“The date which will live in infamy,” December 7, 1941, was everything that Franklin D. Roosevelt feared during his vision in 1937, during the Japanese invasion of Manchurian China. Roosevelt recognized that the rise and militarization of air power made the world much smaller. The Atlantic and Pacific Oceans had been an adequate protective zone for much of the United States’ history, but that was rapidly changing. Similarly, the rapid change in Europe towards totalitarian governments gave Roosevelt trouble. He recognized that in these authoritarian nations, leaders were advantaged in foreign policy by being able to shift the economy into war production with exceptional power compared to his own. Roosevelt sought to take small steps towards establishing a posture that would offer the United States the security needed in the event of an escalated war.
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The newly created National Military Establishment was rife with conflicts stemming from overlapping responsibility. The most notable of these was the rivalry between the Department of State and the new, massively larger, Department of Defense. Which of these two Departments gets priority in foreign policy making continues to be a struggle in the National Security Council.
As the policy makers that designed NSA 47 intended, different Presidents have implemented the NSC in different ways. The first, President Truman, hardly used it at all. Even in the buildup to the Korean War Truman sparingly called meetings of the NSC. It would not be until President Eisenhower that the NSC’s regimental structure would be used to make recommendations on national security. Therefore, policy makers created NSA 47 in order to centralize, standardize, and organize an official peace time National Military Establishment which was left to itself in its early years due to Presidential preference and inter-council
The newly created National Military Establishment was rife with conflicts stemming from overlapping responsibility. The most notable of these was the rivalry between the Department of State and the new, massively larger, Department of Defense. Which of these two Departments gets priority in foreign policy making continues to be a struggle in the National Security Council.
As the policy makers that designed NSA 47 intended, different Presidents have implemented the NSC in different ways. The first, President Truman, hardly used it at all. Even in the buildup to the Korean War Truman sparingly called meetings of the NSC. It would not be until President Eisenhower that the NSC’s regimental structure would be used to make recommendations on national security. Therefore, policy makers created NSA 47 in order to centralize, standardize, and organize an official peace time National Military Establishment which was left to itself in its early years due to Presidential preference and inter-council