Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy [Paperback]

Morton H. Halperin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 1974 | ISBN-10: 0815734077 | ISBN-13: 978-0815734079

The first edition of Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy is one of the most successful Brookings titles of all time. This thoroughly revised version updates that classic analysis of the role played by the federal bureaucracy --civilian career officials, political appointees, and military officers --and Congress in formulating U.S. national security policy, illustrating how policy decisions are actually made. Government agencies, departments, and individuals all have certain interests to preserve and promote. Those priorities, and the conflicts they sometimes spark, heavily influence the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. A decision that looks like an orchestrated attempt to influence another country may in fact represent a shaky compromise between rival elements within the U.S. government. The authors provide numerous examples of bureaucratic maneuvering and reveal how they have influenced our international relations. The revised edition includes new examples of bureaucratic politics from the past three decades, from Jimmy Carter's view of the State Department to conflicts between George W. Bush and the bureaucracy regarding Iraq. The second edition also includes a new analysis of Congress's role in the politics of foreign policymaking.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Review

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

About the Author

Morton H. Halperin was a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and is now senior adviser to the Open Society Institute. He directed policy planning staffs at the Department of State, the National Security Council, and the Department of Defense for Presidents Johnson, Nixon, and Clinton. Priscilla Clapp served nearly thirty years in government under six presidents, mostly in the State Department and overseas. Arnold Kanter is a principal and founding member of the Scowcroft Group. He has served in several capacities in government, including Special Assistant to the President and Under Secretary of State. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Brookings Inst Pr (April 1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0815734077
• ISBN-13: 978-0815734079
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,517,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Morton H. Halperin is a Senior Advisor to the Open Society Institute and the Open Society Policy Center. Dr. Halperin served in the Clinton, Nixon and Johnson administrations, most recently as Director of the Policy Planning Staff at the Department of State (1998-2001). He taught at Harvard (1960-66) and, as a visitor at other universities including Columbia, George Washington, and Yale. He has been affiliated with a number of other think tanks including the Center for American Progress, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Century Foundation and the Brookings Institution. He is the author of numerous books and articles including Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, The Democracy Advantage, and Protecting Democracy.

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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential Reference for Understanding Bad as Well as Unethical Decisions, July 12, 2003

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Paperback)

Edit of 22 Dec 07 to stress importance of this book today, and add links. This books says that one of the rules of the game is to lie to the President if you think you can get away with it. Dick Cheney has created three new rules:

1. Ignore the President, Hijack the Presidency

2. Subvert Congress and Article 1 of the Constitution

3. Lie to the People, Over and Over, Even After the Lie is Known to be a Lie

This book is quite extraordinary. It is one of perhaps ten that I consider to be lifetime essential references for any national security official--not because I condone the rules for subverting and manipulating policy that the book documents, but in order to defend against them, for in the aggregate, they all undermine both the Constitution and the power of Congress.

Part I is an introduction to national security interests, the organizations within the government that each take on a life of their own and interpret both what our foreign policy should be and how it should be pursued in their own terms, how Presidential interests--predominantly defined by domestic constituencies--compete with the bureaucracy, and how the various players from career officials to political appointees to others play against one another.

Part II, the heart of the book, dissects the many strategies for manipulating decisions within the bureacracy. The "rules of the game" include the manipulation of which agency gets the lead (tending to suppress all dissenting opinions from other agencies) to which staffer in the White House has the lead (pre-determining the outcome), to means of using foreign officials, the press, and business leaders to present supporting opinions, to manipulating the President. [Although not cited in this book, having occurred many years later, John Lehman's ability to get President Reagan to pick three names for three aircraft carriers, was sufficient to blow away the Secretary of Defense view that only two were needed...as related in his Command of the Seas.]

Part III is, if you will, the guerrilla campaign that follows a decision. As George Shultz, then Secretary of State, is on record in Congressional testimony as saying--we paraphrase from recollection: "nothing in this town is ever decided--every decision has to be refought every single day." The author concludes his extraordinary book with the rules of the game for distorting, undermining, or extending decisions through implementation decisions and actions in the field far from Washington. We are reminded of Harry Truman's reflections on CIA, after he retired, to the effect that he had never intended for CIA to become an action arm or anything other than a central analysis organization.

I cannot recommend a more useful nor more important book to those who would seek to understand how a handful of neo-conservatives, led by Dick Cheney, were able to manipulate the President, Congress, the Armed Forces (including the silent Joint Chiefs of Staff) and the American public, into an unjust war with Iraq. Cheney knows the "rules of the game" better than anyone else including the President....this book reveals his methods of operation in a concise and easy to understand manner.

Other books that build on this one:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA, Fourth Edition
Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA

Books that go in the right direction:
A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship
The Paradox of American Power: Why the World's Only Superpower Can't Go It Alone
The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People
The Tao of Democracy: Using Co-Intelligence to Create a World That Works for All