National security

National security of the United States

Over the history of the United States, policies such as the Monroe Doctrine, the domestic establishment of the United States Secret Service in the wake of the American Civil War, and the so called "big stick" corollary to the Monroe Doctrine by President Theodore Roosevelt all show a maturation of policies and systems of establishing and ensuring diplomatic, military, and economic security. Each nation has its own history of establishing national security mechanisms.

The modern concept of national security was introduced in the United States after World War II and became an official guiding principle of foreign policy in the United States when theNational Security Act of 1947 was signed on July 26, 1947 by U.S. President Harry S. Truman.^[1]

The majority of the provisions of the Act took effect on 18 September 1947, the day after the Senate confirmed James V. Forrestal as the first Secretary of Defense. Together with its 1949 amendment, this act:

• created the National Military Establishment (NME) which became known as the Department of Defense when the act was amended in 1949,

• created a separate Department of the Air Force from the existing United States Army Air Forces,

• subordinated the military branches to the new cabinet level position of the Secretary of Defense, and

• established the National Security Council (NSC), a central place of coordination for national security policy in the Executive Branch, as well as the Central Intelligence Agency, the United States' first peacetime intelligence agency.

During the Cold War's bipolar system, states often relied heavily on the two superpowers and other aligned nations to assist their national security. This principal is referred to as collective security, a term which came into vogue after the Armistice of World War I.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, and with the rise of terrorism, national security has had to shift its focus dramatically. Security Sector Reform (SSR) and Security Sector Management (SSM)^[2] is needed in many nations for different reasons. Some are nations emerging from repressive regimes or recovering from civil wars. Others are developing nations with weak governments where national security sectors never existed or were never strong before. The United States saw its own security sector overhaul with the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.