In this provocative and thoughtful book, Amy Zegart challenges the
conventional belief that national security agencies work reasonably
well to serve the national interest as they were designed to do.
Using a new institutionalist approach, Zegart asks what forces
shaped the initial design of the Central Intelligence Agency, the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the National Security Council in ways
that meant they were handicapped from birth.
Ironically, she finds that much of the blame can be ascribed to
cherished features of American democracy--frequent elections, the
separation of powers, majority rule, political compromise--all of
which constrain presidential power and give Congress little
incentive to create an effective foreign policy system. At the same
time, bureaucrats in rival departments had the expertise, the
staying power, and the incentives to sabotage the creation of
effective competitors, and this is exactly what they did.
Historical evidence suggests that most political players did not
consider broad national concerns when they forged the CIA, JCS, and
NSC in the late 1940s. Although President Truman aimed to establish
a functional foreign policy system, he was stymied by
self-interested bureaucrats, legislators, and military leaders. The
NSC was established by accident, as a byproduct of political
compromise; Navy opposition crippled the JCS from the outset; and
the CIA emerged without the statutory authority to fulfill its
assigned role thanks to the Navy, War, State, and Justice
departments, which fought to protect their own intelligence
apparatus.
Not surprisingly, the new security agencies performed poorly as
they struggled to overcome their crippled evolution. Only the NSC
overcame its initial handicaps as several presidents exploited
loopholes in the National Security Act of 1947 to reinvent the NSC
staff. The JCS, by contrast, remained mired in its ineffective
design for nearly forty years--i.e., throughout the Cold War--and
the CIA's pivotal analysis branch has never recovered from its
origins. In sum, the author paints an astonishing picture: the
agencies Americans count on most to protect them from enemies
abroad are, by design, largely incapable of doing so.
General
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