then justified through a bunch of National Security Council resolutions. So these things work together. I used to know this, like, directly, but I might be NSC 10 2. One of these early NSC documents essentially allows the CIA to do covert psychological warfare campaigns. 81 so these institutions wind up coming together. 81 NSC 1042 is another one.

[Martin DeCaro]

Sorry to interject there, but there were 81 major covert actions during Truman's second term already. Weiner goes on to say the National Security Council in those days was the President, Secretary of Defense, secretary of State, and the military chiefs. But it rarely met. Truman was rarely there. You know, these, these institutions are getting off the ground, but inherent in their foundation or establishment are the seeds of growth. Right. They could only get bigger as you take on more and more responsibility to police the world or what have you.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, and I just know this because I was looking at the National Security act literally a day or two ago. I think the act allows for up to 200 staff on the NSC. So it's quite big. There's capacity there. And the document I was referring to earlier was NSC 10 4, which basically allows the CIA to do guerrilla activities. But yeah, I mean, states accrete power. You know, this is one of the fundamental lessons of the literature on state making or American political development, which focuses specifically on the United States States A create power. I mean, you could just see that from a macro perspective. Since 1776, has the American state grown larger or not? And so when you create new institutions, it's very difficult to get rid of them. They very quickly become normalized. I mean, think about ICE was only created in March 2003, the same month we invaded Iraq. And now it seems very like normal.

[Martin DeCaro]

Sure. And for the first time now, the US talking about 1940s, has intelligence gathering, peacetime, intelligence gathering bureaucracies. Were these effective in the early years?

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, in the sense that, for example, like the NSC documents really do create the legal basis for US Hegemony. But your point which is correct is that it's really only Eisenhower that the NSC becomes what it becomes, which is like basically a centralized policy, policymaking body that is going to eventually replace the Department of State. Today, the NSC is much More important than the Department of State in terms of foreign policy making. That wasn't true under Truman. That begins to change under Eisenhower. And what's also useful about the NSC is that it's a very plastic policymaking body. So it looks very different under, say, John Foster Dulles than it does under Kissinger or than it does under Condoleezza Rice or what have you. So I think that these are important things. Basically allow the President to centralize authority in the executive branch to the degree that today it's by far the President.

[Martin DeCaro]

Absolutely.

[Daniel Besner]

Really in the White House. That makes foreign policy.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, that is a key legacy of the creation of the national security state is the amount of power the executive branch accrues for foreign policy. Even though we go through these every generation or so. Oh, we've got to reform this. This has been a disaster. We need more accountability. We need reform. We. So you had Vietnam and the Church Committee and then after the 911 attacks, the US did torture and kidnappings are called extraordinary rendition, preemptive war. All this stuff, all the intelligence failures. Time and again we have another round of hearings and reforms or okay, it's not going to happen again. And then within a generation, here we are again. It erodes the foundations of democracy. The lack of accountability erodes the foundations of our democracy.

[Daniel Besner]

And I think that basically there was the justification of it, and this is what I wrote my first book about, is that the Soviet Union's analogous to Nazi Germany. It's a moment of emergency. We need to basically democratize the foreign policymaking apparatus. We're not quite sure if the American public is going to commit itself to fighting this global war. And beyond the national security state which you have as a creation, I think this is as important a part of the story of this para state of think tanks and academic research centers that aren't even formally part of the state like the RAND Corporation that are really function as the brains, the research arm of the national security state which have absolutely no connection to the public except insofar as they're funded or not. But they're often funded in strange ways that's not necessarily so democratic. And I think that the language of emergency is used to justify this. But what happens over time is that this begins to colonize this logic, begins to colonize other areas besides foreign policy. And you see sort of a mission creep over the American government.

[Martin DeCaro]

And not just lack of accountability, which as mentioned has happened from time to time. It's a lack of transparency, excessive secrecy. We're told our national security Our safety here as Americans, our interests as a country, they're so important, yet we're not allowed to really know much about how that whole process takes place. And the secrecy gets worse and worse and worse. And that's built in, built into this?

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, I mean by design. Yeah, I mean. Cause the worry was that the American public wasn't going to commit itself to the public project of global hegemony. I mean, particularly coming involved in the affairs of Europe, which is originally of course, where the Cold War centered upon. And I think that the United States was just not willing, really American elites were just not willing to gamble on ordinary Americans not really wanting to fight a decades long Cold War. And so they used the logic of national security and the logic of emergency to justify these profoundly illiberal measures. And I think that was very much by design.

[Martin DeCaro]

Do you agree with historian Alfred McCoy and others who've made the following argument? So the US sets up the CIA, National Security Council, et cetera, but it's also a signatory to the new UN Charter which sanctifies national borders and human rights. Universal human rights. McCoy has argued that the CIA now allows the US to interfere and meddle or even topple other countries affairs through covert operations which gives them plausible deniability. It's like an end run around the UN Charter.

