Saul Landau is a senior fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and a member of the Executive Board of Policy Alternatives for the Caribbean and Central America. He has written widely on U.S. policy toward Latin America. He and John Dinges won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for their book Assassination on Embassy Row. John Dinges won the Edgar Allen Poe Award for their book Assassination on Embassy Row.
Ever since President Truman invoked the words "national security" to launch the U.S. side of the cold war, government officials have used the phrase to explain, justify, or excuse executive actions that were dubious, illegal, or, as Senator Sam Ervin said during the Watergate hearings, "on the windy side of the law." National security does not simp
Preface -- From Anticolonial to National Security State: Continuity and Change -- The Origins of the National Security Doctrine -- Onto the World Stage -- The Cold War -- The National Security State -- The CIA and the New Interventionism -- Cuba: National Security Fiasco -- Kennedy, Johnson, and Counterinsurgency: The Institutionalization of Distortion -- The Nixon Doctrine -- Ford, Trilateralism, and the Export of National Security -- Intervention and Human Rights -- The Reagan Doctrine -- Central America and the Fruits of Reaganism -- Behind the National Security Myths -- The Alternative -- The Last National Security Scandal?
In The Dangerous Doctrine, Saul Landau reviews the history of national security doctrine from Truman's declaration that national security was at stake in Iran, Greece, and Turkey and the subsequent use of the words "national security" by government officials to explain, justify, or excuse executive actions that were dubious or illegal.
