Customer Reviews

Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power

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The arrogance and naiveté of the National Security Council and its principal protagonists is ably reflected in the title. The pretentiousness and unreality of "Running the World" is fittingly complemented by a cover photo of a Cabinet meeting, not an NSC meeting-the latter take place in crummy little rooms with poor ventilation, not at all the kind of image one wants as an Emperor, naked or not.

There are three consistent and very useful themes throughout the book that make it extraordinarily valuable to any student of the pathologies of the national security "decision" process (I use that term *very* loosely).

First, that each Administration allows personal ambitions and an almost pathological desire for "differentiation" from the previous Administration to first destroy and then slowly rebuilt the NSC. Hence, it is dysfunctional much of the time, regardless of the ideology prevailing at the time.

The second prevailing theme, one that Amy Zegart captured so well in her seminal scholarly work, "Flawed by Design," is the perpetual dysfunctionality, a constant dysfunctionality, between the Departments of State and Defense, and between Defense and the loosely managed U.S. Intelligence Community. The bottom line is that personalities and politics, not intelligence nor wisdom, are the prevailing drivers of U.S. national security.

Lastly, the irrelevance of secret intelligence to the White House decision process, regardless of what Administration is in power, is documented. Page 361 is an especially good indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in particular, and with specific reference to its complete incompetence at economic intelligence needed by the Department of the Treasury. In general, intelligence in this book is portrayed, accurately, as either irrelevant or a pawn to the politically-driven preferences of the White House.

This is not a scholarly work, but merits great credit for the many interviews. Over-all the author has leveraged close access to a large variety of U.S.players over time, while not engaging the other players, including foreign players, private sector players, and non-governmental players. The book, even with its focus only on US players would have benefited from an annex charting and comparing the approaches of various NSC iterations to various issues and topics, to include number of action officers, number of meetings, and number of decision papers, but that kind of hard work does not appear to have been part of the plan. There is also little mention of the role lobbying and blatant corruption play in making foreign and security policy--for example, there is no mention of how the White House and the U.S. Senate, from 1974-1979, knew full well that Peak Oil (the end of cheap oil) had arrived, but in what may well be the most treasonous and retrospectively impeachable offence against the public interest, both the White House and the Senators decided to "live the dream" and waste 25 years during which we could have achieved energy independence and sanity.

The book, by virtue of its focus on primary research, does not address the substantive literature on global issues, nor the scholarly and practical literature on the NSC. Morton Halperin's seminal work on "Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy" and other works on the NSC such as those edited by Dr. Loch Johnson, the foremost academic observer of secrecy and policy, are essential complements to this author's offering.

The book whitewashes Tony Lake, whose incapacity as an advisor merits note. Most of what the author puts forward about Lake is contradicted by other accounts including those of Dick Clarke, who says he could not get Lake's support until the time came for the latter to leave government and write a book. Naturally there are different points of view.

The book is a hatchet job on the Reagan era, even catty in its tone, but the author avoids appearing to be a sycophant to Bush II in that he very properly documents the grotesque dysfunctionality of the Bush II team (and the extraordinary competence of Vice President Cheney in getting his way as co-President). The author has done a good job of leading up to a severe indictment of the Bush II national security decision process, and excels at showing how Condi Rice was "run over" and side-lined by Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neo-conservatives. His documentation on Cheney as a de facto prime minister is quite good, and these few pages are alone worth the price of the book. Pages 428-429 are "hot" and make it clear that the Bush II Administration, where Cheney was given the terrorism mandate in passing (something not widely known to the public), chose to emphasize invading Iraq, national missile defense, and energy sweetheart deals over counter-terrorism during the critical three months leading to 9-11.

