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

by David Rothkopf (Author)
Key Phrases: policy inner circle, foreign policy principals, deputy national security advisor, United States, White House, State Department (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
The NSC is a semi-defined group—the president, vice president, secretaries of defense and state, national security adviser and staff, and other officials as needed—with the open-ended mission of helping the president decide and coordinate military and foreign policy. Its institutional vagueness makes it an ill-chosen framework for this engaging but unfocused study of postwar American policy making. Working from interviews with NSC members, Rothkopf, an academic and Clinton administration commerce official, examines the NSC's history from its 1947 inception onward, reviewing its performance in major foreign policy crises and tracing the rising influence of the NSA post. He delves into bureaucratic minutiae, but focuses on such "Shakespearean" human factors as the character and managerial style of the president and the personal "chemistry" and patronage networks among his cabinet and advisers. Rothkopf prefers a centrist, internationalist security policy, with experienced hands restraining ideologues; he therefore gives high marks to the NSC under Nixon, Carter and Bush 41, while castigating the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations. He presents a wealth of information, but the NSC's ad hoc purview, unstable structure and personality-driven dynamics make it hard to discern a coherent outline of American policy among its wranglings.
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Review
"A timely and important new book." -- New York Times, Thomas Friedman, May 27, 2005

"David Rothkopf has written an enlightening insider's history of what he calls 'the committee in charge of running the world" -- Evan Thomas, New York Times Book Review, June 26, 2005

"The historical narrative is like catnip for conspiracy theorists. The NSC is the ultimate Washington insiders club." -- Dan Dunsky, Toronto Globe & Mail, June 25, 2005

RRRothkopf's interest in process may be most valuable when [it] wends its way to the decision-making apparatus of the administration. -- Washington Post Book World, July 17, 2005

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 576 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs (May 31, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1586482483
• ISBN-13: 978-1586482480
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #264,411 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

49 of 59 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Documents Arrogance and Naivete of Top Executive Officials, September 11, 2005

By	Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)

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

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Generally an Impressive Effort - Lots of Detail on Kissinger, November 30, 2005

By	J. E. Robinson - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

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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12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Pay No Attention To That Man Behind The Curtain...", June 14, 2005

By	Mark Holechek "CEO, MarkMedia.US" (NYC/USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.