In looking for ways to start this review over the book In The Shadow Of The Garrison State, I ran across and excerpt of a review by the publisher of the book a professor with the Princeton University Press in which he states "War--or the threat of war--usually strengthens states as governments tax, draft soldiers, exert control over industrial production, and dampen internal dissent in order to build military might. The United States, however, was founded on the suspicion of state power, a suspicion that continued to gird its institutional architecture and inform the sentiments of many of its politicians and citizens through the twentieth century. In this comprehensive rethinking of postwar political history, Aaron Friedberg convincingly argues that such anti-statist inclinations prevented Cold War anxieties from transforming the United States into the garrison state it might have become in their absence. Drawing on an array of primary and secondary sources, including newly a!
             vailable archival materials, Friedberg concludes that the "weakness" of the American state served as a profound source of national strength that allowed the United States to outperform and outlast its supremely centralized and statist rival: the Soviet Union".
             I think that this assessment is correct in that according to class discussions it was the opinion of the class and others that the anti statist principles that the Untied States articles of confederation gives the right to each state to govern there own. Also through out our nations history many of our forefathers to the constitution which many of whom became president, preached this very notion. Further more, our fear of becoming that which we were fighting in many respects helped American leaders and policy makers to shy away from any actions that would take our country to that extreme. Examples being from our own civil war, the notion of states rights and popular sovereignty where primary concerns ...