There are a few disconcerting errors or failures in the book. In lambasting Reagan for invading Grenada, he says that 8,612 medals were handed out. Had he troubled to check with the military, he might have learned the difference between medals and campaign ribbons. He seriously over-sells both Burger and Lake while ignoring the blatant manner in which the Clinton Administration, and Madeline Albright in particular, sought to down-play terrorism to the point of suppressing alarmist reporting and ignoring or side-lining Dick Clarke. He claims, on page 387, that the Clinton Administration "foiled plots against trans-Pacific jumbo jet traffic." Not so fast. The terrorist blew himself up in the Philippines prior to executing the plot, which was completely undetected by U.S. intelligence, and it was that error that revealed the plot when Philippine authorities responded to the resulting fire. On page 457 he makes the observation that the Congress has less turnover than the Soviet politburo. This should have been credited to Peggy Noonan and Ronald Reagan, who used it in an address to a joint session of Congress. He ends the book wisely, saying, "The ultimate check is an educated American public," which thought tallies nicely with Thomas Jefferson, who said "A Nation's best defense is an educated citizenry."

This is a book that needed to be written. It documents the pathetic manner in which U.S. national security is in the hands of a small group of people that place loyalty to one another above intelligence, wisdom, and strategic thinking. We all suffer. It is a primary reference for all who would wish to understand why the greatest Nation on the planet has such a pathetic lack of strategic culture, vision, process, and outcome.

The Exective, and the Congress, and Broken. Here are some other books, with my reviews:
Vice: Dick Cheney and the Hijacking of the American Presidency
The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11
State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration
A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies
Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush's War on Iraq
Running on Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties Are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It
The Broken Branch: How Congress Is Failing America and How to Get It Back on Track (Institutions of American Democracy)
Breach of Trust: How Washington Turns Outsiders Into Insiders
The Battle for the Soul of Capitalism

For this new book by David J. Rothkopf, one can ignore the cover and title as sales hype for the book for this is a solid history and analysis of the NSC from around 1945 to the present day; it is a 550 page book in small font so it is fairly detailed and lengthy, generally an impressive book in terms of volume of information, detail, and scope; the book is mainly text and notes but it has a few pictures. It gives an up close look at the workings of the NSC for various administrations going back to approximately 1945 - 46, and The National Security Act of July 26, 1947, which was used to create the National Security Council under Truman. The early role of the NSC was to coordinate other departments and act mostly in an advisory role to the preseident.

The NSC was started under Truman but became much more important under Eisenhower, who as a former general, appreciated good preparation, research, and security planning of foreign policy. The NSC included the President who was the chairman, the Vice President, Secretaries of State and Defense, and Director of the Office of Defense Mobilization. Also, other cabinet members participated including the Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the JCS, and the Director of Central Intelligence. This form of the NSC, refined by Ike, has continued through to the present day, with the formality and impact of the NSC rising and falling, from one administration to the next, depending on the president and how he viewed and utilized his advisers. Kennedy did water down Eisenhower's NSC a bit and changed the NSC to permit the Special Assistant for National Security Affairs to in effect run the committe, but the overall impotance of the NSC was restored somewhat by Kissinger working for Nixon.

I guess what I found interesting about the book was the idea that the author belives that Kissinger, especially in the time just before the Nixon resignation, changed the importance of the NSC as a body. It is generally well know Kissinger was involved in both policy-making and implementation. In the early days of the Nixon administration, Kissinger kept a low public profile at the NSC - before the Nixon visit to China - but he emerged after that trip as a media star - and continued that during his famous Middle East shuttle diplomacy. In a very interesting section of the book, we learn how Kissinger convened a meeting of the NSC while Nixon slept prior to his resignation and Kissinger on his own, but chairing the NSC as an assistant to the president or in effect acting as the president, put the US armed forces on a high DEFCON alert status - something that normally only the president would do. Similarly, after Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford was not comfortable with Kissinger but opted to keep him on for the sake of continuity. In addition, and as an example, the author gives us some insight into the Kissinger - Arthur Schlesinger rivavlry, that was won out by Kissinger, but Kissiger was sometimes outmanoeuvered by Rumsfeld in the Ford administration.

