Area studies and the national security state

Abstract

During the Cold War a deep rift emerged in the United States between the government's national security agencies and their critics. Most critics were not pro-Soviet. Nor did they deny that security, properly construed, is a legitimate national concern. Their critique was founded instead on the observation that the U.S. government, in the name of national security, systematically and often brutally opposed popular movements in the so-called Third World for social justice, democracy, and more equitable economic arrangements. The domestic corollaries of this foreign policy included McCarthyism and the pall it subsequently cast over intellectual and political life.

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Notes on contributors

James K. Boyce

I am grateful to Mark Selden for comments on an earlier version of this piece.