Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Peter W. Rodman (Author), Henry Kissinger (Introduction)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 6, 2009

A revelatory account from a Washington insider of how modern presidents have succeeded—and failed—in making foreign policy. An important contribution in the wake of recent American experiences abroad, and an essential book for the new administration, here is a fascinating, in-depth look at what actually happens in the Oval Office from a respected expert who has held high-level positions in several governments.

Illuminating the qualities of personal leadership—character, focus, determination, persuasiveness, and consistency—that determine a president’s ability to guide his staff, Peter W. Rodman makes clear how these qualities shape policy and determine how this policy is implemented. With telling anecdotes and trenchant analysis, he reminds us of the importance of a president’s vision for the world and of his ability to make this vision a reality.

Rodman’s tour through the past forty years recounts both high points and dismal lows. He shows how Nixon’s deep knowledge of the world combined with his personal paranoia to produce great victories (China) and deep failures (the demoralization of State and other departments). He demonstrates how Carter suffered from his own indecisiveness, and how Reagan’s determined focus in dealing with the Soviets contrasted with his lack of attention to the Middle East, which helped lead to the disastrous events in Beirut. And, finally, he illustrates how George W. Bush put too much stock in bureaucratic consensus and, until the surge, failed to push hard enough for new strategies in Iraq.

Rodman offers an original and telling survey of modern presidential policy-making, challenging many conventional accounts of events as well as many standard remedies. This is a vivid story of larger-than-life Washington personalities in action, an invaluable guide for our new president, and a deeply insightful primer on executive leadership.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

The late Rodman held high-level national security posts in every Republican administration since Nixon’s, and this posthumous work is his analysis of a president’s foreign-policy apparatus. Nominally, the CIA and the Departments of State and Defense are executive instruments, but in reality, they have institutional outlooks and agendas that can conflict with a president’s policies. Control of these bureaucracies, then, is Rodman’s topic, in which the statutory steering wheel—the National Security Council and its staff—looms large. Taking each president since Nixon in turn, Rodman appraises the personal interactions of foreign-policy chieftains with each other and with their chief executive, underlining whether comity or confusion reigned at the top. Rodman argues that a president’s fortunes in foreign policy depend on his clarity and decisiveness and on his inclination to work through the bureaucracies or to bypass them. Given the author’s judgment that a president’s national-security appointments presage whether he becomes their leader or their captive, observers of the new Obama administration and its inaugural moves in foreign affairs should find lessons in Rodman’s experienced outlook. --Gilbert Taylor

Review

"Presidential Command  should be on the short list of readings for members of the Barack Obama administration--as much for its pointing out the mistakes to avoid as for illustrating the procedures to emulate."
–Gary Hart, The New York Times Book Review
 
"A brilliant tutorial on the way presidents, regardless of party or ideology, have struggled to control the vast national security bureaucracy they inherit after taking the oath of office . . . Presidential Command should be required reading for President-elect Barack Obama's national-security team, and . . . for Mr. Obama himself."
–Jonathan Karl, Wall Street Journal

“Provocative . . . Highly insightful . . . Fascinating . . . Fair-minded.”
–Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

“Rodman’s rankings of presidential performance pack interest.”
–Harry Levins, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

“Insightful . . . [Rodman’s] grasp of the inherent conflict between State and National Security will probably make this book required reading in many parts of the Obama administration.”
–Sacramento Book Review

“Observers of the new Obama administration and its inaugural moves in foreign affairs should find lessons in Rodman’s experienced outlook.”
--Booklist

“Peter Rodman was incisive, wise, and fair and these qualities are reflected in his revealing, timely, and truly important account of how our recent presidents both succeeded and failed in exercising strategic ‘command’ over U.S. foreign policy.”
–Zbigniew Brzezinski

“This masterful series of studies, by one of America's most gifted and sensitive national security analysts, merges a scrupulous taste for clarity with a broad and humane vision of the American national interest. It is enlightening, penetrating and always fascinating.”
–Philip Bobbitt, author of Terror and Consent

 “In an age of sensational leaks and headline-grabbing exposés that illuminate very little, it is bracing to read Peter Rodman’s calm and reasoned dissection of foreign policy over the course of several recent administrations, which illuminates very much. His is the quiet voice of wisdom.”
–Robert D. Kaplan, author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos 

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: Knopf; Fifth Edition edition (January 6, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307269795
• ISBN-13: 978-0307269799
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 1.3 x 9.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #609,266 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Perfect Mix of Experience and Intellect, February 18, 2009

By 

Mike Doran (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

This book is a must read for anybody interested in United States foreign policy. It is gracefully written, and exudes a forthright integrity that can only come from deep, hands-on experience.

