The Common Defense; Strategic Programs in National Politics

New York: Columbia University Press, 1966. Columbia Paperback Edition [stated], third printing. Trade paperback. Good/No dust jacket issued. xii, 500 pages. Notes. Appendix. Index. Underlining, marginal marks and some comments noted. Samuel Phillips Huntington (April 18, 1927 - December 24, 2008) was an American political scientist, adviser, and academic. He spent more than half a century at Harvard University, where he was director of Harvard's Center for International Affairs and the Albert J. Weatherhead III University Professor. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Huntington was the White House Coordinator of Security Planning for the National Security Council. Huntington is best known for his 1993 theory, the "Clash of Civilizations", of a post-Cold War new world order. He argued that future wars would be fought not between countries, but between cultures, and that Islamic extremism would become the biggest threat to Western domination of the world. Huntington is credited with helping to shape American views on civilian-military relations, political development, and comparative government. According to the Open Syllabus Project, Huntington is the second most frequently cited author on college syllabi for political science courses. Huntington's first major book was The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil-Military Relations which is regarded as the most influential book on American civil-military relations. He became prominent with his Political Order in Changing Societies (1968), a work that challenged the conventional opinion of modernization theorists, that economic and social progress would produce stable democracies in recently decolonized countries. This book examines the concrete ways of providing for 'the common defense;. The author discuses the military policy of the United States in the years between 1945 and 1960. the discussion is at once an analysis and an explanation of the policy of this period and a more general study of how military policy is formed within the American system of government. Huntington focuses specifically on decisions involving the military effort, force levels, and weapons in assessing the over-all change sin America's strategic programs.