The book goes on to outline the long Kissinger legacity at the NSC where many subsequent advisers and members had direct and indirect ties to Kissinger. It chronicles the changes under Carter and the use of the NSC by Clinton, but Kissinger dominates a large central section of the book. The importance of the NSC rose and fell with subsequent administrations including the Reagan and Bush Republican administrations, but the ghost of Kissiger lingered on through people such as Cheney and Rumsfeld, and other advisers, who have direct and indirect links back to the Kissinger era.

This is an impressive and a detailed look into the workings, the history, the people, the internal politics, the accomplishments, and the mistakes made by the National Security Council. Most readers of American history and politics will enjoy and appreciate the book. Incidentally, the author himself has ties to Kissinger through Kissinger Associates. Also, he is a well known author of five other books, and has lectured at Columbia.
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We certainly ain't in Kansas anymore. We've gone international in a big way in the last 60 years. Decision making on this level has changed. Whether you realize it or not could be based soley on whether you've read this book, or not."Running The World" by David Rothkopf. It's a great (sometimes funny, sometimes scary)look into the function of the NSC, probably the most important branch of the government...that no one knows about. As far as a ruling body, the National Security Council are the CEOs of our government. Rothkopf is a great storyteller and as the former Managing Director of Kissinger Associates and Deputy Under Secretary of Commerce (Clinton), he's been involved with domestic and international policy from the inside. He has the ability to captivate and inspire thought and ideas. Rothkopf himself coined the now-so-popular phrase "Emerging Markets" that has been spoken by Presidents Clinton and Bush. This was a great first read for me for the summer, it'll be a tough act to follow.

David Rothkopf, CEO of both Intellibridge and the consulting firm the Rothkopf Group, has written an excellent historical narrative of the National Security Council, the committee "Running the World."

Rothkopf combines both solid scholarship and his own personal recollections as being a senior member of the Clinton administration to paint a compelling picture of the highest echelons of the national security apparatus of the United States. Rothkopf's main thesis is that the people who make sometimes world and history altering decisions are not extraordinary; they are not superhuman. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, not unlike most of humanity. But for whatever reason they have made it into positions of incredible power.

It is the importance of individuals that is the driving force of Rothkopf's story. The NSC has had its ups and downs. It played a strictly advisory role in its early years; while in the late 1960s to mid `70s was dominated by one man: Henry Kissinger. Mismanagement of the NSC nearly brought down President Reagan. However, just a few years later perhaps the most efficient and well run NSC in history was guided by Brent Scowcroft and George H.W. Bush through the first Persian Gulf War and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It is the role of individuals, especially the official chair of the NSC, the president, to shepherd U.S. national security policy through good and bad times. Rothkopf's biggest contribution is to paint a vivid picture of the role of individuals. For that, I highly recommend this book.

His following book, Superclass was way better and easier to read. Start with that first. You have to be a historian to appreciate the detail that Running the World presents. Not a bad read, but long winded and detailed to the max. Decent addition to the historian library. But you probably wont be reading this one multiple times as you would Superclass.

This book takes the reader from the beginning of the National Security Council (NSC) up through the Clinton administration.

It describes how the NSC has evolved over time and the nature of its functioning and how different Presidents utilized its advice.

As the NSC is instrumental in providing U.S. national security advice to the President, this book is an important one in the study of Presidential power, decisionmaking and the national security policymaking.

It describes the policymaking process and the inter-agency and bureaucratic formulation of policy and how different Presidents structured the functioning of the NSC differently to suit their needs or what they and their top advisors deemed to be the optimal national security policymaking structure.

I found the book to be excellent, engaging, and thorough study. I particularly was interested in learning about how Henry Kissinger and his numerous proteges that worked with him and eventually held their own top positions in government had a significant and substantive impact on U.S. national security policy for the last 30+ years.

This book is required reading for the student of U.S. national security policy formulation.