[Daniel Besner]

Precisely. And the US never really cared about the UN Charter. I mean the UN very quickly becomes just a space for weaker nations of the world to complain at the great powers who ignore them.

[Martin DeCaro]

Eisenhower, he's often not considered a great or deep thinker, but his farewell address in 1960, 61, he's about to leave office and Kennedy's about to take over. I don't want to sound corny here, but his speech is really something. He talks about how what we're calling here the national security state, he called it the military industrial complex. He talked about how it has penetrated almost every level of our culture and we've got to be concerned about the dangers. But we didn't listen.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

[Daniel Besner]

Ironically, he was a guy more than anyone helped create that structure, like 20,000.

[Martin DeCaro]

Nuclear warheads or something by the time he left.

[Daniel Besner]

Thousand I believe. Yes, but special Pleading and yeah, not only that, not only does Eisenhower talk about the military industrial complex. Martin, did you read, did you read the essay for today in class? What was the other thing that he warned about? The scientific technological elite. And so what he meant by that was sort of the think tanks and the academic research centers that are also in an undemocratic space. So taken together, the military industrial complex and the scientific technological elite are essentially the structure of American national security and the American national security state. Even though he didn't really warn about executive bodies and the centralization of power in the executive. But I mean that that's who he was. So I can understand why he didn't warn about that. But yeah, he was correct. But the irony of course being that he really did create that and there.

[Martin DeCaro]

Was a Cold War to continue to contest. So maybe a point where there could have been a real re evaluation of where we're going as a nation state here with all of this was after the Cold War ended. There was really no peace dividend. But you can find quotes of George H.W. bush talking about how now it is time to reduce military spending and all. But you know, institutions like NATO did not disappear when the Warsaw Pact disappeared.

[Daniel Besner]

No, they did not.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, but communism is gone. But you know, John Dower, John W. Dower has made a great point about this. He wrote a short book called the Violent American Century. I have it over here. I'm not maybe not getting the title right. He talks about how we went from communism then to. Well, the 1990s were kind of like a decade of drift. We didn't really have a monolithic enemy at that point. Right. But then after 9, 11, it's Islamism and now today it's autocracy. Yeah.

[Daniel Besner]

And this goes back really to the American founding, a very Manichean country founded on Puritan ideology that tended to see the world as divided between those saved and those not saved. And this is a core feature of the American approach to the world that especially once you have the institutions of national security, you kind of just go a leap from enemy to enemy. I would say we had the Soviet Union then in the 1990s, we had humanitarian interventions. Then we had radical Islam after 2001, then we had the drift to great power conflict with China. Ukraine gave us Russia for a bit and now we're back to China. This is just a necessary logic of the system almost.

[Martin DeCaro]

I mean, these aren't phantoms. There was something called radical Islam. However, the point of having this massive edifice of intelligence collecting and Intelligence services to prevent such attacks.

[Daniel Besner]

I would say radical Islam, quote unquote, which I do not think is a useful term for a variety of reasons, was not an existential threat to, to the United States.

[Martin DeCaro]

I agree with that.

[Daniel Besner]

It's not like to say the least.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I said it wasn't a phantom. I agree. Does not necessitate preemptive wars, torture, all the rest. So the intelligence edifice misses the attack itself. And then the overreach in response to that is another layer of disaster upon.

[Daniel Besner]

So what happened was you got these institutions set up in the 1940s and there are still the institutions that delimit American foreign policy and they're incredibly anti democratic. Democratic. And they really do centralize power among very few people. And I think that's problematic to say the least, given what US power has actually meant for most of the world.

[Martin DeCaro]

People in other countries were aware of what the CIA was doing in those countries before this news became public. You know, declassified documents in our country. I mean, take the coup in Iran in 1953 against Mossadegh. The Iranians understood what was happening long before the American public was aware that the CIA was in the there. Just one example.

[Daniel Besner]

Oh, absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Or Guatemala. And there's a bunch more. I mean, intervening in the French and Italian elections in the late 1940s.

[Martin DeCaro]

So Trump comes along, he talks about the deep state all the time. People on the left who may have been the harshest critics of CIA excesses, excessive secrecy. Right. They took the side of, well, the deep state during the Trump years and people on the right were the ones who began to hate it.

[Daniel Besner]

Well, liberals. Right. I mean, you have to differentiate between liberals and the left here. I mean, what do you make of all that though?

