The United States Constitution requires the government “to provide for the common defense.” As a prime topic featured prominently throughout the legislative blueprint of American society, the “common defense” is conspicuously uncommon in today’s policy scholarship and education. Ironically, the policy discipline largely ignores defense issues despite defense serving as the catalyst for establishing policy studies as an academic field in the 1940s. Through decades of military conflict since and obvious relevance to practitioner behavior, defense issues remain ironically absent the public policy scholarly landscape and are instead hosted primarily within strategic and security studies mediums. This article offers an historical examination of the evolution, development, and scholarly shifts in defense policy over time. It also presents perceived reasons for the lack of defense policy dialogue, recommends approaches to reintegrate the topic back into the scholarly discourse, and concludes arguing defense policy warrants greater attention in academic scholarship and teaching.

中文翻译：

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不寻常的国防政策：历史、演变和未来方向

美国宪法要求政府“提供共同防御”。作为贯穿美国社会立法蓝图的一个主要话题，“共同防御”在当今的政策学术和教育中是非常罕见的。具有讽刺意味的是，尽管在 1940 年代，国防作为将政策研究确立为学术领域的催化剂，但政策学科在很大程度上忽略了国防问题。经过数十年的军事冲突以及与从业者行为的明显相关性，具有讽刺意味的是，国防问题仍然没有出现在公共政策学术领域，而是主要在战略和安全研究媒体中进行。本文对随着时间的推移国防政策的演变、发展和学术转变进行了历史考察。