David J. Rothkopf was a junior member of the Clinton administration. In this fascinating book, he studies the post-1947 record of the American foreign policy élite, the National Security Council and its staff, about 200 people. This exclusive establishment, which he actually calls an `aristocracy', is the part of the US ruling class that runs national policy across Republican and Democrat administrations.

He contrasts 1947 with post-2001, finding `a stunningly different set of conclusions about what to do with American power and prestige'. He supports the multilateralism of NATO, the Marshall Plan, the IMF, the World Bank and the UN, under the slogan of globalisation, and argues against Bush's unilateralism, which puts the USA `above and beyond the influence of global institutions or the rule of law'. He agrees with Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, that terrorism is a tactic not an enemy.

He notes `the debacle in Iraq', yet misunderstands the region completely when he writes, "it is the decay of Middle Eastern civilisation that is the threat to us." Not the US state's unpopular alliances with the Saudi and Israeli states then!

He describes the USA's whole political system as suffering "an irresponsible separation between the will of the majority of America and the will of the representatives of the American people." But if the people's supposed representatives do not represent them, how can this be a democracy?

Finally, Rothkopf warns, "The real strategic threats come from those who would offer an alternative to our leadership." These "will argue that our system has exacerbated rather than resolved basic problems of inequity in the world." With some justice, since, as he admits, "the majority of the world's population are today effectively disenfranchised from reaping the benefit of the world we have been leading." If this US leadership, exercised through the institutions which he so admires, has not benefited the majority of the world's people, what good is it?

David J Rothkopf has written a valuable book about a government agency that one hears very little about in the daily news. "Running the World" is an insider's account of the inner workings of the National Security Council (created by the National Security Act of 1947). The National Security Council is an executive body within the White House that includes cabinet level officials involved in diplomacy and defense. Rothkopf's account is about the key players that were responsible for the successes and failures of the National Security Council's management of America's foreign policy since the end of World War II.

Rothkopf's insider credentials are impressive: he is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, he was under-secretary of commerce during the Clinton Administration, he served as managing director of Kissinger and Associates, he also served as Chairman and CEO of Intellibridge, and he is currently visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

There is an interesting section in this book called "Two Degrees of Henry Kissinger," which shows that the 13 national security advisors (NSAs) that followed Kissinger have either worked with him, for him, or worked with or for one of the members of his staff.

After Nixon was elected President, Kissinger was appointed NSA. Kissinger not only assembled one of the most talented teams in the history of the NSC (Lawrence Eagleberger, Anthony Lake, Alexander Haig, Brent Scowcroft, and Robert MacFarlane), he also took control, either directly or indirectly, of all the interagency policy groups. Kissinger was Nixon's entire inner circle in matters of foreign policy.

When the Watergate scandel broke, Nixon became distracted and virtually left Kissinger to his own devices. As a result, Kissinger may have been the most powerful non-elected official in American history and certainly every NSA since has operated in his shadow.

The title of this book "Running the World" is more than a little pretentious. As has been noted by other reviewers, it is an account of the old boys network written by an old boy and tends toward self-importance. A more accurate and humble title would have been the one I chose for this review: "Global Crisis Management." The NSC does not run the world. The NSC, which consists of the senior cabinet members and White House staff members, is more than likely trying to control crises as they occur than trying to direct the course of events. And as Rothkopf makes clear, the response to a given crisis depends very much on the personalities of the members who are in the president's favor at the given moment.

Rothkopf is very critical of the current Bush Administration's track record. He argues that they have lost sight of the liberal internationalist values set forth by Truman at the end of World War II when the council was founded. At the time, the US enjoyed a position of power that was not unlike its position after 9/11. The Truman Adminsistration established international institutions that deferred America's power to the good of international system. The Bush Administration, under the sway of Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other neoconservatives, decided to reassert American national interest through the use of military force, the consequences of which we are still suffering today.

Critics of this book have called Rothkopf an apologist for the Clinton administration. Far from it, Rothkopf has enumerated the foreign policy disasters that occured during Clinton's watch: namely, the failures in Somalia, Bosnia, Haiti, and Rwanda. The picture that Rothkopf paints of the NSC is not one that runs the world but rather one that tries to maintain the status quo in the face of an ever-changing world.

