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National Security Advice to U.S. Presidents: Some Lessons from Thirty Years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

I. M. Destler
I. M. Destler
Affiliation:
Brookings Institution
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Abstract

Since 1947 the major formal institution for channeling national security advice to Presidents has been the National Security Council. The Council has operated (1) as a forum where senior officials meet with the President; (2) as a focal point for formal policy planning and decision processes; and (3) as an umbrella for establishment of a Presidential foreign policy staff. The first was the goal of its proponents; the last is what it has most importantly become. But the N.S.C. has reflected the relationships among each administration's top officials more than it has shaped them; hence the need to think of broader advisory “systems” combining the formal and the informal. Among the variables shaping such systems are; a President's particular organizational sense; his attitude toward formality and regularity; whether he has (and wants) strong Cabinet officials; how his key advisers work out their role relationships and jurisdictional boundaries; how widely he casts his net for advce; how broad a range of substantive issue involvement he seeks; how much he seeks operational involvement; and his attitude toward divided counsel and interpersonal conflict.

Prescriptions about foreign policy advisory systems tend to stress the President's role as decision maker; they should focus also on the oft-competing role of effective Presidential leadership in getting policies and decisions executed. The importance of execution argues for giving the Secretary of State primacy over other advisers; the need to protect the President's decision authority argues for a White House assistant independent of the Secretary, though perhaps with reduced rank. Presidents also need better advice on the domestic politics of U.S. foreign policy, and each could profit from a “mid-term system review” after his institutions and advisory relationships have taken shape.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 29 , Issue 2 , January 1977 , pp. 143 - 176
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1977

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References

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7 Of course, one may argue that the establishment of the Secretary of Defense was of equal if not greater importance. Indeed, in the immediate postwar years the phrase “national security” was considered a near-synonym of “national defense”: James Forrestal, as Secretary of the Navy, originally backed the establishment of the N.S.C. as an alternative to defense unification. When both the Council and the Secretary of Defense were established by the National Security Act of 1947, the latter was described in the Act as the President's principal adviser in the field of “national security.” In short order, however, the N.S.C. became heavily involved in State Department and for- eign policy business, an involvement reflected in Truman's early order that the Secretary of State chair the Council in his absence. “National security policy” then became a nearsynonym of foreign policy, or at least of its “security” or “political-military” components. The latter usage is employed in this article.

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15 The Secretary of the Treasury has never been a formal member of the N.S.C, but was regularly invited to Council meetings under Eisenhower and most other postwar Presidents. The Murphy Commission proposed that he be added as a statutory member in view of the increased importance of economic relations in foreign policy. Congress passed legislation to this end in December 1975, but President Ford vetoed it, declaring that “adequate arrangements for providing advice to the President on the integration of economic and foreign policy already exist.”

16 Quoted in Sorensen (fn. 3), 284.

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21 On the operations of the Nixon-Kissinger system generally, see esp. Chester Crocker, “The Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council System, 1969–1972: A Study in Foreign Policy Management,” in National Academy of Public Administration, “Making Organizational Change Effective: Case Studies of Attempted Reforms in Foreign Affairs,” Appendix O (Vol. 6) to the Murphy Commission Report (fn. 8), 79–99; and Destler, (fn. 9), chap. 5 and Epilogue. For an insider's account of how the system was established, see Morton H. Halperin, “The 1969 NSC System,” unpub. paper prepared for the Murphy Commission.

22 Washington Post, November 9, 1973.

23 Information provided by the N.S.C. staff, covering the period through April 28, 1976.

24 New York Times, May 13, 1975; The New Republic, June 7, 1975, p. 8; and information provided by N.S.C. staff.

25 The standard account of this episode is Hammond, Paul Y., “NSC-68: Prologue to Rearmament,” in Schilling, Warner and others, Strategy, Politics, and Defense Budgets (New York: Columbia University Press 1962)Google Scholar.

26 Johnson (fn. 9), 714.

27 Acheson, “Thoughts on Thought in High Places,” reprinted in Jackson Subcommittee (fn. 9), II, 292.

28 Bundy's letter to Senator Henry Jackson, in Jackson Subcommittee (fn. 9), I, 1338.

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31 For a careful, illuminating account of the development of this role, and of conflicts among the Special Assistant's roles, see Hall (fn. 9).

