The national security mentality reached well beyond the state makers in Washington. National security issues also engaged leaders in other areas of American life, not to mention ordinary citizens, many of whom found ways to register their convictions. This chapter tries to read how people other than policy makers reacted to the Cold War, and especially to the developments described in the preceding chapters. Its focus is on the public sphere rather than on Congress, the presidency, and other agencies in what might be called the political sphere, although this shift in focus does not involve a shift in themes. On the contrary, by moving from a state–centered narrative to one that is decentered, it is possible to determine if the views expressed in Washington reverberated in other quarters and thus to provide a fuller account of the postwar struggle to reshape the state and redefine the country's political identity.

As employed here, the public sphere embraced several groups, including journalists and commentators whose views have been traced in the previous chapters and need not detain us further. Instead, this chapter focuses on Cold War intellectuals and ordinary Americans. Although American intellectuals were not as active in shaping national security policy as they would be a decade later, the early Cold War did influence their thinking and contribute to a national security mentality that is evident in their published work and political activity.