E258 - How the New Deal Invented the National Security State w/ Andrew Preston

[00:00:10]Hello prestige heads and welcome to American Prestige. I'm Danny Bessner here as always with my friend and comrade Derek Davidson and we are extremely excited to welcome to the podcast today someone who I've admired for many years and that is Andrew Preston. Andrew is the WL Lions Brown Jr. for Jefferson Scholars, Foundation, Distinguished Professor of Diplomacy, and Statecraft at the University of Virginia. Uh, Andrew, I think you should ask for that title to be made a little bit longer. And he's also the author of Total Defense: The New Deal and the Invention of National Security. And in no doubt, what is the highlight of his career, the editor at Cambridge University Press, who commissioned the Cold War Liberalism edited volume. So, Andrew, thank you very much for joining us.

[00:00:56]>> Thanks for having me on, Danny. Hi Derek. It's a real pleasure to join you guys.

[00:01:02]>> Pleasure is all ours. Um let's let's just dive into the book because this is really important and I think it is it is funny not not funny haha or really funny at all. uh that we were talking um about this and and because the Cold War liberalism volume I think really does relate directly to what you're doing here which is kind trying to trace back what might be referred to as the United States's foreign policy regime or security regime to before the cold war.

[00:01:28]um that often times people have identified the United States as what used to be called rise to globalism before that term sort of took on a odor in the last 10 years because of the election of Trump and its use amongst the alt-right and far right in general.

[00:01:43]Um but basically tracing this to the New Deal period. So I think it might be worthwhile before we get into your argument about the book to sort of situate it and and what intervention it is actually making in the historical literature. How have historians understood the United States's security foreign policy regime and what is your book trying to do and I think does quite well.

[00:02:04]>> Yeah, it's a great question and um my reading my sense of the reading in the historioggraphy was that most historians of American foreign relations until very recently kind of assumed that national security as a way of identifying American self-defense and identifying threats in the world um was timeless. it went back to the founding of the nation and that um the way that Americans identify threats in the 20th century is pretty much the same as George Washington did it or Thomas Jefferson or Abraham Lincoln or whoever. There's a a a smaller group of historians who have given national security a history um and that smaller group of historians, it's a very small group um but not a tiny group. They um when they say that national security has a history, they pinpoint it to the early cold war. And that's that makes sense because that's when the National Security Act was passed. That's when Truman starts talking about national security more than any other president had uh up to that point. Um it's when you see start seeing the institutions of the national security state take real form. It's an era of paranoid hysterical anti-communism and not only abroad but also rooting out subversives at home. So there is this smaller group of historians who said national security is not timeless. It has a history of its own and then they they date it its origin point to the early cold war. And then if we think in terms of concentric circles and we go from the big circle it's timeless to the slightly smaller circle where no it has a history and that it its starting point is the early cold war. there's a smaller circle within that um that says of a group of historians that you can probably count on one hand to say uh it's not timeless.

[00:03:49]It does have its own history, but it's and but it doesn't begin in the early war. It's a product of World War II or the World War II era. And they really look at the early 1940s, maybe the late 1930s. And I agree with that. That's kind of the literature that I'm adding to the small group of historians. But the twist that I put on it and um there aren't very many people who make the argument that I do. In fact, I don't think there there's anyone who makes the argument exactly as I do. Um I say it has a lot to do with uh world affairs and the world crisis in the late 30s and early 40s. It has a lot to do with domestic politics and I build on that literature that makes that connection between domestic politics and foreign policy in a way that you have Danny um in a lot of your writing. Uh but I then make what I think is a novel argument by saying actually it's not just foreign policy. It's not just the world and it's not just domestic politics, but it's about ideology. It's about liberalism and that national security is we should see national security very much as a part of the New Deal and it's an outgrowth of New Deal liberalism, >> right? Which is very much runs parallel to my claim that cold war liberalism is very much the outgrowth of New Deal liberalism. And so that what's really I think we're both doing is basically tracing a transformation in American political thought that occurs in the wake of the multiple crises of the of the 30s, the depression, the rise of Nazism um in particular and also Soviet communism. But before we dive into that, um I mean what what's great and what you do in a lot of your work is that you you don't just start in the 30s or 40s, but you sort of place it in this deeper history in the United States. So, let's talk about why those historians who think that national security is a timeless feature of of um American thought, what what was actually the American conception of what would later be termed national security during the first century and a half of the existence of the republic?

[00:05:47]>> Yeah. So, in the very first decades of the republic, um it's the only other time in American history until the 20th century when leaders did use the phrase national security. So Washington, Jefferson, Adams, they did say uh national security. They didn't say it often, but they did say it. Um but they meant the defense of territorial sovereignty. And there's, you know, an obvious reason why they thought in those terms. It's because they were this new nation was weak. It was fragile. It was fractious. They were arguing with each other. And they had they were surrounded by enemies. Um and so self-defense meant the defense of territorial sovereignty.

[00:06:23]And then that language of national security, that phrase national security, which just meant that and then protecting the physical sovereignty of the United States, that fades after the War of 1812. And after that, the language of defense is def is is defense. It's about self-defense. And it's not used a whole lot because Americans don't have a whole lot to fear in the world. And I argue in the book that well, it's I don't come up with the term, but I think I give it a new a new development. I use a term that political scientists have used uh called free security and I argue that after the war of 1812 the United States could take its basic security for granted. It could assume that it would not be uh physically attacked, invaded, occupied, its government overthrown, its way of life changed by an external power. That just wasn't going to happen. So it could take for granted that it would be safe.

[00:07:15]It did not make the North American continent peaceful because American free security, ironically, then it removed threats from the United States. It opened up all sorts of possibilities for the United States and then it made the US in the 19th century a pretty aggressive power. I mean, if you ask, you know, if you ask did the Canadians or the Mexicans or anyone in the Caribbean or Central America have free security, the answer is obviously no.

[00:07:40]And the reason they didn't was because the US was so powerful. One of the reasons the US is so powerful is because it has no peer competitors in its neighborhoods. So I trace that idea and I link it to developments in American political economy and state building and um uh and and the fiscal military state through the 19th century into the 20th when free security begins to disappear.

[00:08:01]And there's no exact pinpoint when it disappears, but it's sometime historians agree that it's sometime in the 1940s. I would say conceptually Americans think they don't have free security until Pearl Harbor in 1941. Um, and then they really don't have free security when the Soviets test their atomic bomb in 1949.

[00:08:21]>> So, how does the Civil War play into this? And then how does the SpanishAmerican War play into this? And and how do you interpret the SpanishAmerican War? Because it's oftentimes it's been interpreted in various ways. either this is sort of the exception to the rule that the United States is not going to have a territorial empire akin to the British and the French. It's going to have a different type of empire for those who accept the imperial framing. Earlier in the 20th century, historians would argue just this shows the US isn't an empire, which I think no one essentially in our field agrees with any longer. But um how do you interpret the SpanishAmerican War? And also how does the Civil War, which I think um historians have shown really make the nation focus on on things like death, does it ironically not make the nation focus on quote unquote security? That is sort of the the completion of the project of union or how do you interpret that?

