Logo_EMN_dark-02
Logo_EMN_dark-02
Logo_EMN_dark-02
Logo_EMN_dark-02

Eisenhower Media Network

Logo_EMN_dark-02

Eisenhower Media Network

  • About EMN
  • Experts
  • Media
  • Reports
  • Contact An Expert
Recent Posts
  • Matthew Hoh: Russia Resumes Shahed Drone Blitz Hours After Leopard 2 Tank Announcement
  • Matthew Hoh: Game-Changing Abrams Tanks Present One Glaring Problem for Ukraine
  • William Astore: Let the Weapons Flow and the Body Count Grow

We remember Pearl Harbor as a beginning. A dramatic moment when the United States stepped onto the world stage a reluctant leader. A tipping point forcing America to join a war that a “deceitful” enemy had inflicted upon its distant Hawaiian shores.

But the true legacy of that fateful day in December 1941 might derive more from what the Japanese attack wrought, rather than from what it began.

The real inheritance of Pearl Harbor is that it shrank the world in terms of how Americans have thought about their national security ever since.

After Dec. 7, U.S. policymakers no longer viewed the vast Pacific and Atlantic oceans as inviolable barriers protecting them from America’s enemies. The era of “free security,” historian C. Vann Woodward opined in 1960, was over. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in his famous “Day of Infamy” speech, argued that “our people, our territory, and our interests are in grave danger.”

Combined with the Munich analogy — the belief borne of events in the 1930s that would-be Hitlerian tyrants must never be appeased, but swiftly defeated — the lesson of Pearl Harbor suggested that Americans had to expand their definition of “national security.” Threats must be defeated early abroad before they metastasized at home.

In short order, such conceptions of an extended, if not global, national security meant there were no “peripheral” areas that stood outside of American interests. And even though Pearl Harbor ultimately led to the Axis powers’ defeat, new threats quickly emerged — so it seemed — that committed the United States to a decades-long Cold War against what many deemed a monolithic, expansionistic communist menace.

Read the full article here.

The real inheritance of Pearl Harbor is that it shrank the world in terms of how Americans have thought about their national security ever since.

Gregory Daddis

Previous PostWilliam Astore: Taking On the Military-Industrial Complex
Next PostWilliam Astore: Peace Is Not Our Profession

Latest Posts

News-item_Daddis-2

Gregory Daddis: US, PARTNERS, BEATING ‘DEGRADED’ ISLAMIC STATE GROUP

US Central Command is touting its final report for 2022 as proof it’s “degraded” the Islamic State gro

Coffee or Die Magazine, Daddis
January 3, 2023
News-item_Daddis-2

Gregory Daddis: Biden says the US doesn’t want a new Cold War – but there are some reasons it might

“We do not seek a Cold War,” declared President Joe Biden in front of world leaders gathered at the Un

Conversation, Daddis
October 4, 2022
News-item_Daddis-2

Gregory Daddis: Here’s how Biden has shifted the war on terror

Col. Gregory A. Daddis was quoted in an article from the Hill titled “Here’s How Biden Shifted the War

Daddis, The Hill
September 12, 2022
Recent
Matthew Hoh: Russia Resumes Shahed Drone Blitz Hours After Leopard 2 Tank Announcement
Hoh, Newsweek
January 26, 2023
Matthew Hoh: Game-Changing Abrams Tanks Present One Glaring Problem for Ukraine
Hoh, Newsweek
January 26, 2023
William Astore: Let the Weapons Flow and the Body Count Grow
Astore, Bracing Views
January 24, 2023
Twitter Feed
Missing Consumer Key - Check Settings
Tags
9/11 (7) Afghanistan (6) Afghanistan war (6) Afghanistan withdrawal (18) Air Force (4) Biden (4) China (11) Cold War (4) Dan Berschinski (3) Danny Sjursen (13) defense budget (11) Dennis Fritz (6) Dennis Laich (4) department of defense (4) Eisenhower (7) Erik Edstrom (5) featured (38) forever wars (7) Gregory Daddis (10) Iraq (8) Lawrence Wilkerson (8) Marine Corps (3) Matthew Hoh (12) memorial (4) military (12) military industrial complex (24) monument (4) NDAA (4) news (119) Pentagon (24) podcast (4) President Biden (3) refugees (4) Russia (15) terrorism (4) Ukraine (14) United States (48) veterans (17) veterans day (6) Vietnam (3) Vietnam War (5) war (14) Washington D.C. (4) whistleblower (3) William Astore (41)
© 2022 Eisenhower Media Network. All Rights Reserved