Sixty-four years ago this week President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act of 1947 into law. In a break with what had been previous American practice, this law set the stage for the establishment of the Department of Defense, the U.S. Air Force as a separate service, and the first publicly acknowledged peacetime intelligence agency, the CIA.
In effect, the National Security Act of 1947 marked America’s acceptance of the fact that it had become a Great Power and that it could no longer afford to turn its back on the world’s problems like it had after World War I.
The enormity of the Second World War, the millions killed, wounded, and displaced, and the millions who donned the uniforms of their respective countries, meant that very few people living around the world in 1945 had escaped its impact.
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