The National Security Act of 1947- How militarism was institutionalized in America

The National Security Act of 1947 and most recently the creation of the Homeland Security Department and the Patriot Act unquestionably prove why the founders of the Constitution were so fearful of a powerful executive within the federal government. For astute students of political science and anti-imperial scholars, the last 65 years has definitively shown why several founders of the U.S. Constitution were so fearful of a powerful executive branch in the federal government.

The National Security Act of 1947, which created the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Air Force, the National Security Council and the executive level position of National Security Director, all tipped the balances of power in Washington DC from a State Department influenced foreign policy towards militarism.

Trapped within the infotainment media bubble of cable news outlets or mainstream press outlets, a large majority of Americans do not have any idea how the National Security Act of 1947 and the seeking of more power by the executive set events in motion that would ultimately lead to the horrific terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. Contrary to the partisan rancor and propaganda that has become the norm for the infotainment media outlets and most of the mainstream press, several anti-imperialist scholars such as Eugene Jarecki, Chalmers Johnson, and Lawrence Wilkerson all recognize that the National Security Act of 1947 has produced unintended negative consequences for the balance of powers among the executive, legislative, and judicial branches in American government.

In the book, The American Way of War, the author Eugene Jarecki devotes an entire chapter explaining the origins of the national security state with the creation of the National Security Act of 1947. In the chapter, Jarecki provides a detailed assessment of each one of the institutions created by the National Security Act of 1947 and how these executive level institutions have subverted or bypassed the structural mechanisms of checks and balances in the Constitution.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the National Security Act of 1947 was the creation of the National Security Council and the position of the National Security Council Advisor. According to Jarecki, the position of the National Security Advisor “has provided the executive with a covert asset in the decision making process”. As he later points out in the chapter, this ability to provide a covert asset in the decision making process for the executive, has allowed Presidents to avoid responsibility and let the National Security Director take the blame. Some notable cases of this kind of behavior are the decision by Henry Kissinger to bomb Cambodia in 1970 and John Poindexter and his role in the Iran/Contra affair. As Jarecki writes in the chapter,

“While lower level actors like Oliver North were convicted, fined, and indicted in limited ways, the executive himself maintained the privilege to admit error, preserve his deniability, and live on to become one of America’s most revered presidents”.

Similar to Andrew Bacevich, another anti-imperialistic scholar who was also a member of the military, retired Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson acknowledges the creation of the National Security Act of 1947 greatly contributed to militarism in America. In his interview with Eugene Jarecki, Wilkerson explains how diplomatic influence the State Department once had is now overwhelmed by the sheer power of the Department of Defense, the National Security Council, and the Central Intelligence Agency. Driving home this point is the fact that the Department of Defense has a yearly budget of over half a trillion dollars, while the State Department has a budget of only 30 billion dollars. As Jarecki writes, “Of all the monies spent today in the United States on foreign affairs, 93 percent passes through the Department of Defense and only 7 percent goes through the State Department. This simple statistic goes a long way in explaining why America finds herself so often turning to “the military instrument” to solve international problems. One of the most recent examples of turning to the military instrument for use in foreign relations was the story of the U.S. Army being used to provide relief for Pakistani flood victims.

While the creation of the National Security Act of 1947 was meant to correct some of the mistakes that lead up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, the same argument was recently used by the Bush administration to create the Department of Homeland Security.

In both cases, the over blown fears of war and insecurity were cover for a power grab by the executive and a subversion of the checks and balances protected in the U.S. Constitution.