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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.
- Sales Rank: #523362 in Books
- Published on: 2009-02-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 1.40" h x 6.20" w x 9.30" l, 1.33 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
From Publishers Weekly
The position of national security adviser is by far the most powerful unelected (and unconfirmed by Congress) post in the federal government, with tremendous influence over American foreign policy (for good and for ill). Daalder (coauthor, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy) and Destler (coauthor, American Trade Politics), foreign policy experts at, respectively, the Brookings Institution and the University of Maryland, do an excellent job of examining the different philosophies and styles of all who have filled the role, from McGeorge Bundy to Condoleezza Rice, as well as how different presidents have deployed the skills of their national security advisers. Unlike Cabinet secretaries, the national security adviser maintains an office in the White House and operates free of the politics and bureaucratic demands of running federal departments. There is no one-size-fits-all mold, and no standard résumé for this vital job. Some advisers have been college professors, others diplomats, still others veterans of the military. Each, as the authors astutely show, has brought unique talents and prejudices to the assignment, and each has left an indelible mark on history. (Feb.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
An assessment of national security advisors since McGeorge Bundy, this work queries their roles in the formation of foreign policy. Avoiding foreign policy per se, the authors describe how each advisor envisaged the functions of the position and how effectively each carried them out. Crediting Bundy with institutionalizing the post, Daalder and Destler explain its main tasks of creating a staff, operating the Situation Room, and controlling the flow of information to the president. A dilemma is inherent in the position, argue the authors, between the advisor’s role as the conduit to the president of the national security bureaucracies’ preferences in foreign affairs, and the advisor’s potential to wield power in foreign affairs. According to the authors, Henry Kissinger stands alone as a political player, while Brent Scowcroft is the model of an efficient, self-effacing national security advisor in his interactions with President George H. W. Bush. Concluding with advice for future advisors, this study, readable and not overtly scholarly, should appeal to interests in American foreign policy. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
"Beginning with the Kennedy years, the role of national security adviser has grown to be one of the most powerful in government. Daalder and Destler provide a colorful, intimate, and revealing look at what it takes to do the job right. By describing the delicate balances, power plays, and personality factors involved, this book shows what really happens in the corridors of the White House."-- Walter Isaacson, author of Einstein and Kissinger
"This is a wise, important, and even urgent book. Its astute judgments on the relationships between the national security advisers and the presidents they served over a half-century -- the ways they made and implemented foreign policy, and the results, successful to disastrous -- should be taken to heart by the next U.S. foreign policy team, and alerts the rest of us to what to watch for."-- Elizabeth Drew, author of Citizen McCain
"Every national security adviser in the last fifty years had his or her strengths and weaknesses. Now, for the first time, a book focuses on each of them as individuals, succinctly and precisely. Essential reading for the new administration -- and anyone interested in the history of the National Security Council system."-- Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations
"Given the daunting array of national-security challenges facing the Obama administration, this lucid, insightful, and authoritative book could hardly be more timely. Drawing on their deep knowledge of how the White House and the world work, Daalder and Destler have shed light on one of the most important, but least understood, posts in the U.S. government at a pivotal moment in American foreign policy."-- Strobe Talbott, former deputy secretary of state and author of The Great Experiment
"With well-drawn examples, Ivo Daalder and I. M. Destler chart U.S. foreign policy through the prism of the vital but amorphous post of National Security Adviser. Their tracing of bureaucratic intrigue from McGeorge Bundy through Kissinger and Brzezinski to Condoleezza Rice is always fascinating, if not always reassuring."-- A.J. Langguth, Our Vietnam: The War 1954-1975
Most helpful customer reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful.
Up close and personal
By Lance B. Hillsinger
In the Shadow of the Oval Office is an impressive summary of the duties, inner-workings, and conflicts inherit in the role of National Security Adivsor. The authors, Ivo Daalder and I.m Destler write with a brillant command of the subject matter and without political agenda. The narrative is remarkably consistent in style; one would think there was a single author, not two.
What impressed, and somewhat frightened, this reviewer is how much the effectiveness, or lack there of, the National Security Advisor is based upon personality of the NSA and the presonality of the President he or she serves. If there is a single thesis in this book, it would be that the country is well-served when there is good match between NSA and the President, and the country, if not the world, is poorly served if there is poor match.
But Daadler and Destler are primarily not interested in advancing an academic theory, rather they are more interested in just telling the story correctly. The reader sees how national policies are developed in the context of management styles and inter-personal dynamics involved as well as the relevant historical perspective.
In short, In the Shadow of the Oval Office is a triumphant combination of polictical analysis, historical re-telling, and character study.
6 of 7 people found the following review helpful.
