Schraderglobal posture. The report, “United States Objectives and Programs for
National Security”—better known as NSC 68—planted the vocabulary
that became the Cold War’s discursive kudzu. Though Kennan himself
diverged from its predictions, NSC 68 echoed his formulations, con-
trasting the importance of U.S. “lawfulness” to Soviet expedience and
absolutism.
NSC 68 drew much of its rhetorical power from carceral imagery.
“The Soviet monolith,” it maintained, “is held together by the iron cur-
tain around it and the iron bars within it, not by any force of natural
cohesion.” The United States thus had to embark on a massive “build-up
of political, economic, and military strength” to take advantage of the
Kremlin’s “greatest vulnerability,” its relationship with the Soviet people.
“That relationship,” NSC 68 charged, “is characterized by universal
suspicion, fear, and denunciation.” At its core were “intricately devised
mechanisms of coercion” from which the Kremlin’s power derived. The
report went on to propose that the “artificial mechanisms of unity” of
the Soviet police state would crumble if challenged from outside, which
is what the cornucopia of U.S. national security spending would do.
Though NSC 68 did not make specific recommendations regarding
defense expenditures, the Truman administration almost tripled defense
spending as a percentage of the gross domestic product between 1950
and 1953 (from 5 to 14.2 percent).
The pathway toward the permanent war economy of NSC 68’s
vision was not direct. It was contested in Congress and in public opin-
ion. Critics rightly feared the emergence of a “garrison state,” a term
that has been largely lost today. The necessary shifts entailed liberals
accommodating conservatives. As historian Michael J. Hogan detailed,
to find a way for fiscal conservatives to accede to the new appropriations
that capital-intensive war-making would require in the atomic age, it
was necessary for New Dealers to give up hope for continuously robust