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The Uncommon Defense Policy: History, Evolution, and Future Directions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2021

RYAN BURKE
RYAN BURKE*
Affiliation:
United States Air Force Academy, USA
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Abstract

The United States Constitution requires the government “to provide for the common defense.” As a prime topic featured prominently throughout the legislative blueprint of American society, the “common defense” is conspicuously uncommon in today’s policy scholarship and education. Ironically, the policy discipline largely ignores defense issues despite defense serving as the catalyst for establishing policy studies as an academic field in the 1940s. Through decades of military conflict since and obvious relevance to practitioner behavior, defense issues remain ironically absent the public policy scholarly landscape and are instead hosted primarily within strategic and security studies mediums. This article offers an historical examination of the evolution, development, and scholarly shifts in defense policy over time. It also presents perceived reasons for the lack of defense policy dialogue, recommends approaches to reintegrate the topic back into the scholarly discourse, and concludes arguing defense policy warrants greater attention in academic scholarship and teaching.

Keywords

defense policynational securityUS militaryscholarshipcurricula
Type
Critical Perspective
Information
Journal of Policy History , Volume 33 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 205 - 229
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2021

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Footnotes

The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the United States Air Force Academy, the United States Military Academy, the Department of the Air Force, the Department of the Army, or the Department of Defense.

References

Notes

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14. Department of Homeland Security, “Mission,” 2019, https://www.dhs.gov/mission.

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16. US Const. art. I, §8 (‘Legislative Powers’) states that the Congress shall have the power to “provide for the common defense” as well as the following six defense-specific provisions: (1) To declare war, grant letters of marque and reprisal, and make rules concerning captures on land and water; (2) To raise and support armies, but no appropriation of money to that use shall be for a longer term than two years; (3) To provide and maintain a navy; (4) To make rules for the government and regulation of the land and naval forces; (5) To provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the union, suppress insurrections and repel invasions; (6) To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the militia, and for governing such part of them as may be employed in the service of the United States, reserving to the states respectively, the appointment of the officers, and the authority of training the militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

17. US Const. art. IV, §4.

18. US Const. art. I, §10.

19. US Const. amend. II.

20. US Const. art. II, §2.

21. As an example: Article I, Section 8, stipulates that the Congress shall “raise and support armies” but that no appropriation of money shall be for longer than two years, hence the requirement for Congress to pass a National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA; DOD budget legislation) every two years.

22. National Security Act of 1947, Public Law 235, 61 Stat. 496 (1947).

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25. Comfort et al., “Emergency Management Research and Practice in Public Administration,” 540.

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27. Comfort et al., “Emergency Management Research and Practice in Public Administration,” 540.

28. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, “Submitting a Manuscript, Information for Authors,” 2019, https://academic.oup.com/jpart/pages/Instructions_To_Authors.

29. National security, in further comparison, produces 188 hits in PAR’s database, but national security is, as this article notes, a broader term inclusive of both defense and homeland-security matters. Other related search terms and hit results in PAR, specifically, included disaster response: 60 hits; disaster management: 47 hits; military response: 4 hits; civil military: 33 hits. While attaching the “policy” qualifier to defense and military seems more specific than homeland security and emergency management as broader terms, this is necessary. Simply searching under the term “defense” will produce numerous results with no relevance to military matters, as defense is a multiuse term applicable to myriad conversations.

30. The list of defense-policy contributors and their relevant works is too great to list here and beyond the scope and necessity of this article. For those interested, consider the myriad works of Bernard Brodie, Henry Kissinger, Kenneth Waltz, Paul Hammond, Samuel Huntington, Warner Schilling, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Walt, Andrew Krepinevich, Barry Posen, Robert Art, Richard Betts, Stephen Biddle, Eliot Cohen, Peter Feaver, Michael Horowitz, to name a few.

31. Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, “International Security Policy,” 2019, https://sipa.columbia.edu/academics/concentrations/international-security-policy.

32. George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy, “National Security and Foreign Policy,” 2019. https://tspppa.gwu.edu/national-security-foreign-policy.

33. University of North Carolina Chapel Hill, “Curriculum in Peace, War, and Defense,” 2019, https://pwad.unc.edu/.

34. University of Michigan Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, International Policy Center, 2019, “International Research.” http://ipc.umich.edu/international-research, University of Virginia Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy, 2019, “National Security Cohort,” https://batten.virginia.edu/research/centers/national-security-policy-center/national-security-cohort.

35. Texas A&M Bush School of Government and Public Service, 2019, “Certificate in Advanced International Affairs.” https://bush.tamu.edu/certificate/caia/, University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy, 2019, “Diplomacy and Defense.” https://harris.uchicago.edu/academics/programs-degrees/courses/diplomacy-defense.

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38. Homeland Security Act of 2002, 116 Stat. 2135.

39. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” 16.

40. Ibid., 13.

41. Defense Manpower Data Center, “Armed Forces Strength Figures for May 31, 2019,” https://www.dmdc.osd.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp.

42. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive?” 10.

43. Scott Jaschik, “Professors and Politics: What the Research Says,” Inside Higher Education (27 February 2017), https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/02/27/research-confirms-professors-lean-left-questions-assumptions-about-what-means.

44. CNN, “Exit Polls,” 2016, https://www.cnn.com/election/2016/results/exit-polls.

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46. Donald J. Trump, “Fiscal Year 2020 Budget of the U.S. Government, 2019,” Washington, DC.

47. Comfort et al., “Emergency Management Research and Practice in Public Administration,” 540.

48. The naming convention here is significant and supports the position of this article that homeland security does not absorb defense policy in the same subfield, but that they are fundamentally different.

49. Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, “2019 Fall Research Conference Policy Areas,” http://www.appam.org/events/fall-research-conference/http-/www-appam-org/events/fall-research-conference/rising-to-the-challenge/policy-areas/.

50. Richard F. Keevey, “Defense Policy Must Work with State-Craft,” Public Administration Times 3, no. 3 (Summer 2017): 6, 13.

51. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive? 27.

52. Ibid.

53. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate, “Welcome to the Centers of Excellence,” 2019, https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/centers-excellence.

54. Minerva Research Initiative, Department of Defense, 2020, https://minerva.defense.gov/.

55. Richard Grimmett, “Instances of Use of United States Armed Forces Abroad, 1798–2010,” Library of Congress, Congressional Reseach Service, Washington, DC, 2011.

56. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive? 20.

57. Ibid., 8.

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59. The World Bank, “GDP (current US$): All Countries and Economies,” The World Bank Group, 2019, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ny.gdp.mktp.cd.

60. Betts, “Should Strategic Studies Survive? 23.

61. This quote appears in myriad forms and translations in military writings and is attributed to former French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau. The original source of the quote is contained in Soixante Anneés d’Histoire Française (1932) by Georges Suarez.