[00:09:12]>> Yeah. So the Civil War, it it it is in my book. It's not a foreign war obviously, but I it is a it is an important moment in my book. um the greatest threat to American security, the exception to free security is not from without but from within. And to me that just accentuates the really unique character that or the unique condition of free security that the US enjoyed through the 19th century. um the US then I mean the civil war is kind of the ultimate example of something that I traced in the book and that's what the secretary of war John Calhoun who was a you know had a lot of objectionable views on a lot of things but uh was secretary of war in the 1820s and described the American fiscal military state in a way that I think is extremely accurate and he said that the United States should have an expansible army and I like to think of it as a kind of accordion fiscal military state where you have a very small military and then when you need it you expand it quite rapidly and then you shrink it again right after the war. And that's what happened all through the 19th century.

[00:10:11]The US wanted to go to war. It had a very small um uh standing military. Uh but it's able to expand it almost at will in order to take on the British, the Mexicans, the South or the North from the Confederates point of view and later on uh against the Spanish in 1898.

[00:10:31]Um and there's a lot of debt financing for that. Um, but as soon as the war is over, there's this extremely rapid demobilization. I mean, it's as rapid as the mobilization. And that's why it's like an accordion. It expands, it contracts, it expands, it contracts very, very quickly. And the ultimate example of that is the Civil War. And I argue in the book that only or I point out in the book, I'm not sure it's an argument, but I point out that only a state that could feel secure in itself and in its position in the world could afford to have such a small military through the 19th century. Because if you compare I mean even if you compare it to some private European armies like the East India Company's army which was not a part of the British state for some forget just the massive British military even the East India Company had a much larger army than the US except during the civil war. So I I do and then coming out of the civil war the you know civil war >> Andrew let me just let me just come in very quickly because I do have a question. So, so is that ideological?

[00:11:28]>> Is that that there's an ideological commitment, you know, based on almost a Hamiltonian perspective on the dangers of land armies that you'll become a Sparta because I think like in a book that centers ideology, it's important to un explain the causal mechanism. So, why do you think that is? So, there's the material reality of lack of competitors, but one could imagine a world where that could just be what happens after 1945. I would argue there was also a lack of competitors, but they claimed that there isn't. So, so what allows the space for there not to be this large army?

[00:12:04]>> So, part of it is exactly that. Um, there's an aversion, smaller Republican aversion to standing armies um because it's considered a threat to democracy.

[00:12:13]There's definitely that and I think expansionism is an ideology and most of uh except in a time of war but also during a time of war like in 1846 4748 um the the the military the navy and the army are used to facilitate territorial expansion and that's not just simply filing into empty space that is an ideology in and of itself part of manifest destiny part of progress uh and that all that sort of thing. Um, in terms of in terms of the SpanishAmerican War, it's a great question. Um, what struck me in looking at the SpanishAmerican War and most American wars until World War II is that it was not justified in the name of self-defense. And so there's none of the language of national security that's become ubiquitous since World War II where the president doesn't today it's President Trump, but it could be any president and it has been any president who uses national security to justify all sorts of things including invasion but also all sorts of other things like tariffs or immigration controls. That language of self-defense of national security was not used. McKinley didn't use it to to go to war with Spain and Cuba or the Philippines. Woodro Wilson didn't use it in World War I. And I I find that I found that very interesting and that helped me track maybe with a bit more precision the character of national security through time.

[00:13:32]>> So what is the language that McKinley uses and what is the language that Woodro Wilson uses? I mean my my guess on Wilson is the language of making the world safe for democracy which is a type of capital P progressive universalistic project. My guess is McKinley is going to talk in the language of interest in empire. But tell me what do they talk about? Well, McKinley doesn't talk about empire because he doesn't want to say this is a war for empire, even though it clearly is a war for empire. He uses the language of humanitarianism. The Cubans are being suppressed. Uh they're being tortured. The Spanish are brutal.

[00:14:02]They're like the concistadors of old.

[00:14:04]There's all this language about the sort of bloodthirsty Spaniards. Um and we have to come to the rescue of of the Cubans. There's no McKinley does not talk about self-determination or independence. So Kuba Libre is the rallying cry of the Cubans of the time.

[00:14:19]McKinley does explicitly does not use that language because he doesn't believe in an independent fully independent Cuba. He believes as you said he believes in empire. Wilson uses um yeah the language of we the world needs to be made selfh safe for democracy. He uses that passive voice. Um and his the terms are very universalistic. They're not nationalistic. He doesn't invoke self-defense. He says we need to make the world a better place. Now you could make an argument. I think it's a true argument that in order you know it by by spreading democracy uh Wilson is making the world safer for the United States by spreading free trade by spreading capital by spreading a world of openness at least openness in that kind of capitalist mindset. He's making the world safe for the biggest liberal democratic capitalist power in the world and that's the United States.

[00:15:10]So there is self-interest. Wilson isn't just saying that just to be a nice guy, but that self-interest is not about protecting the USA.

[00:15:18]>> And what about the American public during this period? I mean, this is the moment, probably the last moment between the 1880s and the type of peace progressives in the 1920s where there's a broad-based anti-imperialist movement that's often times connected to labor um and other other, you know, ethnationalist groups as well. There's a deep racist undercurrent to a lot of these movements. But what is the American public broadly speaking? what should we know about how they're thinking about security in this, you know, progressive era moment?

[00:15:47]>> Yeah. So, the thing is, I think especially the more time goes on, the American public is becoming more and more averse to war. The American public was very opposed to going to war um from 1914 until 1917. And then I think if Wilson didn't want to go to war in 1917, he probably could have got away with it politically. Um but a lot Wilson and especially a lot of people around him want to go to war. The American people do not want to go to war in late 1939.

[00:16:14]And that's the big problem. We can talk about that in more detail. And that's the crux of the book is that that's FDR's key problem is that he does want to get the US more involved in the world crisis against Germany, against Japan.

[00:16:26]But public opinion is absolutely not with it. even people who you know yes you have the kind of racist anti-semitic corners in both in the eras of both world wars but actually the real problem for for FDR and for Wilson but especially for FDR is that you can't portray most of the people who don't want to go to war as anti-semites or racists or head in the sand isolationists they're internationalists they just don't want to go to war and that's that you know there's a there's a big difference there and so leaders is not so much Wilson and I think this is what FDR learns from Wilson is that FDR then um really amps up the threat in a way that is not realistic and so he uses the language of self-defense but he turns to this new phrase national security that presidents before him had never used like he's using it and hadn't used it at all at all since the late 18th very early uh 19th century. So he he conjures up threat in a way that Wilson McKinley and other presidents hadn't before him.

