Struggle for the Turf

Extract

For anyone whose job is to study the United States, the memoirs of its statesmen provide more than merely entertaining reading. They not only give you a closer insight into the “kitchen” of statesmanship and political decision making; they also provide an opportunity to check the assumptions and paradigms that were constructed earlier to analyze the policy of any particular administration. The memoirs confirm that in spite of hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the U.S. press that discuss specific policies, as well as daily debates in Congress and its committees, press conferences, and official statements, the policy process is not as open as it might seem at first glance. Rather, American foreign policy is made within a very restricted circle of the “initiated”—official and unofficial presidential advisers, including selected members of the Cabinet.