In the days leading up to the declaration of a new national emergency on 14 September 2001, the Bush administration made it clear that the rationale behind any response to the attacks on the World Trade Center was security: all the talk was of a ‘heightened security alert’ and the introduction of new emergency measures in the name of ‘national security’. But this begs a question: what is ‘national security’?

It is well known that following World War II a range of civilian and military heads of different parts of the US state were brought together before a Senate committee to consider the unification of the military services. In his message to Congress in December 1945, Truman had asked for the creation of a unified military establishment along with a ‘national defense council’, and by May 1946 both Army and Navy were advocating a ‘Council of Common Defense’. Yet by 1947 ‘common defense’ had been dropped and replaced with ‘national security’ – hence the creation of the National Security Council and the National Security Act. The most forceful advocate of the concept, Navy Secretary James Forrestal, commented that ‘national security’ can only be secured with a broad and comprehensive front, and made a point of adding that ‘I am using the word “security” here consistently and continuously rather than “defense”’, highlighting just how new and exciting this idea seemed. ‘I like your words “national security”’, one Senator commented.