ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY

Wide-ranging examination of the nexus between domestic politics and foreign policy during the past 60 years.

In 1940, Franklin Roosevelt urged his countrymen to turn America into “the great arsenal of democracy,” supplying the necessary weapons to defeat the Nazi threat. Within a year the United States fully entered World War II and subsequently devised numerous policies and institutions that abided for decades, creating a national-security state whose contours have always been shaped by domestic politics. Zelizer (History and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.; New Directions in Policy Issues, 2005, etc.) organizes his detailed survey around four themes: the ongoing battle between congress and the president for control of national-security policy; the constant jockeying between Democrats and Republicans for a national-security electoral advantage; the recurring debate about how big and powerful the national government should be; and the persistent controversy over unilateral vs. multilateral action. The author makes clear that moments of bipartisan coalition have been rare. Instead, ideological, electoral and institutional battles are the rule where the demands of a democracy and superpower status often conflict. Marching through the decades since WWII, Zelizer reminds us of episodes that have set off foreign-policy debates—the major wars, of course, but also now dimly remembered disputes over who lost China, the so-called missile gap with the Soviet Union, the rise of the military-industrial complex, the utility of détente and the wisdom of the nuclear-freeze movement. He skillfully charts the debate over various illustrative issues—defense spending, human rights abroad, first-amendment rights at home—and his discussion of the draft, which once intimately connected the average citizen to the national-security state, is particularly fine.

A timely analysis of the forces that will collide as President Obama ponders the way forward in Afghanistan.