The most solemn obligation of any president is to safeguard the
nation's security. But the president cannot do this alone. He needs
help. In the past half century, presidents have relied on their
national security advisers to provide that help.
Who are these people, the powerful officials who operate in the
shadow of the Oval Office, often out of public view and accountable
only to the presidents who put them there? Some remain obscure even
to this day. But quite a number have names that resonate far beyond
the foreign policy elite: McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew
Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice.
Ivo Daalder and Mac Destler provide the first inside look at how
presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have used their
national security advisers to manage America's engagements with the
outside world. They paint vivid portraits of the fourteen men and
one woman who have occupied the coveted office in the West Wing,
detailing their very different personalities, their relations with
their presidents, and their policy successes and failures.
It all started with Kennedy and Bundy, the brilliant young
Harvard dean who became the nation's first modern national security
adviser. While Bundy served Kennedy well, he had difficulty with
his successor. Lyndon Johnson needed reassurance more than advice,
and Bundy wasn't always willing to give him that. Thus the basic
lesson -- the president sets the tone and his aides must respond to
that reality.
The man who learned the lesson best was someone who operated
mainly in the shadows. Brent Scowcroft was the only adviser to
serve two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Learning
from others' failures, he found the winning formula: gain the trust
of colleagues, build a collaborative policy process, and stay close
to the president. This formula became the gold standard -- all four
national security advisers who came after him aspired to be "like
Brent."
The next president and national security adviser can learn not
only from success, but also from failure. Rice stayed close to
George W. Bush -- closer perhaps than any adviser before or since.
But her closeness did not translate into running an effective
policy process, as the disastrous decision to invade Iraq without a
plan underscored. It would take years, and another national
security aide, to persuade Bush that his Iraq policy was failing
and to engineer a policy review that produced the "surge."
The national security adviser has one tough job. There are ways
to do it well and ways to do it badly. Daalder and Destler provide
plenty of examples of both. This book is a fascinating look at the
personalities and processes that shape policy and an indispensable
guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully
in the shadow of the Oval Office.
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