The Real "West Wing"
By Nicholas E. Sarantakes
Ivo H. Daalder and I.M. Destler have written an impressive book that readers of all backgrounds and levels of expertise will find engaging. They examine the role of the National Security Advisor in the making of U.S. foreign policy. They start their account with the tenure of McGeorge Bundy in the Kennedy White House. There is some historical background about the role of the National Security Council and the role of the men filling the position under President Dwight D. Eisenhower, but it was Bundy who pioneered the role. This focus slights the achievements of four men that served under Eisenhower, but there is no getting around the fact that the office was weaker then.
Daalder and Destler's thesis that the National Security Advisor's role is a function of his relationship with the President--or to be more accurate, the President's relationship with the advisor-and that this is the source of their influence and power seems fairly straight forward. Bundy is living proof of this argument. He was a key player in Washington under Kennedy, but never had a good relationship with Lyndon Johnson and left the White House in 1966.
There are numerous strengths to this book. The most important is that Daalder and Destler are gifted writers. Too many other scholars would have turned their text into something ponderous, but these two make it an interesting, compelling read that is gripping. In this sense, they have skills similar to those of a novelist. Their research is impressive--they found obscure material on topics that this reviewer has written about but never knew existed--yet they avoid getting caught up in the details of it all. Neither author is an historian and they seem to prefer discussing the more recent administrations. Their analysis is only adequate in the beginning, but gets much stronger as they move forward in time.
If you liked "The West Wing," you will like this book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Managing Foreign Policy From the White House
By Etienne RP
The flap cover summary states that this book will provide "an indispensable guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully in the shadow of the Oval Office." Similarly, Richard Holbrooke endorses the book as "essential reading for the new administration." Daadler and Destler's Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents They Served is thus presented as a how-to book, a manual for statecraft that will provide a job description for those who intend to fill the White House's posting. They list the qualities presidents should look for when choosing their close diplomatic adviser. They make a ranking of past national security advisers according to influence, administrative efficiency, and overall performance. The primary target of the book therefore seems to be foreign policy operatives and Washington insiders. Based on historical records and personal recollections by the main protagonists who tried to distill the lessons from their experience, it provides a unique perspective on American diplomacy by people who played a central role in shaping policy decisions and determining outcomes.
Oddly as it sounds, I would also recommend this book to people involved in business policy and human resource management. There is a strong case to be made that history books offer better lessons and insights to business executives than management textbooks. For a start, they are better written, and they offer a more gripping narrative. The retention rate of hearing about a good story will always be better than going through a shopping list of dos and don'ts. People generally feel more passionate about politics and international events than about the business pages of their newspaper. History involves larger-than-life characters and puts into view the most salient aspects of human nature. Management often shuns the emotional aspects of human behavior and focuses on the rational side. But companies, like countries and polities, are driven by deeply felt emotions such as love, ambition, and greed. Politics puts the human nature back into view, and reconciles us with our inner selves.
On a more practical side, historians get access to archival records, key testimonies, and contrasting viewpoints. Management scholars, for their part, are often denied access to the inner working of corporations, and have to rely on dry financial statements or meaningless questionnaires. The corporation is a black box, and drastically filters the flow of information that trickles out of it. News and communiqués are carefully drafted for public relations purposes. Corporate lore and business cases are of little relevance for those unconnected to a particular workplace. By contrast, the U.S. government is a city built upon a hill, and the White House is a house of glass whose processes and records are made fully transparent. Political scientists and historians will always have an edge over management scholars in terms of access to information, contextualization of public events, and relevance of their research output for the public at large. Bureaucracies often draw lessons from the corporate world and try to adapt models developed by management specialists. Conversely, private sector managers can also learn from the experience of policymakers, and governmental decision-making on foreign affairs issues provides what can be characterized as the epitome of decision.
Like business strategy, effective foreign policymaking is defined by people, process, and purpose. Attention to people means more than filling a job description. There has to be a good fit between the president and his national security adviser. The most famous pairs in the White House--Kennedy and Bundy, Nixon and Kissinger, Carter and Brzezinski, Bush Sr. and Scowcroft, Clinton and Sandy Berger, Bush Jr. and Condi Rice--illustrate this necessary convergence of character and compatibility of style. The NSC adviser serves at the pleasure of the president. He is the first to brief him in the morning, the closest at hand when crisis situations arise. They are bound to operate in a compatible way.
What works with one president does not necessarily suit another. The same McGeorge Bundy who meshed so well with president Kennedy was clearly out of sync with his successor, and he left to be replaced by Walt Rostow, who had a better relationship with Johnson. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger also shared many proclivities. Both were foreign policy aficionados, eager to put their stamp on the world. They had a similar realist view of how the world operated, one in which power and its balance between states was of primary importance. Both harbored secret anxieties and deep insecurities that made their combination ultimately destructive. Sometimes, as in the Carter-Brzezinski combination, a relationship flourishes because of differences. Brzezinski strived on conflict; Carter was at heart a conciliator. Similarly, Bush and Rice had little in common, but they proved remarkably compatible.
