In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

CHAPTER 2 The Politics of Rearmament in the Executive Branch I: The Fiscal 1951 Budget It is not within the province or competence of the economist to pass judgment on the necessary level of expenditures in these fields [defense and foreign aid]. It is within his province, however, to point out the dangers to the domestic economy arising out ofcontinuing deficits and with a growing national debt in times of relatively high business activity. These are dangers to the security ofthe Nation no less real than the dangers of military aggression or international economic retardation. -Edwin Nourse I asked one of the services, the other day, what they needed for the defense ofAmerica. That service had a program, on charts and all, that would cost 30 to 50 billion dollars a year. After 30 or 40 minutes of it I said, "Now forget this presentation. This is what I want: a sufficient defense within the economy of the United States. I want something that is practical. Quit that dreaming." -Louis Johnson I was sent over by the State Department to follow the joint effort at military planning [by Britain, France, and the Low Countries].... They estimated that the cost of the military equipment necessary for a force strong enough to hold the Soviets at the Rhine was $45 billion in 1949 dollars. That was triple the cost of the entire Marshall Plan. Could the United States institute a military aid program to help? -Paul Nitze Accounts of the defense buildup that began in 1950 nearly always center around a National Security Council report best known by its file number, NSC 68. The report, which was submitted to the president by ajoint StateDefense working group on April 7, 1950, argued that the Soviet Union was engaged in an all-out effort to extend its influence and control over all regions of the world. It asserted that the means available to the Kremlin 25 26 Building the Cold War Consensus were considerable and growing constantly. Noting that "[t]hese risks crowd in on us, in a shrinking world of polarized power, so as to give us no choice, ultimately, between meeting them effectively and being overcome by them,,. the report concluded that "it is clear that a substantial and rapid military building up of strength in the free world is necessary to support a firm policy necessary to check and roll back the Kremlin's drive for world domination." I The rhetoric of NSC 68 echoes realist arguments about the pressures of the international system on a unitary state. Furthermore, NSC 68 was developed in secret at the highest levels of government and involved basic national security policy questions. Both its subject matter and its institutional setting suggest that the development and acceptance of this policy statement within the executive branch should be a very strong case for realist or statist explanations stressing unitary state action to meet the imperatives of the international system and protect core values from external threats. However, close examination of historical evidence about this process reveals that even the best of these accounts are quite problematic. The domestic political economy theory offers a better way to reconstruct the policy-making process in this case. The account of policy development in the executive branch presented in the next two chapters has two goals. The first is to demonstrate that the development and acceptance of NSC 68 is better explained in terms of domestic coalition building and maintenance than as a response to external threats to core values. Major developments in the process corresponded to changes in the demands ofcoalition building and maintenance rather than to particular external events. Decision makers disagreed about the meaning of the events usually thought to have motivated rearmament. Neither the writing of NSC 68 nor the decision to accept its call for rearmament can be convincingly linked to the external shocks usually offered to explain them. These events were important, but they did not drive the development of policy. The second goal is to show that high-ranking executive branch decision makers reflect the broader economic and political divisions in society. These societal linkages are important in determining the positions they take on foreign policy issues. The idea that these decision makers act on a set of core values or a "national" interest is deeply problematic, even on national security issues. Realist and statist historical accounts logically require linkages between the policy-making process and external events because they rule out serious conflict...

Share