[00:17:28]How else is is World War I a turning point? Let's let's talk about that teens and 20s period because I think personally that is really where we see foreshadowings of what is going to be institutionalized later both in the Roosevelt administration and after. You know, you get the Espionage Act, you get the Sedition Act, you get the first first amendment cases that are ever heard by the Supreme Court in 1919 over free speech, you get the increasing centralization of power in the executive, you get the uh quieting down of of political radicalism by the government. You get the formation soon thereafter of of the modern FBI. So, it's really that that crucial moment.

[00:18:03]So, so what what happens during the Great War in the 20s and type of the leadup uh to Roosevelt and the New Deal?

[00:18:10]>> Yeah. So all that's true and I explore um I explore that in the book. I do say though that I have two chapters on the World War I era. I do characterize it as a kind of false start when we think about the trajectory of national security. So a lot of the um building blocks are put into place for the national security state um including institutionally and you you said them all in terms of legislation, in terms of executive agencies and departments, in terms of law enforcement. Um, but it doesn't stick and it doesn't stick. Even if some of those institutions like the FBI, even if they stick, even if the Espionage Act sticks, they don't cohhere into something that we'd later call the national security state because Wilson hadn't made the uh case for war based on threat and self-defense or national security. Um, and because after the war, because he hadn't done that, after the war there is no threat. So, Germany's defeated. Uh Russia's been convulsed by uh revolution and is now you know the Soviet Union but is weak and is rebuilding. Um Britain is strong but it's an ally. France is fairly strong. It's also an ally. The US absolutely doesn't feel any threat. So if you're to ask the American people, we need to have this permanent warfare state to have what George Kennan later calls all measures short of war. That's a hard case to make and and Wilson can't make it. That's why the Senate can reject the Treaty of Versailles without any consequences. So Wilson makes a lot of these gestures and puts in place, it's more than gestures. He puts in place in Congress puts in place a lot of what you just said. Um and that fiscal military state, that accordion just really stretches very far in terms of building up a massive army, but it demobilizes right away and that national security state does not crystallize. And that's one of the lessons that FDR learns from Wilson. I I want to sit on this for a moment because an argument that you'll often see made on the left is the importance of defense contracting um and in the 1920s is when you really do see to my mind the the modern military-industrial complex begin to form particularly in the aviation industry because that is just going to require an enormous amount of capital of research and development which private companies are going to have to do because the government like you said is ideologically committed to not doing it.

[00:20:27]But is the arguments is ideology really central here or what else is happening with material and international capitalism and the formation of this early military-industrial complex particularly the uh what at the time I believe is the air. How come that doesn't push in a more militarizing direction we might say? Why why is the 20s and the republican moment of the 1920s one in which there is this contraction?

[00:20:56]because that leads to counterfactual.

[00:20:57]Does that mean no Hitler, no American global domination, which we'll talk about later, but what is really going on in the 20s?

[00:21:05]>> Yeah, it's a great question. You absolutely have those developments that you're talking about, especially as you said in military and civilian aviation.

[00:21:12]Um, but for the reasons that I said, it's kind of a false start. It it doesn't it doesn't cohhere into a cohesive national security state based on a permanent sense of threat. And I think that's key. It sounds like a small distinction but I think it's an important one. So you still have the technological advances in the inter war period. Um you still have the development of aviation. You still have you don't have a very big military though. The US has a very small military even on the eve even when Asia goes to war in 1937 and Europe goes to war in 39. The US is not a major military power and it wouldn't be until rearmament is is embraced in 1940 and then it becomes this as you're foreshadowing this this you know leviathan in terms of military power from World War II um uh into the Cold War. Um the the memory of World War I was extremely unpopular in the 20s and 30s, especially as we get in the 30s.

[00:22:06]And so you have, you know, uh, not just the rise of of something like a military-industrial complex, but you have the rise of fierce resistance on both the left and the right to the military-industrial complex. So you have people warning about the merchants of death. That's the title of a 1934 book about munitions makers who kind of jinned up the case for war and kind of pushed America to war. uh in 1917 you have the NY committee um under the you know Gerald Nye who's not a progressive um uh saying essentially we went to World War I to to line the pockets of rich people in Wall Street and in American corporations. Um, and so that memory of World War I has a serious dampening effect on what would later be like a a like the kind of thing that Eisenhower talked about in ' 61, like a serious really embedded na uh military-industrial complex or what we now call the national security state.

[00:23:06]>> All right, let's let's get to the heart of the book, which is Roosevelt. And let's take a step back. Where does this guy come from? And why is it Roosevelt who introduces the concept of national security? Who is he ideologically in the literature? He's not really considered much of a thinker. I think he's often, you know, actually viewed as a classic liberal, not deep in ideology, but responding to various problem situations.

[00:23:34]But who was he and what is the New Deal?

[00:23:37]and let's really sit on how you think the New Deal sets the stage for what is coming later.

[00:23:44]>> Yeah, thanks thanks for that Danny because you set it up nicely and it is the crux of the book. So FDR is is a patrician. He's as close to uh like an official aristocrat, like a British style aristocrat as you'll find in the United States. He's essentially what if you, you know, if he was European, you'd call him Landed Gentry or idol rich or something like that. Um, he's supremely wellconed. He lives in the Hudson Valley. Um, but he has connections to Washington and New York and elsewhere.

[00:24:15]Um, he's instinctive instinctively, but not I would say not ideologically an internationalist as as in he's very wealthy. He travels the world. Um, he feels at home in the world. He feels like the United States is a very special place but a part you know very much also a part of the world. Um and he's got political ambitions. Uh he is a distant cousin of Theodore Roosevelt. So he's a navalist like Teddy Roosevelt was. He believes in American power. He'd been Woodro Wilson's assistant secretary of the Navy during World War I. Uh a position that his distant cousin Teddy Roosevelt had held during the SpanishAmerican War. And it's in that position that FDR really he's a thorn in the side. He almost gets fired. Um he's a thorn in the side of higherups and including President Wilson in advocating for preparedness well before Wilson's ready for it. So he believes in a big military. He believes in a strong military state. Then he gets polio um as an adult and he's he's paralyzed and he goes into politics and I think it's his paralysis and then the condition of the country after 1929 that stirs something within him that had always been there that is this sense of no bless or it's it's a it's a kind of progressivism. I think it's a very deeply felt progressivism um to to help people not just to stave off revolution although I think like like all capital P progressives that's a big that's something that he very much wants to stave off but he also gen genuinely wants to help people and help the country and by the time he becomes president and he wins the 32 election and becomes president in 33 um I think he's he's worried about the collapse of American democracy. He's worried about the collapse of American capitalism and he wants to save American society. And his solution to do so is this series of programs or this one overall program with many many many different aspects to it that he calls the New Deal.

