In The Emergency State, leading global affairs commentator David C. Unger reveals the hidden costs of America's obsessive pursuit of absolute national security. In the decades since World War II, presidents from both parties have assumed broad war-making powers never intended by the Constitution and intervened abroad to preserve our credibility rather than our security, while trillions of tax dollars have been diverted from essential domestic needs to the Pentagon. Yet ironically, this pursuit has not just damaged our democracy and undermined our economic strength—it has also failed to make us safer.
In a penetrating work of historical analysis, Unger explains how this narrow-minded emphasis on security came to distort our political life and shows how we can change course. As Unger reminds us, in the first 150 years of the American republic, the United States valued limited military intervention abroad and the checks and balances put in place by the founding fathers. Yet American history took a sharp turn during World War II, when we began to build a vast and cumbersome complex of national security institutions, reflexes, and beliefs. Originally designed to wage hot war against Germany and cold war against the Soviet Union, our security bureaucracy is no longer effective at confronting the elusive, non–state-supported threats we now face.
The Emergency State traces a series of missed opportunities—from the so-called Year of Intelligence in 1975 to the end of the cold war to 9/11—when we could have paused to rethink our defense strategy and didn't. We have ultimately failed to dismantle our outdated national security state, Unger argues, because both parties are equally responsible for its expansion. While countless books have exposed the damage wrought by George W. Bush's war on terror, Unger shows it was only the natural culmination of decades of bipartisan emergency state logic—and argues that Obama, along with many previous Democratic presidents, has failed to shift course in any meaningful way.
In this provocative and incisive book, Unger proposes a radically different paradigm that would better address our security needs while also working to reverse the damage done to our democratic institutions and economic vitality.
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"A must read for everyone."
— Linda (5 out of 5 stars)
“Unger’s broad indictment of defense policy bipartisan[ship], if not nonpartisan is sure to spark considerable and worthy debate.”
— Publishers WeeklyUnger's broad indictment of defense policy bipartisan if not nonpartisan is sure to spark considerable and worthy debate.
— Publishers Weekly" Very thorough, but occasionally redundant. Still, a good exploration of how even peacetime presidents have retained wartime powers and how that has affected constitutional democracy, international affairs, and the American economy. "
— Frances, 9/22/2013David C. Unger has been on the editorial board of the New York Times for more than thirty years and currently writes about military, foreign policy, and international economic issues from a transatlantic perspective. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a part-time faculty member at the Bologna Center of the Johns Hopkins University Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
Michael Prichard is a Los Angeles-based actor who has played several thousand characters during his career, over one hundred of them in theater and film. He is primarily heard as an audiobook narrator, having recorded well over five hundred full-length books. His numerous awards and accolades include an Audie Award for Tears in the Darkness by Michael Norman and Elizabeth M. Norman and six AudioFile Earphones Awards. He was named a Top Ten Golden Voice by SmartMoney magazine. He holds an MFA in theater from the University of Southern California.