David Ekbladh
Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
Experience
Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
Current Affiliation: Assistant Professor of History, Tufts University, Medford, Mass.
U.S. Army A.A.F. Photo
Winter 2011/12
"Present at the Creation: Edward Mead Earle and the Depression-Era Origin of Security Studies"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 3, volume 36
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
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.
May 2010
"A Pillar's Progress: How Development's History Shapes U.S. Options in the Present"
Discussion Paper
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
With the attacks of September 11, 2001, and the "War on Terror" that followed, development aid was shoved back into the spotlight. Many ideas and institutions that had lain dormant in international affairs, insinuated their return into U.S. strategy and the agenda of the international community. "Nation building" in Afghanistan and Iraq along with a hope that development would stifle the appeal of extremist ideologies and the movements that they stirred has returned development to a prominent place in U.S. grand strategy.
AP Photo
March 2010
"Meeting the Challenge from Totalitarianism: The Tennessee Valley Authority as a Global Model for Liberal Development, 1933–1945"
Journal Article, International History Review, issue 1, volume 32
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
"...[T]he rivalry between models of socio-economic development did not begin with the cold war. During the Depression, liberals sought to show that planned economic and social development was possible without the use of autocratic methods. Liberal internationalists, aware that their totalitarian ideological competitors offered their own attractive modernization programmes needed a liberal champion. In the TVA they found a global model that became nearly synonymous with liberal development because of its claim to harmonize potentially destabilizing forces. At a time when development models were features of the international discourse, the TVA distinguished itself by offering proof that large-scale, socially transformative, planning-based development was viable in a liberal democracy. The ease with which these ideas supplied an ideological strategy during the cold war illustrated the degree to which modernization had already proved its effectiveness as a weapon against ideological challenges to liberalism."
November 2009
The Great American Mission: Modernization and the Construction of an American World Order
Book
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
The Great American Mission traces how America's global modernization efforts during the twentieth century were a means to remake the world in its own image. David Ekbladh shows that the emerging concept of modernization combined existing development ideas from the Depression. He describes how ambitious New Deal programs like the Tennessee Valley Authority became symbols of American liberalism's ability to marshal the social sciences, state planning, civil society, and technology to produce extensive social and economic change. For proponents, it became a valuable weapon to check the influence of menacing ideologies such as Fascism and Communism.
November 4, 2009
"Muddling Through: How Development's Past Shapes Its Future"
Op-Ed
By David Ekbladh, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 2009–2010
International development is back. President Barack Obama has given it significance in U.S. strategy not seen since the Cold War. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's much touted "Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review," emphasizes her own belief that it is, "a core pillar of American power."
