Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 The National Security Discourse: Ideology, Political Culture, and State Making
- 2 Magna Charta: The National Security Act and the Specter of the Garrison State
- 3 The High Price of Peace: Guns-and-Butter Politics in the Early Cold War
- 4 The Time Tax: American Political Culture and the UMT Debate
- 5 “Chaos and Conflict and Carnage Confounded”: Budget Battles and Defense Reorganization
- 6 Preparing for Permanent War: Economy, Science, and Secrecy in the National Security State
- 7 Turning Point: NSC-68, the Korean War, and the National Security Response
- 8 Semiwar: The Korean War and Rearmament
- 9 The Iron Cross: Solvency, Security, and the Eisenhower Transition
- 10 Other Voices: The Public Sphere and the National Security Mentality
- 11 Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
5 - “Chaos and Conflict and Carnage Confounded”: Budget Battles and Defense Reorganization
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 May 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Acknowledgments
- 1 The National Security Discourse: Ideology, Political Culture, and State Making
- 2 Magna Charta: The National Security Act and the Specter of the Garrison State
- 3 The High Price of Peace: Guns-and-Butter Politics in the Early Cold War
- 4 The Time Tax: American Political Culture and the UMT Debate
- 5 “Chaos and Conflict and Carnage Confounded”: Budget Battles and Defense Reorganization
- 6 Preparing for Permanent War: Economy, Science, and Secrecy in the National Security State
- 7 Turning Point: NSC-68, the Korean War, and the National Security Response
- 8 Semiwar: The Korean War and Rearmament
- 9 The Iron Cross: Solvency, Security, and the Eisenhower Transition
- 10 Other Voices: The Public Sphere and the National Security Mentality
- 11 Conclusion
- Selected Bibliography
- Index
Summary
By the time James V. Forrestal became the country's first secretary of defense, he was showing the strains of nearly eight years of government service. As his biographers point out, Forrestal had become something of an automaton, a workaholic who could neither relax on the job nor retreat to the haven of a happy family. He and his wife led essentially separate lives. She was a schizophrenic whose bizarre behavior, including vulgar language, chronic breakdowns, and alcoholism, grew worse with each year of their marriage. He was a promiscuous Lothario whose private affairs revealed a cynical and secretive personality that became increasingly unstable in the Machiavellian world of the National Military Establishment.
As secretary of defense, Forrestal worked with a small staff to administer the affairs of military departments that behaved more like hostile sovereigns than a unified force. The National Security Act, which he had shaped, made it difficult for him to succeed in his new assignment, and the struggle to succeed exhausted him both physically and mentally and left him increasingly nervous and irresolute. Only days after taking office he was complaining about the difficult tasks before him and telling a friend that he would soon need “the combined attention” of the “entire psychiatric profession.” He was right.
From the start, Forrestal had trouble making up his mind.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- A Cross of IronHarry S. Truman and the Origins of the National Security State, 1945–1954, pp. 159 - 208Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1998