[00:26:18]Can Andrew maybe can you talk a little bit more about that in in terms of the outgrowth of this concept of national security as we think of it as a military thing from the fundamental kind of New Deal conception of security which includes a lot of other things economic security for you know it's sort of inherent to the the ideology underpinning the New Deal but it means so much more in that context than we've come to you know sort allow it to mean since then.

[00:26:49]>> Yeah, that's exactly right. When FDR becomes president in 33 at the very very in the very depths of of the depression, he constantly talks about security. It's my duty to provide security for the American people and he uses that word security. Historians um of the New Deal have pointed this out before I did. I there's this massive and very rich literature on the New Deal. um Jennifer Klene and David Kennedy. Um historians have have pointed out that he used the word security and the ideas of security more than he did words like liberty or democracy or capitalism. Um so he believed in security. That was the government's obligation. That's a that's that's new in American political culture. That's a new social contract that FDR is coming up with. And he's changing the character of liberalism when he does that. Liberalism in the 19th century had meant individualism. I mean, liberalism always means at its heart the protection of the individual.

[00:27:47]And in the 19th century, the state was considered the greatest threat to individual liberty. So therefore, liberalism is anti-statist. And FDR then turns that on its head and he says actually the greatest threat to um to liberty to individual liberty is uh economics and especially private corporations and private capital. So the only entity that can protect individual liberty or safeguard individual liberty under those new conditions um because of the American industrial boom in the previous 40 years. It's just it's only the government that has the strength to stand up for individuals. That's the new social contract. So he says we will protect your security. We will enhance your security. We will provide you with security security.

[00:28:32]And that's in the first administration.

[00:28:34]Then by the time we get to and he he he and Congress institute all sorts of things um that that facilitate this goal, most notably the Social Security Act in 1935.

[00:28:47]Then by the time he's reelected in 36, the depression, it's not over. It's definitely not over and there would be a serious downturn in 37, but the worst seems to be over. It seems like America's found its footing again and things are on the right track, at least economically. But at the same time, right at that moment, the world crisis starts to escalate. And FDR then the argument I make in the book is that he takes this language of security and he takes it from you know new deal government intervention and this new social contract of this new definition of liberalism. He takes it from the domestic realm and applies it to foreign policy and he says we will provide you with security against remote and distant threats. I have been doing that to to provide you with security against unemployment and old age.

[00:29:37]Now I'm gonna apply it to Germany and Japan. And >> wait, Andrew, can I just jump in very quickly because I I think we might I don't think there's an American liberalism really until the 30s.

[00:29:49]>> Uh I think that whatever you could point to in the United States is protool liberal. I I really do agree with Bruce Klick here that the United States really has a different matrix than Europe u where liberalism is a more enacted ideology connected to given political parties like the liberal party in the UK and and various German parties in VHimar. Um, I think FDR is creating an American liberalism and and Kevin Schultz, I'm sure you saw the book, FDR uses the term really for the first time in the 30s, 32 during the campaign because he didn't want to use socialist because there was still Wilson sent troops to the Soviet Union. There was the first Red Scare, >> very anti-communist, anti-immigrant sentiment throughout the 1920s. So, I would even go further. I would say that liberalism in the American context, not in the global one, but in the American context, liberalism and security are forged at the beginning here. And that that this is why one thing that's coming apart today is that this sort of ideological structure that FDR created in the 30s no longer has leg hegemonic legitimacy in the Grocian sense. So, could we talk a little bit about like what is he doing to liberalism and where do you see liberalism coming from?

[00:31:08]Because to me, this is like an outgrowth to borrow Gary Gersel, left-wing progressivism that is now reformed in the 30s and which will be known by us in our lifetimes as American liberalism, but which there's no there's no real American liberal in 1910. Lincoln is not a liberal. that doesn't make sense in in 1860s America, even though if he shares certain things with Gladstone. Um, I think you know what I'm saying, but I'd love to get your take on this as a history of liberalism. Yeah.

[00:31:36]>> Yeah. No, that's a great point, Danny.

[00:31:37]And you're right that that's a that's a really good intervention. Um, it doesn't change the argument that I make in the book, and I think that's you would you would also >> not at all. You would agree with that.

[00:31:45]Yeah. And so so that the kind of genealogy of liberalism that I trace in the book is not or I don't really trace the genealogy of liberalism in the book.

[00:31:53]That's not the point of the book. Um it is about this new social contract which I think is a new social contract in the American context that FDR um uh >> and that social contract is identical with liberalism. I think that's liberalism is that social contract in the America. It's not really about individualism. It's about this social contract >> that is now coming apart. Sorry.

[00:32:14]>> I think individual liberty might be different than individualism. I do think that FDR has at heart the the freedom of the individual, the liberty of the individual, and it's not necessarily like a kind of individualism that you might associate with the Republican presidents of the 1920s or Reagan and so on and so forth. The the other thing I would add to that is that what FDR does is he he extends that in a way that Wilson tried and couldn't as you were saying as I was saying um to to foreign and military affairs and he really makes it stick and and that that notion of liberalism that's based on security um that government provides for the people then has this kind of I call it a diad which is not a very good term but I couldn't think of something else but it's that very tight relationship between domestic security that's socioeconomic and and military security that's exterior external or about foreign policy and in the book I end up arguing that not only is but social security and thinking about social security and domestic security that's this point from which he starts and national security and so national security isn't just the other side of the coin of social security thinking about national security actually has its origins in social security >> I have a question a counterfactual why Doesn't he create the NYSE, CIA, DoD in the late 1930s? Why is that a product of the late 1940s? Cuz he creates the welfare state in the first term. Why not create the warfare state? Why leave that to Truman afterward? It's a counterfactual, but it's something that I', as I learn more about the period, I'm like, why didn't he do that? Because I I think you probably agree with me. I refer to it in the Cold War liberalism book, the Second New Deal. Obviously, there's a phrase for it in in the literature, and New Deal historians don't like this. But the second New Deal is the warfare state in the late 1940s, and that's really the end of the New Deal, which is over by McCarthyism. But why doesn't he do the institutional thing in the late 30s in your opinion?

[00:34:09]>> Well, he does do some of it. He doesn't do what Truman does uh in 1947 onwards.

