CIAO DATE: 03/2012
A publication of:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Security studies is commonly thought to have emerged as a response to the Cold War, but its roots reach much further back. Historian Edward Mead Earle and his colleagues first addressed the problem of security to cope with the unraveling of the international order in the 1930s. Earle was instrumental in paving the way for security studies as it exists today, laying the foundations for an important discipline that seeks to combine history, economics, and political science to build bridges between the government and academia and use scientific inquiry to inform policy and guide grand strategy.
Security studies, as an American field of inquiry, has particular historical origins. Contrary to standard views, it was the unraveling of the international order in the 1930s that compelled a collection of internationalist institutions and individuals, led by historian Edward Mead Earle, to bind together a variety of new and traditional disciplines to create an entirely new field focused on the problem of security. These institutions and individuals not only sought to confront the crisis at hand by influencing public views, altering academic discussion, enhancing government capacity, and creating an American “grand strategy,” but also to establish strong institutional and intellectual foundations for an enduring scholarly project that would contended with future national security problems generated by the modern world. In this effort, Earle and his foundation, government, and university collaborators had significant influence on the evolution of security studies as a field that are still felt today.