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In the Shadow of the Oval Office: Profiles of the National Security Advisers and the Presidents They Served--From JFK to George W. Bush
The most solemn obligation of any president is to safeguard the nation's security. But the president cannot do this alone. He needs help. In the past half century, presidents have relied on their national security advisers to provide that help.
Who are these people, the powerful officials who operate in the shadow of the Oval Office, often out of public view and accountable only to the presidents who put them there? Some remain obscure even to this day. But quite a number have names that resonate far beyond the foreign policy elite: McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice.
Ivo Daalder and Mac Destler provide the first inside look at how presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have used their national security advisers to manage America's engagements with the outside world. They paint vivid portraits of the fourteen men and one woman who have occupied the coveted office in the West Wing, detailing their very different personalities, their relations with their presidents, and their policy successes and failures.
It all started with Kennedy and Bundy, the brilliant young Harvard dean who became the nation's first modern national security adviser. While Bundy served Kennedy well, he had difficulty with his successor. Lyndon Johnson needed reassurance more than advice, and Bundy wasn't always willing to give him that. Thus the basic lesson -- the president sets the tone and his aides must respond to that reality.
The man who learned the lesson best was someone who operated mainly in the shadows. Brent Scowcroft was the only adviser to serve two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Learning from others' failures, he found the winning formula: gain the trust of colleagues, build a collaborative policy process, and stay close to the president. This formula became the gold standard -- all four national security advisers who came after him aspired to be "like Brent."
The next president and national security adviser can learn not only from success, but also from failure. Rice stayed close to George W. Bush -- closer perhaps than any adviser before or since. But her closeness did not translate into running an effective policy process, as the disastrous decision to invade Iraq without a plan underscored. It would take years, and another national security aide, to persuade Bush that his Iraq policy was failing and to engineer a policy review that produced the "surge."
The national security adviser has one tough job. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. Daalder and Destler provide plenty of examples of both. This book is a fascinating look at the personalities and processes that shape policy and an indispensable guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully in the shadow of the Oval Office.
Who are these people, the powerful officials who operate in the shadow of the Oval Office, often out of public view and accountable only to the presidents who put them there? Some remain obscure even to this day. But quite a number have names that resonate far beyond the foreign policy elite: McGeorge Bundy, Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice.
Ivo Daalder and Mac Destler provide the first inside look at how presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush have used their national security advisers to manage America's engagements with the outside world. They paint vivid portraits of the fourteen men and one woman who have occupied the coveted office in the West Wing, detailing their very different personalities, their relations with their presidents, and their policy successes and failures.
It all started with Kennedy and Bundy, the brilliant young Harvard dean who became the nation's first modern national security adviser. While Bundy served Kennedy well, he had difficulty with his successor. Lyndon Johnson needed reassurance more than advice, and Bundy wasn't always willing to give him that. Thus the basic lesson -- the president sets the tone and his aides must respond to that reality.
The man who learned the lesson best was someone who operated mainly in the shadows. Brent Scowcroft was the only adviser to serve two presidents, Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush. Learning from others' failures, he found the winning formula: gain the trust of colleagues, build a collaborative policy process, and stay close to the president. This formula became the gold standard -- all four national security advisers who came after him aspired to be "like Brent."
The next president and national security adviser can learn not only from success, but also from failure. Rice stayed close to George W. Bush -- closer perhaps than any adviser before or since. But her closeness did not translate into running an effective policy process, as the disastrous decision to invade Iraq without a plan underscored. It would take years, and another national security aide, to persuade Bush that his Iraq policy was failing and to engineer a policy review that produced the "surge."
The national security adviser has one tough job. There are ways to do it well and ways to do it badly. Daalder and Destler provide plenty of examples of both. This book is a fascinating look at the personalities and processes that shape policy and an indispensable guide to those who want to understand how to operate successfully in the shadow of the Oval Office.
401 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2009
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About the author
Ivo H. Daalder
27 books20 followersIvo Daalder served on the national security council staff in the Clinton administration and is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. His most recent book, America Unbound: The Bush Revolution in Foreign Policy (with James M. Lindsay) won the 2003 Lionel Gelber Prize.
Daalder was educated at the University of Kent, Oxford University, and Georgetown University, and received his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He received a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs and an International Affairs Fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations. Daalder was an associate professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, where he was also director of research at the Center for International and Security Studies. He was a Senior Fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution from 1997 to 2009, where he was a specialist in European security, transatlantic relations, and national security affairs.
Daalder was educated at the University of Kent, Oxford University, and Georgetown University, and received his Ph.D. in political science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He was fellow at Harvard University's Center for Science and International Affairs and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. He received a Pew Faculty Fellowship in International Affairs and an International Affairs Fellowship of the Council on Foreign Relations. Daalder was an associate professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Affairs, where he was also director of research at the Center for International and Security Studies. He was a Senior Fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution from 1997 to 2009, where he was a specialist in European security, transatlantic relations, and national security affairs.
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
August 20, 2013
If I could summarize this book with two words, they would be absolutely absorbing. While the authors focus on the National Security Advisers from the 1950s on, some of the most effective portions of the text focus on the Presidents. The authors present the actions of the NSA in the context of both the world events which they were to analyze as well as the management styles of the president and the personal rivalries of the cabinet. While the anecdotes and "behind the scenes" items are worth the read in itself, the analysis of management styles of the presidents makes this book wonderful.