[00:34:14]If you go from 47 in the National Security Act to 52 in the National Security Agency, there's a lot of institution building there. and a lot of the things that you just mentioned. But from 1940,441 into 42 and I I list them in the book. I have another kind of alphabet agencies of World War II um uh security state app, you know, part of the security state apparatus. Um that FDR puts in place in order to to to to wage World War II. It's not as all-encompassing as what comes in the Cold War that Truman does. Um and I think there's >> but it's the war. But it's the war. So that's what um so then then is there like there's still an inability to do it in peace time. Is that the big difference here that he needs the emergency of war even though before the United States formerly enters it the war has broken out there's Lenley etc. >> Yeah. Yeah. No that's a great point. I think that I mean as a distinction between Roosevelt and Truman. Yeah. I think that's a really good point. I think that's excellent. I do say um that things like um Japanese internment uh which have an institutional apparatus are also liberal projects. Right. if you're going to have this kind of serious repressive state and to do something like that, we're going to do so in order to set up schools in these interament camps and to teach people to read and write. And it's given this kind of New Deal flavor and it's given the acronym as well. So there is this, you know, across all sorts of aspects of the warfare state in World War II. Um, but the warfare state that FDR sets up, I think he's not setting it up with a permanent like what they do in 1947, what Truman does, it's it's supposed to be permanent. it's there without a kind of expiry date. Whereas much of what FDR does is including in in the realm of national security is as a wartime emergency. And I don't think he sees it as outlasting the war.

[00:35:58]>> So Andrew, before we move on to World War II, I do want to ask a question which to me embodies the fundamental tension of the Roosevelt administration.

[00:36:06]is that the man who did the most to institutionalize liberalism is also perhaps the president who set the stage for the liberalism that I would argue defined much of postworld war II American history. So in addition to the WPA, the CCC and the various social democratic elements of the Roosevelt administration, he also tries to pass the National Recovery Recovery Administration in clear violation of the Constitution. Uh probably the biggest example is the 3,700 executive orders which are more than any other president before or since. you had the Supreme Court packing scheme of the of the later 1930s, but he is genuinely, you know, someone who institutionalized liberalism. So, does this just mean that liberalism and illiberalism always went together in the American context and there's a dialectical relationship there? I'm just curious how you think about this problem, this tension really, which to me is the defining ideological and institutional tension of the FDR administration. What do you think of it?

[00:37:02]Yeah, it's it's a really tough knot to untie and a lot of historians better than I have tried to untie it. Um, I think you kind of hinted at the answer there. I think that if you're going to base your politics and especially this new social contract on the government's obligation to the people and that our obligation is not to provide liberty, but it's to and not necessarily to provide justice, although I, you know, I think the FDR would say he tried to do both, but it's to provide security.

[00:37:29]then um the temptation then to to use all the means at your disposal is going to be enormous. That doesn't mean the liberals alone are going to be illiberal. Lots of people in uh American society and other societies, liberal societies uh have been illiberal, but I think just the means of being of just being able to do so are there. And there's a really really rich literature now Anthony Gregory, Beverly Gage and other people who have looked at at how the New Deal was also uh not just a war on poverty but also a war on crime.

[00:38:01]There's a really good literature on Linda Johnson and the Great Society looking at basically the exact same thing. Um so there is a there is a tendency there. I don't think it's inevitable but there is a tendency. So, was there a world where security doesn't become the defining logic? Or I mean, this is the other counterfactual question, or or is that what you needed in the United States? Is there a world where it could have just been a more humanistic we're all here to help each other out, which the New Deal did have elements of that? I mean, that's one of the great things that the New Deal does do, but I do think it creates this security regime. I think your book is persuasive on that. So, is there a counterfactual world?

[00:38:35]>> Yeah, it's a great question. Does that person who runs in 32 on some on on a kind of New Deal vision that is not based on security, does does that person win the White House? Probably given the conditions. Um, but that that's kind of the promise that FDR was making and that's what appealed so much to the American people. I think it's not really the alternative isn't really, you know, further to the left. The alternative would have been what we had in the 20s and what Herbert Hoover was offering in 1932. Hoover is I don't think it's a coincidence that he is a fierce critic of the New Deal and he's also a fierce critic of intervention later on. And so he's very anti-statist. He wants the I mean he's not as anti-statist as a lot of other people were. So the alternative I think is what Americans had been living with in the 1920s. And I think I think the counterfactual then is if there hadn't been a depression would something like that kind of security mentality have emerged? And I would say probably not.

[00:39:30]So how do Americans redefine their understanding of what national security is away from the physical protection of the republic to something else? uh Wor time wrote about this especially in his book Tomorrow the World and he links it to a CFR planners who then come to shape the state department and it numerous different issues essentially related to ideological ones about moving history in a particular progressive and liberal direction and also maintaining the material capacity to challenge Nazi Germany are if I recall correctly the two major explanations that he gives.

[00:40:03]But how does this happen in the 1930s?

[00:40:06]How do we go from physical security to something much much broader that is going to then shape the World War II and postcold war worlds?

[00:40:14]>> Yeah. FDR is saying that American self-defense is is not just about making sure that nobody storms the beaches of California or New York or Florida, but it's about protecting against remote and distant threats. Later, what we call the domino theory. It's also about protecting an American way of life. um because if that way of life is threatened elsewhere then it's going to eventually inevitably harm the United States. He warns in 1940 that uh he tells he kind of scolds Americans and tells them uh we can't remain a lone island of democracy in a world ruled by force which is revolutionary because if you think about it Americans up to that point had reveled in being the lone island of democracy that's the whole city on a hill >> right the city on a hill the Monroe doctrine I mean that that doctrine of separation was it made Americans feel safe now he's saying actually separation is not safety separation is uh is um is fundamentally it's danger dangerous. And the argument I make in the book is it's ideological. Um it's it's about foreign policy, but it really is also about domestic politics. And I hinted at it before. FDR's problem is that he said that Germany and Japan are not just terrible, but they're dangerous. And then he had people like Herbert Hoover running around the country saying, "Yes, Nazi Germany is a terrible. They're they're awful." And this is why Hoover is so important. More important, I think, than Lindberg or Nye or some of the others who you could say are anti-semites. There's no way you can say that Herbert Hoover was an anti-semite.

[00:41:39]And he's running around the country saying, "Yeah, I don't like Nazi Germany. I don't like Imperial Japan, but they're not going to hurt us.

[00:41:44]They're not going to harm us." And what the president, what Roosevelt is asking us to do is to commit to intervention that is against the spirit of American democracy. We tried that in World War I and it was a mistake. Almost all American, well, not almost all, but a lot of Americans agreed with Hoover, definitely majority. Let's not get involved in that kind of overseas crusade again. That's their fight, not ours. And whenever FDR would say, "Well, we need to save the American way of life." And by intervening, Hoover would say, "No, the the only thing we're going to do by intervening is endangering the American way of life because we will centralize power uh war powers in the executive to an extent that we just won't be able uh to undo." Um, and so what that does is it forces and Hoover wasn't a I use Hoover a lot in the book because he's a good sort of catch-all for a large group of people. What that forces FDR to do is what John, my uh former colleague at when I used to teach at Cambridge University, John Thompson, who wrote a fantastic book called the sense of power on a lot of these issues.