I read this book just after finishing Gerhard Weinberg's excellent book A World at Arms which spent a lot of time on Churchill and Roosevelt basically running World War II. Roosevelt would send a trusted aid out on a mission once in a while, but he esentially ran the War by himself. Truman wasn't even aware of the Atomic Bomb project until after Roosevelt's death. Stalin and Churchill were aware, but not Truman.

It makes good sense that Truman then created the National Security Council, and it's no surprise that he included the vice president as a member. It's also not much of a surprise that also created by the same legislation the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Central Intelligence Agency. After all the interservice rivalries Army vs. Navy and FBI vs. OSS during World War II were pathetic.

In this exhaustive history of the NSC Mr. Rothkopf discusses the working relationship between the President and the NSC since its birth. As you would expect, the organization has waxed and waned depending on the individuals involved. A major influence on the NSC from the late sixties through about 1990 has been Henry Kissinger whose influence has extended far beyond his actual time in office.

The conclusion I reach after reading this book is that the NSC isn't perfect, what is, but it's a hell of a lot better than the way Roosevelt did it. This book is a good introduction to how one rather obscure part of our Government works.

Why the rush? There are a surprising number of little mistakes that should have been picked up in the editing process. Granted, the topic is timely and important, but would the world have collapsed if the publishers held on to the book for an extra month for another round of read-throughs? Also, there is just too much writing. Editors should have crossed out a lot of unnecessary stuff.

There are two reasons I point out one factual error I came across. First, it makes me feel smarter. That is less important to everyone else, but it makes me feel good. Second, if I found one error, people who specialize in other areas may have noticed other errors, and those should be pointed out. Anyway, on pages 218-219, Rothkopf describes Reagan's National Security Planning Group (NSPG) as having been "chaired by Bush and [it] ended up dealing with issues like the spate of terrorist attacks and other crises that confronted the administration." The NSPG did indeed deal with important issues, and in some sense it probably dealt with the issues he pointed out, but Rothkopf is confusing the NSPG with the Crisis Management Team, which later became the Special Situations Group, both of which were chaired by VP Bush. The NSPG, however, was more accurately described by Bush's VP chief of staff, Craig Fuller: "The [NSPG] is the most restricted national security council meeting that is called. It is usually confined to the principals, meaning the Secretaries of State, Defense, Vice President, ... the Director of Central Intelligence, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, the President's Chief of Staff, [the National Security Adviser and deputy NSA] and ... usually the Attorney General and Secretary of the Treasury, but it can be expanded depending on the topic." No more than a dozen people usually attended, and only the President and Vice President brought their chiefs of staff (p. 923). There were usually two NSPG meetings per month. The Tower Commission report noted that the NSC meetings were becoming a bit too big for productive discussions among the principals, so the President turned to the NSPG. And from everything I have read, Reagan was at most of the meetings. This is not a major error, but at the same time, the NSPG was an incredibly important component of Reagan Administration foreign/national security policy. Perhaps there are other errors.

One of the funnier errors: the Washington Post Book World review pointed out that the picture on the cover is more likely from a Cabinet meeting. Elaine Chao, Secretary of Labor, who is not on the NSC, is clearly visible in the picture. Was it really that difficult to come up with a better, more accurate picture? If people do judge books by the cover, this one has not put its best foot forward.

The good stuff: Rothkopf's description of policy viewpoints is interesting. Rather than the constant chatter about the personal spats between major members of foreign policy (although those are included in the book too), we should hear more about what these people think. This important stuff is shaping the world. Another great aspect of the book is that Rothkopf got an amazing amount of access to the key players through interviews. These are the people who have shaped the world over the past four or so decades. The quotations, although a bit long, are practically a primary source of data for other researchers. Hopefully someday Rothkopf will make his interview transcripts available to other researchers. Great stuff there.