[Martin DeCaro]

And Trump's so called commitment to getting rid of the day? He's not really. No, but we're in a strange place in our politics right now with this.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, he's not really going to do it. I mean, it's all just fake. Like you can't tariff goods and services and not tariff financial transactions or restrict or regulate them. Yeah. So it's like most of what Trump does is like totally fake. And the liberals just show once again they have no stuff, spine or core. And so they're just perfectly happy to align with any anti democratic force as long as it's theoretically on their side of the political aisle.

[Martin DeCaro]

And he's not really committed.

[Daniel Besner]

Classic liberals.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I know you're not a fan. Trump's not really dedicated to deconstructing the edifice of the national security state either. He wants more military spending. And I've been having this discussion offline with an old friend of mine. He used to teach me politics at Ithaca College about the influence of structures. No matter who the president is, you're influencing, influenced by these structures, ideas and institutions. So you can say as your candidate, oh, no more war. None of this, none of that. We're going to do this, we're going to do that. But then once you're in the pilot's chair, it's a different story.

[Daniel Besner]

The power can't be available to people, especially to the type of person that wants to be president of the United States. You know, Obama tries to make it like super process oriented and super legalized. Trump doesn't care about any of that. But they still, neither of them should have the authority to just basically run rampant all over the world.

[Martin DeCaro]

And the Obama drone strikes, right, assassinations in other countries at which the United States never declared war. I mean, that's where.

[Daniel Besner]

And also just the maintenance of the empire. I mean, the drone strikes are obviously the most phenomenal thing, but just the maintenance of the hundreds and hundreds of bases, the pivot to the Pacific, all that great stuff, it's just, you know, empire, the same exact thing, subject to absolutely no democratic accountability whatsoever.

[Martin DeCaro]

Sometimes I'm not sure how to wrap up a conversation as we've been discussing. Daniel, you know, you're a podcaster too, so you can relate. You know, what's the brilliant note I can wrap up on? You know, I guess for a long time I thought that this would be unsustainable, all of this. At some point the American people would say, we can't have guns and butter anymore.

[Daniel Besner]

Well, we got rid of the butter.

[Martin DeCaro]

That's right.

[Daniel Besner]

You know, like, think about all the money we spent, sent abroad. Meanwhile, people here are suffering under student debt, they're suffering under medical debt. We don't have universal health care. Americans work more than every other country. It just sucks. It basically just sucks to be an American right now. I mean, we're not getting bombed or destroyed. Obviously, it's better to be an American than to be in war torn areas of the world, obviously, but when you're comparing us to sort of our quote, unquote developed peers, it's just worse to be an American. And I don't think the national security state and US Hegemony is unrelated to that, about life here getting just decreasingly worse, living through a period of decay and dissolution. And it sucks. And I wish it were different.

[Martin DeCaro]

We know Though there is one irony about all of this. We are very safe despite all of our problems. Americans are very safe. Yet there's this always lingering, sometimes simmering or even boiling insecurity that we need all of this or something might happen. I guess that's called the ideology of primacy. We have to be everywhere.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think that is something that needs to change. You need a transformation in how Americans understand themselves and their position in the world. You know, we've become an increasingly militarist society. All these flyovers, the valorization of military. Just the language of the military has really permeated things, and I think that's all related to this moment in the 1940s. I truly do.

[Martin DeCaro]

So final thing here. You have a book coming out, don't you?

[Daniel Besner]

I do. It's called Imperialist Realism, and it does examine the notion of what it means to be an American and American's relationship to empire and the present moment.

[Martin DeCaro]

When's it coming out?

[Daniel Besner]

I think in the autumn. I think late. I think November.

[Martin DeCaro]

Wow. Maybe you should ask the person who wrote the book, Daniel.

[Daniel Besner]

I don't pay attention to those things. We're in copy editing right now.

[Martin DeCaro]

Yeah, I know. I know the publishing industry, having never read. Written a book myself. I have read books, so I have not written one. You send it off to the publisher, and then it's months before it goes.

[Daniel Besner]

Yeah, it's not my. It's not in my hands right now.

[Dwight D. Eisenhower]

A vital element in keeping the peace is our military establishment. Establishment. Our arms must be mighty ready for instant action so that no potential aggressor may be tempted to risk his own destruction. Our military organization today bears little relation to that known of any of my predecessors in peacetime or indeed by the fighting men of World War II or Korea. Until the latest of our war world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense. We have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions.

[Martin DeCaro]

And again, we thank Daniel Bessner of the American Prestige Podcast for joining us on this episode. On the next episode of History as it happens, it is the fifth and final part of this series marking the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. And my guest will be historian David M. Kennedy. We'll be talking about America's global age and whether it's coming to an end. That is is next as we Report History as it Happens. Stay up to date by signing up for my newsletter. Just go to Substack and search for History as it Happens.

[Daniel Besner]

SA.