[00:42:45]And so what John Thompson said, uh FDR had to exaggerate American vulnerability.

[00:42:50]And in order to convince Americans, they had to get involved in in the war. And it's that process of exaggerating vulnerability I argue that creates the idea of national security that is about protecting not just physical territorial sovereignty but against all sorts of threats all around the world >> which I mean to my mind I'm I'm a fan of FDR in general but that betrays the classic liberal fear of mass politics.

[00:43:16]Absolutely >> right. That that is not a attempt at rational persuasion.

[00:43:20]It's lying essentially and even though if one might agree as I do that you needed to defeat Nazi Germany certainly um it is it is something that is embedded in sort of this liberal hegemony that becomes dominant from the 30s forward. Um >> but here's the thing I just there here's the thing I don't think he was lying and this is this it depends on how you define lying but I think he I think he meant it. I think he was sincere and I think he thought it was real. And there's a there's a, you know, a big part of me that agrees with him that yes, these are new these are new dangers in a new type of world that have to be thought of in a new way. I'm not sure national security was the answer, but then again, it was a pretty difficult situation where you're making stuff up on the fly. And if that's what he makes up, it makes sense in the context of of the late 30s, early 40s. it does lead to a number of abuses during the war and then of course it creates this national security state afterwards that that has that that sort of you know has so many abuses um and gets America involved in lots of wars it doesn't need to do but I think FDR I don't think it's a matter of lying I think he thought he was being honest honestly >> I think I think he blur I I agree I think I think most people who say things believe what they're saying I I I don't I don't agree with historians who who argue that it's sort of a smoke screen um I think it's it's a blurring of capacities and intentions. Uh, and I think that becomes one of the major features of American foreign policy discourse. And you see it even with with the way people talk about Iran. Iran could get a thousand drones in the next month and thereby threaten the United States. It could do X or Y. And so what it winds up doing is it's creating a culture of international relations thinking that essentially, if you follow it to its logical conclusion, says the only way the United States could be safe is if it engages in world domination.

[00:45:04]And so maybe you could um it was more genuine visav Nazi Germany. Although from a particular perspective, I don't think Hitler was going to ever invade the Western Hemisphere. I think Hitler, much like Stalin after the war, thought that the United States would give him Europe uh and they would have their hemisphere, which is what they've always done. So I I I am sympathetic to FDR. I do think you need to defeat Nazi Germany. I just wish it wasn't through this argumentative strategy because I think it had such pernitious effects. In retrospect, he couldn't have known that.

[00:45:38]Um, but I think it's one of the the the major reasons that the American foreign policy thinking has been so frankly foolish for for so very long.

[00:45:48]Um, and it and it really does start here. Um, but I mean a historical actor, you know, can never know how they're going to be thinking. And I mean I agree with Andrew Stevenson. He did view the Nazis as a gangster state that you couldn't deal with. He uses that all the time and he's not wrong about that. Um, so yeah, I mean it's just the complexities here.

[00:46:06]>> Yeah, agreed. I mean, I I don't think I could add anything to that.

[00:46:10]>> So, let's talk about World War.

[00:46:11]>> Yeah. So, let's talk about World War II.

[00:46:14]Um, and and how the war itself is really what institutionalizes this. And then it to me it also raises the question is you're right. I agree. He didn't think the OSS and OWI were necessarily going to be permanent features, that the joint chiefs were going to be permanent features. But what did he think he was doing? I mean, this is the question, the big counterfactual of basically the last hundred years is I think if FDR lives, I don't think there's a cold war. You know, I'm I'm I'm extreme on that position. And I think him and Stalin reach an agreement that actually mirrors what did happen without the ideological sort of like intensity of the Truman administration who did let Stalin quote unquote own Eastern Europe. Eisenhower did by 53 I think once he decides not to aid the rebels. So I think he would have had the exact same thing. It's just with way less US Soviet tension. Um but that's kind of an orthogonal argument.

[00:47:02]But but h how is the war crucial and what does FDR think he's doing?

[00:47:07]Well, just to start with that last point that you made and then work backwards. I think you're absolutely right. I think if FDR lives, you have you have a lot of geopolitical rivalry. You have some tensions. You have some cooperation. You have basically how international politics almost always functions, but you don't have this kind of declaration.

[00:47:24]Here's where again, you mentioned Stephenson. I'm going to mention Stephenson here where I think he's right. And uh Frederick Logaval and Campbell Craig make this argument in their book that America basically kind of declares cold war. had enough of the of this kind of really frustrating, irritating jockeying for power and feeling each other out in 1946 47 and then they kind of imposed this existential zero sum game winner take all struggle for the world. But the Soviet Union wasn't struggling for the for the soul of the world. They were struggling at least in the late 40s to control Eastern Europe because it's that's been the corridor for invading the Soviet Union. But the United States had this global mentality. And Andrew, I would lead this I would link this very quickly to your earlier work. I think there's a Protestant millinarianism here. And I think it is a uniquely Protestant thing that happens in the 1940s that they read onto the Soviet Union and they're right on to China in the last 10 years. Sorry to interrupt.

[00:48:19]>> No, no, no. That's a great intervention.

[00:48:21]And I think you're absolutely right. And I think there's a Protestant mentality that goes back to the Reformation that if and this is I make this gesture in the in in the book in total defense, a reformation idea that if Protestantism is under threat somewhere, it's under threat everywhere. And this is the mentality that becomes sort of doctrine uh through World War II, but especially in the Cold War and the Truman administration adopted wholesale.

[00:48:50]So let's talk this >> podcast remains a proatholic.

[00:48:53]>> Oh yeah, we are definitely ca pro Catholic here. It's I always call it a Jewish interest podcast. Um uh but so what happens during the war and what does FDR think he's doing during the war and then let's talk a little bit about the Cold War. But the World War II is so crucial to the basically institutionalization of as a as a political moment here.

[00:49:15]>> Yeah. Really interestingly. So FDR uses he turns to national security, the language of national security after 1937 and he uses it constantly uh up until Pearl Harbor and after Pearl Harbor it drops off. He barely uses that phrase again because the US is at war. This kind of for me sealed the deal that it had as much to do with domestic politics as more to do with domestic politics than than the actual world situation.

[00:49:41]And during the war he fights the war. He sets up this huge warfare state in order to win the war. As we've said before, I think we both agree that it he intended it to be temporary um and not to be everlasting. He thought that that peace would uh after the war would only be be sustainable if the US and the USSR could get along. Maybe not be allies, but could get along. Although in sometimes he did think there might be convergence of interests between the Soviet Union and the United States. And so that's what he's thinking. He's just thinking of winning the war. He's not thinking of setting up this. I mean, there are people, as Steven Worerheim quite persuasively demonstrates, there are people in in his administration who are thinking permanent military dominance, but not necessarily to kind of, you know, intervene in wars all over the world. It's to have this it's to stop that accordion state. Um, and I wish I'd thought of it like that uh and in relation to Steven's book when I was writing the book because I'd make it more explicit, but that kind of Calhoun's idea of an expansible army now is a permanent army. But that doesn't come till the Cold War. That's a that's a that's not a really a World War II thing for FDR and a lot of people around him.