32 On Rostow's functions, see Moose (fn. 9), 85–86.

33 The quote is from the first federal Budget Director, General Charles G. Dawes, who used to brief his successors about the job and end with the following: “Young man, if you retain nothing else that I have told you, remember this: Cabinet members are Vice Presidents in charge of spending, and as such they are the natural enemies of the President. Good day.” Quoted by Gordon, Kermit, “The Budget Director,” in Cronin, Thomas E. and Greenberg, Sanford D., eds., The Presidential Advisory System (New York: Harper and Row 1969), 61Google Scholar. It should perhaps be noted that Dawes was probably referring mainly to Cabinet members in charge of domestic Departments, with strong program interests and supporting constituencies.

34 Neustadt, “Approaches to Staffing the Presidency: Notes on FDR and JFK” in Altshuler (fn. 9), 119.

35 Quoted in the New York Times, August 23, 1973.

36 On “competitive,” “collegial,” and “formalistic” management patterns in general Presidential decision making, see Johnson, Richard T., “Presidential Style,” in Wildavsky, Aaron, ed., Perspectives on the Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown 1975), 262–300Google Scholar.

37 The discussion will avoid duplication of the more comprehensive organizational proposals on foreign affairs presented in Destler (fn. 9), chap. 9.

38 See, for example, George (fns. 29 and 9); Hall (fn. 9); and Janis, Irving L., Victims of Groupthink (Boston: Hougliton Mifflin 1972)Google Scholar.

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40 Quoted in Hoopes, Townsend, The Limits of Intervention (New York: David McKay 1969), 90Google Scholar.

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52 Allison, “Overview of Findings and Recommendations From Defense and Arms Control Cases,” Appendix K (Volume 4) to the Murphy Commission Report (fn. 8), 38. The language quoted is in reference to a White House staffing proposal put forward by Francis Bator.

53 Robert H. Johnson, for example, has suggested eliminating the N.S.C. and other parallel bodies, replacing them with less formal Cabinet-level councils appropriate to particular problems under consideration, and supporting them all with a unified “Cabinet staff.” One of “perhaps four deputies” would handle “foreign security” issues, another would concentrate on “international interdependence” issues; the other two would cover domestic matters. (See, for example, his “Managing Interdependence: Restructuring the U.S. Government,” in John Sewell, ed., The U.S. and World Development: Agenda for Action igyy [Overseas Development Council, forthcoming].) Graham T. Allison and Peter L. Szanton have urged that “an executive committee of the Cabinet become the chief forum for high-level review and decision of all major issues combining ‘foreign,’ ‘domestic,’ and ‘economic’ implications.” See Remaining Foreign Policy: The Organizational Connection (New York: Basic Books 1976), chap. 4Google Scholar. This “ExCab” would be supported by a staff incorporating those of the N.S.C., the Domestic Council, and the Economic Policy Board.

Although the implications of such proposals require analysis beyond the scope of this article, they should certainly not be dismissed as lightly as the Murphy Commission Report (fn. 8), 36, rejects a similar proposal. Employing the Cabinet in this way would not necessarily prove “cumbersome and inefficient” because the Cabinet would seldom need to meet as a whole—the real business would be done by ExCab, the Staff, or the particular Cabinet subgroups.

A key issue here is whether current governmental organization gives undue prominence to national security concerns and excessive influence to national security institutions. Graham Allison so argues in his Murphy Commission studies. And though the “militarization of American foreign policy” in the fifties and sixties seems to have had causes mainly outside the structure of Presidential advisory institutions, the continuing institutional emphasis on national security policy as a relatively separate and superior sphere is certainly open to question today. Broadening the N.S.C. and staff to encompass general Presidential policy would remedy these limitations. If such reform were to name the highest aide working full time on national security a Deputy Assistant to the President, it would certainly make him less likely to eclipse Cabinet members. The question then arises, of course, whether he would have enough leverage at that level to play the staff role strongly and effectively. Certainly he and the other major deputies would need to deal directly with the President.

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55 Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report of February 15, 1975, for example, indicated that the request had “little support.”

56 Hammond (fn. 9), 154.

57 This might prove easier if one of the Cabinet staff proposals noted in footnote 53 was adopted.

58 Johnson (fn. 53), chap. 5.

59 Galbraith, , Ambassador's Journal (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1969), 7Google Scholar.