ABSTRACT
National defense is primarily a subset of the social system insofar as it is concerned with human beings and with their technological artifacts. It also has relationships with the biological and physical sciences. Within the general pattern of the world social system, national defense deals with certain aspects of the organization and interaction of national states. National defense is a subset of the “threat system.” The threat system is part of the social system in which human behavior is organized by threats rather than by exchange or by integrative structures. The dynamics of legitimacy are very complex, yet also highly relevant to the problem of national defense. Legitimacy seems to come from two quite different and contradictory sources like positive payoffs and sacrifice trap, which explains, perhaps, why it produces systems exhibiting great discontinuities. The institutions of national defense are the result of a long evolution of threat systems that is still continuing.