[00:50:49]>> How are is the American public convinced during and after the war? And then we'll conclude with what happens during the Cold War.

[00:50:58]>> Yeah, they're convinced during the war because the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor and they they want to win the war. But what I found really interesting is that all through the war um just like Steve Casey wrote a terrific book about this during the Korean War and he he wrote a terrific book about this for World War II as well where actually even after Pearl Harbor a lot of Americans aren't convinced that this is really a fight for them. Yes, they want to defeat Japan. No question about it. They want to have revenge for Pearl Harbor and that kind of thing. but to sort of wage this global war for democracy to sort of, you know, implement the Atlantic Charter and fulfill the four freedoms and so on and so forth. A lot of Americans aren't really on board with that and they're carried along with it because it's part of the war effort and that's what they're going to do.

[00:51:44]Um, and really the goal is to win the war. It's not necessarily to have this global project. And what what I found really interesting is that um even before the end of the war, the war department is already planning for demobilization. So that expansible army, that accordion um fiscal military state was going to kick into action again. There was going to be this and there was this drastic demobilization after World War II. The War Department starts planning for it as early as 43, which is a remarkable thing when you think about it. They're planning on demobilization after winning the war, two years before the war. is over and there is this overwhelming popular desire to bring the troops back home, reduce the size of the military.

[00:52:27]So, the public isn't on board. And I make the argument in in total defense that the the whole project of national security is an elite project. I know that there some people argue that it's bottom up and there's a lot of popular culture around this, but I think that's later on in the Cold War. I think that's created by elite efforts, and I don't just mean government officials. In the book, I uh pay a lot of attention to Hollywood filmmakers, especially Frank Capra, who was kind of a a you know, an instrument used by FDR and Stimson and George Marshall and later Harry Truman in order to get support for this national security idea. So, um I don't think the people are on board. I think they have to be brought on board. when they are brought on board because they think that their lives are on a daily basis their lives are a risk then it's kind of hard to switch that off but I don't think that comes until the 1950s. Um, so Andrew, moving past World War II into the Cold War, can you talk a little bit about how this notion of national security as nebulous as as it is uh comes to be institutionalized to define basically US interests as global and global domination is the only way to to really protect the American people.

[00:53:45]Yeah, it's kind of the culmination of of what we've been talking about in terms of what builds through the war and into the early Cold War. And when you have this this process of demobilization in 45 and into 46 by huge popular and and congressional demand as well because Congress is responding, I think to a lot of pressure they're feeling from their voters. Um Truman and Marshall especially are really really freaked out. They're really worried and they think this is a catastrophic mistake that the American public and Congress are making by asking, you know, for their for their husbands and brothers and uncles and to come home and to demobilize the military because most Americans don't want that. And so they start trying to make a public relations case kind of like what FDR did in the late 30s for this permanent well for what we would later call the national security state for some kind of permanent readiness.

[00:54:48]Um, and then the Soviets come along as a kind of handy villain uh that that can be used as a foil in order to or make the case for a much larger um and permanent military posture. And they do that through a sense of threat. And they do that by taking that language of national security that FDR used from 37 to 41. It didn't disappear after 41, but it kind of falls away. And then it just is turbocharged in 1946 4748 and it's very very effective and you know talk about the national interest sort of dies away and other ways of expressing American foreign policy or foreign interests or global interests or whatever you want to call it. they become very much um second place to national security because when you convince people that their basic security is at risk and if they don't act otherwise that they're going to be in danger then people are willing to go along with it an awful lot of stuff.

[00:55:51]This kind of gets back to what Danny and I were talking about with the illiberalism of liberalism. Um and I argue in the book that that that um FDR and then later Truman practice a kind of liberalism of fear that the whole notion of of of the liberal project and that social contract is based on a sense of fear and only we can protect you from these uh from these dangers.

[00:56:15]So, one thing I want to underline and maybe just ask you to comment on it a bit more explicitly is that I agree I I not I don't think anti-communism wasn't there and I don't think that Stalin Stalin made moves that for people who lived through the trauma of the 30s and 40s one could reasonably have read as aggressive but I think you and I agree that is not the major thing that is necessarily happening here even though it is important and then the real question is no Soviet no American empire. That's that's a that's a real one because it's difficult to imagine that. But I'm curious how I get your talk a bit more explicitly about the role of anti-communism here.

[00:56:54]>> Yeah. And it's you're you're right. I I certainly don't want sometimes when I make this argument people think that because I'm making it seem as you were, you know, as we talked about earlier that FDR is being dishonest that therefore it's somehow meaning that Nazi Germany wasn't a threat or it's somehow letting off the Germans. And I don't want to do that. And nor do I want to sort of portray that Stalin is peaceloving and he's completely, you know, um all all he wants is peace and harmony and prosperity and he's, you know, there's a lot of blood on Stalin's hands. We know that and there's a lot of blood on his hands after 1945. So it doesn't necessarily making this argument about Truman does not make Stalin necessarily a good actor. But what I am convinced of is that Stalin did not have ambitions of global domination or glo global hijgemony. His security interests were initially Eastern Europe and by controlling Eastern Europe it would then that would protect the Soviet Union. But the Truman administration has these global interests. Now in terms of anti-communism it's a you know once you have that narrative that that um the communists and Soviets are have are are bent on conquest and they're expansionist and the only thing that's going to stop them is force which is essentially the the you know the argument about containment. they have to meet them with counterforce at every moment with or where they're going to expand. Um, and because communism fits, it fits so perfectly into this idea, this doctrine of national security that we have to, that self-defense means protecting not just against physical threats, but protecting a way of life.

[00:58:23]And where communism is really good at spreading its ideas and at planting agents and and you know, maybe those agents were real because there were there were in the early cold war or rather there were in World War II, not so much in the early Cold War. There were actual communist agents, nowhere near as many as people said there were, but there's enough truth there to make people actually fear. And then communism and and whatever we want to call it, Americanism, American capitalism, liberal democratic capitalism, they're they're antithesis on almost everything.

[00:58:53]When you think about religion, individual rights, the economy, um, uh, polity, like how to organize a government, it they're they're exact 180 opposites on every single thing. You add all those together and then you have a, as you were saying, Danny, a plausible sense of threat from an actor like Stalin and you read his actions not through what what the Soviet Union wants in that moment, but you read his actions through the lessons of the late 1930s and appeasement and that sort of thing, then it's a perfect matrix for taking this FDR's idea of national security and, as I said, turbocharging it and applying it to the Soviet Union >> and then institutionalizing it in institution. That's the moment. Exactly.

