ABSTRACT
The security dilemma exists at the level of the state. It does not exist in the minds of statesmen or women, but in the political debate within the extended state. This chapter uses this framework to interpret US defence policy during the Cold War. The minimalist/maximalist distinction identified two politically significant intellectual communities in America's security discourse. In contrast to the claims of conservatives, US Soviet co-operation on this basis was made possible by the ideas of common security and the political agency of those advocates on the political left. Despite Eisenhower's warnings of the distorting influence of a military-industrial complex on the debate, Senator Kennedy used the concerns of a missile gap and an inflexible nuclear strategy to attack the Republican handling of defence issues and to prove his anti-communist credentials. In the US, the arms control community had greater success in convincing the Johnson and then Nixon administration to hold back on deployment of defensive systems.