Beyond personal fit between the president and his adviser, White House officials need to build a good team spirit, both within the NSC staff and with the other cabinet secretaries. This was not always the case. Kissinger famously left the state secretary out of the loop in his secret dealings with China. Brzezinski's views on critical issues, notably on how to deal with the Soviet Union, often clashed with those of Cyrus Vance, Carter's secretary of state. Being generally the most hard-line of senior administration players, Brzezinski actively and visibly sought to "toughen" policies. Other tensions within the national security team were manifested in Caspar Weinberger's debilitating feud with George Shultz under Reagan, or Colin Powell's powerlessness against the combination of Rumsfeld and Cheney's war planning. As Nixon once complained, "it would be goddam easy to run this office if you didn't have to deal with people." Team spirit and employee morale were not a priority for all national security advisers: witness the joke which pretended that "working for Kissinger was like being a mushroom: because you are kept in the dark all the time, because you get a lot of s*** dumped on you, and, in the end, you get canned."
Putting in place an effective policy process is a crucial responsibility of any NSC adviser. Kennedy and McGeorge Bundy originated the three defining features of the function: the adviser's handling of the president's day-to-day foreign affairs business; the staff recruited among the best experts to serve the current administration; and the setting of a Situation Room with access to diplomatic cables and security information in real time. Kissinger added to it the secrecy in all political undertakings and the relentless cultivation of the press. After Kissinger, all agreed that the national security adviser's role was not a "policy-making job": it was to "facilitate the process of decision-making".
According to Brent Scowcroft, who wrote the definitive manual on the subject following the Iran-Contras investigation, the adviser should focus on coordination while the secretary of state (and other cabinet members) focus on implementation and operations. There is an inherent tension between the role of policy coordinator and that of senior adviser to the president: "It is always more exciting to be the adviser, but if you are not the honest broker, you don't have the confidence of the other members of the NSC." To ensure fairness, the adviser's activities as policy spokesman needed to be curtailed: he had to cultivate, in Anthony Lake's words, a "passion for anonymity".
Often described as best performer in the job which he held twice, Brent Scowcroft had a winning formula for effectiveness that was picked up by his successors and that consisted of three elements: first, gain the confidence of colleagues; second, run a transparent and collegial process; and third, secure power through proximity with the president. Remarkably, Scowcroft's influence did not so much diminish as augment that of James Baker, and he was able to avoid the usual conflicts of policy and power. Scowcroft might see the president more than anyone else, but everyone could count on having their views reflected during the decision process. In the words of one of his aides, "the work-to-bulls*** ratio was better in this administration than any other, and less of your calories went into the bureaucratic game."
Of course, national security advisers can only be as effective and successful as presidents enable them to be. For the Scowcroft model to work, you needed an active president, who was deeply familiar with and interested in the world. This brings us to the third element of effective management: purpose and leadership. As the book makes it clear, this leadership was not always effectively displayed. There were a series of policy blunders which originated in the NSC and were not effectively corrected by the adviser. The Bay of Pigs fiasco was "one of history's few pure failures," a result of poor planning and preparation. On the positive side, it led to a far better, more structured decision process when Kennedy faced a graver challenge in the Cuban missile crisis eighteen month later. Even more egregious was the secret diversion of funds to the Nicaraguan Contras by John Poindexter under Reagan. Similarly, Condoleeza Rice was too close to George W. Bush to act as effective counterweight by asking questions, probing assumptions, and challenging conclusions.
Filling the NSC adviser slot does not leave room for error. Daadler and Destler's book offer a careful manual on how to constitute a national security team and make it effective, with obvious implications for policy-making and the pursuit of the national interest. The job of national security adviser is simply too important to be left to chance. The nation cannot afford inexperience or incompetence in this particular position. The consequence can quite literally be catastrophic--like the Iran-Contra scandal that nearly destroyed the Reagan presidency. As mentioned earlier, there are also more general lessons to be learned for people involved in building teams and managing projects. There also, executive search and staffing decisions should not be left to chance. Job descriptions should not be considered in isolation from, but as a combination of, talents and personal traits as well as "people skills". The management team is more than an addition of individuals, and each brings a distinctive contribution to the group dynamic. People need to be made compatible, mesh nicely within organizational structures, and operate in sync.
Great combinations that worked in the past can provide models for future endeavors. The lessons of these models should be reflected upon and distilled within the organization. Teams also need to learn from their errors, and to correct behavior on a short feedback loop. People issues should not be considered in isolation, but should be linked to process and to purpose. A great personal relationship or ebullient team spirit cannot compensate for poor process management or a lack of strategic direction. When looking for role models and practical lessons, managers should look beyond the narrow scope of the business world and broaden their compass to include national leaders and policymakers. Conversely, statesmen and senior officials should not overlook management issues, and should engage in staffing decisions in a principled way. In the Shadow of the Oval Office will help them to do so.
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