[00:59:36]You institutionalize it. That's the moment. Boom. You've got it. Once it's turned on, towards the end of the book, I compare it, you know, to the theory of the ever expanding universe that once it's turned on, my god, it's really, really hard to turn off.

[00:59:51]>> So, um, Andrew, that's where your book ends, but I I want to talk a little bit about, um, the post 47, late 40s, early 50s history, um, before we go. So, I don't know if you saw, but David Bell wrote a very critical semi-review of um the Cold War liberalism book, which >> yeah on on his Substack. But anyway, the main the main criticism was that I was attributing too much causal weight to the Cold War liberals or I would call the New Deal Kum Cold War liberals. Um I am of the mind that the American Empire really is in its foundations a liberal empire. um and is distinguished in various ways, you know, the introduction from previous British and French liberal empires, but is genuinely a liberal empire. Um, and I'm I'm just curious of your thoughts about do you agree with that supposition? Um, it's kind of my I it's kind of where your book leads from my reading, but I'm obviously biased in that. Um, and and what role does liberalism in this late 40s moment have to play in what the American Empire becomes? And how do you read the history of the American Empire in Korea, Vietnam, Central America, Afghanistan, Iraq, etc., etc.?

[01:01:05]>> Yeah. No, I I I see my book as a kind of um prehistory or prequel to cold war liberalism, uh like to your work. Um and I think there is a continuum there.

[01:01:16]There's some change, but there's also a lot of uh continuity. One of the puzzles that motivated me um right from the very beginning of doing this book is trying to tease out the relationship between political economy and domestic politics and then foreign policy. And one of the sort of puzzles that I could never quite solve until I wrote this book, and maybe I haven't solved it, but I think I've I've certainly provided an answer, is why were the um war presidents of the 20th century also all uh liberal Democrats, progressive Democrats who tried to put in place a big domestic reform program. They had Wilson in World War I, FDR in World War II, Truman and Korea, Johnson in Vietnam. And then a lot of their adversaries through that period uh are people like Herbert Hoover or Dwight Eisenhower who are you know not sympathetic to the New Deal and to the big domestic state and they're not sympathetic to foreign intervention. And that was a really uncomfortable question because it called into question a lot of my own polit you know much of my own political outlook. Um and so I think there is a link there. I think there is a really strong link that we've talked about throughout this podcast um on both sides of that diad within liberalism in terms of domestic security and foreign security or military security. Um and I think that relationship is is it is it inherent to liberalism? I think you could make a very strong argument to that. I think I probably would. um what for me the puzzle that I wasn't really able to completely solve in the book but the book really doesn't cover that period the book mostly finishes in 1947 and I have an epilogue after 19 47 is what happens after the 60s because Vietnam really cracks that relationship between it doesn't break it because Clinton comes back and really revives that relationship between war and liberalism you could say that Obama did as well too and Obama wages one of the most disastrous wars in American history and the intervention in Libya in 2011 that has caused all sorts of all sorts of problems. Although I'm not I don't see that as an ideological liberals war, but like Vietnam for instance. Um I think that might be volume two total defense is figuring out what what happens after uh after Vietnam, after civil rights, after the Reagan revolution and neoliberalism, all that sort of thing.

[01:03:40]>> Yeah. To my mind, it's what happens is a shift. You you could get the guns without the butter, as I put it in the Cold War liberalism thing.

[01:03:47]basically sure um gets rid of the sort of social democratic skin that the military national security state has and but there's way more work to be done on that and maybe just as a final question obviously I mean to my mind I'm writing a piece on this now we're the the the unipolar moment is over we're entering a genuine multipolarity at the end of the American century I think American hegemony will be dominant in the western hemisphere in the Middle East and elsewhere it will be kind of returning to the system I argue at least that Roosevelt envisioned with his four policemen model of international relations people know um in at Tran Roosevelt proposed to Stalin two bodies the United Nations but she was like yeah they'll talk about things and then we'll have the real body the four policemen and they'll be the one runs genuinely governing international relations and I think we're returning to that world so in a in in a non in a world where the United States is relatively and absolutely weaker than it has been since 1945.

[01:04:48]Where do you see national security going? Is this a moment of transition or is this sort of a discourse that's going to just continue unabated? What are your thoughts on that and then we'll end?

[01:04:58]>> I thought it was a moment. I thought we were living in a moment of transition.

[01:05:02]And I thought so because of a lot of what Donald Trump had done in his first administration, but especially a lot of what people around him, like it was clear that his second presidency was going to be much more mega focused than there were going to be people around him. And people like JD Vance were calling into question the very fundamental tenants of national security. Um, and Trump was saying the same kind of thing. You know, why are we getting involved in and he would use Syria and then say, you know, it's 6,000 miles away. Why do we have to get involved in Ukraine? It's 7,000 miles away. And JD Vance time and time and time again returned to this theme. He talked about, you know, where where what place matters to me? Ohio matters to me.

[01:05:40]Kentucky matters to me. Those places matter. Um, uh, uh, Dantis, Ronda Santis said the same thing. He would, uh, he has this line that I quote in the book where, uh, he says something like, I'm not sure George W. Bush actually did say this, but he says he listened to a speech and George W. Bush said the survival of American freedom depends on the survival of Djibouti and Ron Desantis said to himself what do I care about Djibouti? Like really is that the connection? So there was there and there you know we could go on and on and mention all sorts of people who are pushing against this very expansive notion of national security that got that got America involved in the forever wars.

[01:06:17]And then you know the real world intervenes and you have for better or worse Donald Trump using national security to justify pretty much anything including tariffs against allies. He's not the first president to do that by the way. George W. Bush slap tariffs on Canadian steel in the name of using national security because that's what the law says. The president can do this if he can find a national security reason for it. So Trump has been doing that and then now we have a kind of quintessential national security war.

[01:06:45]Um, so I I think maybe I thought that we were in a moment of transition. I think it might be just too powerful, just too inexraable to to really undo without something really cataclysmic happening.

[01:07:01]And as much as I would love to see a complete reform of the idea of national security, I'm not sure I want to live through the cataclysm that I think it would take to make that happen.

[01:07:10]>> My guess is it's going to be operative in the reduced American sphere of influence. that and when it comes to the western hemisphere Maduro when it comes to the North Atlantic world Europe when it comes to the Middle East Iran even though Iran is technically Southeast Asia and the imagination it's the Middle East southwest Asia not Southeast Asia sorry everyone I think it's going to be operative there and I think you're going to see different discourses in East Asia in particular South Asia uh and other areas of the world um Eastern Europe as well that's my prediction we will see Preston thank you so much everyone check out Total Defense it is an excellent excellent book and as always I can't Can't wait to see what you write next.

[01:07:47]>> Thanks, Danny. Thanks, Derek.