Peter Rodman served in senior posts in every Republican administration since Nixon, working at State, DoD, and the White House. He participated directly in many of the events that he analyzes. Despite this close personal association with the subject matter, throughout the book Rodman maintains a cold and penetrating objectivity.

Rodman does reveal his personal loyalties and policy preferences, but this book is utterly devoid of special pleading. Contrary to what some of the other reviewers have suggested, it does not attempt to sell this or that policy position or to glorify this or that personality. Its subject is the set of challenges that ALL presidents, Republican and Democratic, face when they try to set up an effective process for making national security policy.

I served in government with Rodman in the last administration. Having come from academia with no previous policy experience, his book has helped me enormously to make some sense out of what I learned on the inside. On the outside, policy analysis and debate is a purely intellectual activity. On the inside, the intellectual component is overshadowed by the interplay between personalities and bureaucracies that this book so deftly describes.

Peter Rodman passed away last August. He was a very gentle and intelligent man. While I am thankful that he managed to leave us this book (as well as his other work, MORE PRECIOUS THAN PEACE), its unique quality makes one sadly aware of how much more he had to offer as a scholar.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars PRESIDENTIAL COMMAND, July 18, 2010

By 

Jesus L Gutierrez (Laredo,Texas) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

I highly recommend this book for people who are interested in foreign policy. Rodman presents our former presidents in action with a lot of details which are unkown to most of us.

The book make me think who is the most influential person in foreign policy in President Obama's Administration. The Secretary of State? The Secretary of Defense? The head of the Pentagon? The National Security Advisor?

I hope we do not have a headless chicken operation in foreign policy. As we learned from Peter Rodman's book, each president has a particular management style in foreign policy. Traditionaly,the key person who advice the president has a well rounded intelectual education in geopolitics; good management skills; without a personal agenda to advance his or her own interest, and above all, that person has the full trust of the president.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Presidents Will Ignore this Book at their Peril, April 22, 2009

By 

T. Berner (New York, New York) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Presidential Command: Power, Leadership, and the Making of Foreign Policy from Richard Nixon to George W. Bush (Hardcover)

It is commonplace among Democrats to think that they are smarter than Republicans and so can ignore the experience of Republican Presidents and the advice of Republican intellectuals. This just lays the foundation for the impotence and incompetence of Democratic Administrations. Presidential Command should be on the top of President Obama's reading list, but because it was written by someone who served in a number of Republican Administrations, it will be ignored.

And that is unfortunate to all Americans (but especially Democrats who want their agenda to succeed), because the late Mr. Rodman's message is that all politicians, left or right (and, therefore, the people who elect them), have to control the bureaucracy - the "Permanent Government" - if they want to accomplish what they set out to do.

A good example of this is the recent series of protocol blunders in President Obama's meetings with the U.K.'s Queen and Prime Minister. This were embarrassing gaffs, made worse by the Daily Telegraph's interview with a State Department spokesman, all of which merely succeeded in alienating an old ally at a time when the new Administration needed to get its support on a variety of issues. What caused this? The State Department, after all, has an Office of Protocol designed specifically to prevent these unneccessary blunders from occurring. Is the President too arrogant to listen to advisors? Did Secretary Clinton deliberately undermine him? Perhaps, but it is more likely that the State Department aparatchiks just sat on their hands to put the new President in his place.

Mr. Rodman examines the foreign policy of every President between Nixon and Bush 2 - and more importantly, the way each Administration structures its advisors to implement its foreign policy. He has good things and bad things to say about each Administration, Democrat or Republican, and an unbiased observer would be hard put to determine the late Mr. Rodman's own sympathies, focused as he is on the effectiveness of elected officials getting the bureaucracy to follow orders (as an aside, Mr. Rodman's advice also applies to domestic policy, although he doesn't cover that subject).

But will President Obama listen before it's too late for him to make his mark, whatever that may be? It seems doubtful. Just looking at the two negative reviews on Amazon to date, for instance, it is clear that at least one, and possibly both, of the critics either didn't read the book or didn't understand it. Mr. Rodman was a protege of Henry Kissinger, but the Nixon Kissinger structure of foreign policy comes into criticism which is quite harsh for the soft spoken, always gentlemanly author. Several times in the book, he clearly argues that the Nixon model, while effective, is a failure. In fact, my feelings toward Henry Kissinger were improved by the fact that he wrote a generous preface to someone who criticizes him so strongly.

I hope someone updates this book twenty years down the road because we are going to be in for an interesting ride and we will need someone with as clear and objective a vision as the late Mr. Rodman to offer guidance.