Roosevelt’s ‘total defense’ doctrine redefined national security to require worldwide vigilance.

Evidence

The buildup of U.S. troops around the world was the result of a profound change in how U.S. leaders thought about the very idea of “defense,” as well as a newly expansive concept of “national security.” Even before the United States entered World War II, Roosevelt and other leaders had started developing a vision of the world as intrinsically threatening, in which any instability and danger, no matter how small or how far removed from the United States, was seen as a vital threat. “No attack is so unlikely or impossible that it may be ignored,” argued Roosevelt in 1939. In a world of “permanent danger,” the military thus needed to be a “permanently mobilized force” ready to confront threats wherever they might appear. “If the United States is to have any defense,” Roosevelt and others believed, “it must have total defense.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 91

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• SEED: ‘If the United States is to have any defense, it must have total defense’ is a quotable origin for the expansive national-security concept driving bases abroad.
• XREF: Connects conceptually to the defense-perimeter framing in paragraph 87 and to critiques of open-ended ‘defense’ in later war-on-terror policies.

Related

• The global base system stems from pre-WWII total-defense thinking (similarity 0.92)
• Cold War mentality of permanent mobilization set in before the Cold War began. (similarity 0.78)