Different Securities? NATO and the Transformation of the State

Abstract

The conflict between military security and economic security which accompanied the first years of NATO has been much discussed.¹ It arose out of the demands of voters in post-war western democracies, many of them with a greatly extended franchise, for personal lifetime economic security. The high unemployment rates and great uncertainties of personal income in the inter-war period were seen by many post-war western European governments as having weakened the fabric of civil society. There was a remarkable readiness, deriving from the desire of restoration regimes to legitimise themselves with electorates which they had largely failed in the inter-war years by satisfying the claims of voters for a larger measure of social security. In some countries-Belgium, France, the United Kingdom —, this was displayed even before the onset of the Cold War reversed the immediate post-war fall in defence spending. The welfare state, as it came to be called, was willingly embraced by politicians whose primary task in their own judgement was to re-establish the nation-states which had collapsed in 1938–40 as the basis of a European order.