What emerges is a split between "hands on" Presidents (Nixon, Kennedy, Bush I), "delegators" (Reagan, Bush II) and those in between (LBJ,Clinton, Eisenhower). Nixon and Kissinger "demonstrate the policy power potential of the NSA position and the costs of a closed system." (93). Indeed, some of Kissinger's rivals in the cabinet did not even know what he was negotiating or who he was talking with. For example, as Nixon and Kissinger worked to open relations with China, Kissinger traveled to India with three different teams and three different sets of instructions:
--the first to talk to Indian officials, which was to divert attention from
--the second to work back channel communications with Pakistan, which was to divert attention from
--the third, which traveled to Beijing to meet with Zhou Enlai.
Kissinger emerges from these pages as the most powerful NSA while Condaleeza Rice emerges as perhaps the most ineffectual. The authors stress, and I agree, that this is more the fault of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld than Rice. One telling comment included from Cheney about Rumsfeld goes "When I look at Donald Rumsfeld, I see a great secretary of defense. When he looks at Dick Cheney, he sees a former assistant of Donald Rumsfeld." Rice was hamstrung from the start because of Cheney's ownership of the ear of President Bush. Rice was "Bush's enabler and enforcer...but was heavily constrained over how the other people in the administration did their jobs. (252). While not a sympathetic figure, you get the feeling that Rice was in over her head...and what might have happened if Rumsfeld was not such a self-serving egotist.
In the discussion of management, an "ad hoc" approach to foreign policy seems to be the most dangerous and most likely to cause difficulties. Clinton's 1st term and LBJ's work in Vietnam were ad hoc arrangements. GHW Bush came on the scene as one of the more qualified Presidents, with Brent Scowcroft, "perhaps the ideal NSA...the temperament of a team player...and, a person rare in Washington, willing to park his ego to ensure the process moved smoothly." (171) As a result, Bush I and his team emerge quite well from these pages. Clinton, on the other hand, emerges as someone not qualified for the job during his first term. He learned fast, thanks to his NSA Sandy Berger and Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
A key piece of analysis from the authors points to the "increasing domestic politicization of foreign affairs following the Cold War." (228) This in turn pushed Clinton and Christopher to make assistants "issue managers" who could speak to both the domestic and foreign repercussions of U.S. policy. All in all, especially for those interested in the inner workings of bureaucratic Washington, this book is highly recommended.
What emerges is a split between "hands on" Presidents (Nixon, Kennedy, Bush I), "delegators" (Reagan, Bush II) and those in between (LBJ,Clinton, Eisenhower). Nixon and Kissinger "demonstrate the policy power potential of the NSA position and the costs of a closed system." (93). Indeed, some of Kissinger's rivals in the cabinet did not even know what he was negotiating or who he was talking with. For example, as Nixon and Kissinger worked to open relations with China, Kissinger traveled to India with three different teams and three different sets of instructions:
--the first to talk to Indian officials, which was to divert attention from
--the second to work back channel communications with Pakistan, which was to divert attention from
--the third, which traveled to Beijing to meet with Zhou Enlai.
Kissinger emerges from these pages as the most powerful NSA while Condaleeza Rice emerges as perhaps the most ineffectual. The authors stress, and I agree, that this is more the fault of Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld than Rice. One telling comment included from Cheney about Rumsfeld goes "When I look at Donald Rumsfeld, I see a great secretary of defense. When he looks at Dick Cheney, he sees a former assistant of Donald Rumsfeld." Rice was hamstrung from the start because of Cheney's ownership of the ear of President Bush. Rice was "Bush's enabler and enforcer...but was heavily constrained over how the other people in the administration did their jobs. (252). While not a sympathetic figure, you get the feeling that Rice was in over her head...and what might have happened if Rumsfeld was not such a self-serving egotist.
In the discussion of management, an "ad hoc" approach to foreign policy seems to be the most dangerous and most likely to cause difficulties. Clinton's 1st term and LBJ's work in Vietnam were ad hoc arrangements. GHW Bush came on the scene as one of the more qualified Presidents, with Brent Scowcroft, "perhaps the ideal NSA...the temperament of a team player...and, a person rare in Washington, willing to park his ego to ensure the process moved smoothly." (171) As a result, Bush I and his team emerge quite well from these pages. Clinton, on the other hand, emerges as someone not qualified for the job during his first term. He learned fast, thanks to his NSA Sandy Berger and Secretary of State Warren Christopher.
A key piece of analysis from the authors points to the "increasing domestic politicization of foreign affairs following the Cold War." (228) This in turn pushed Clinton and Christopher to make assistants "issue managers" who could speak to both the domestic and foreign repercussions of U.S. policy. All in all, especially for those interested in the inner workings of bureaucratic Washington, this book is highly recommended.
January 6, 2019
For what this book is, it is actually pretty good; however, unless you are really looking to nerd out on this topic, all anyone needs is the final chapter. The final chapter summarizes the entire book, is much more readable than the previous chapters, and, obviously, only hits the high points -- as opposed to going into tediously tedious tedium of minutiae, which is what ALL THE PREVIOUS CHAPTERS ARE. Also, I couldn't escape the feeling that the bottom line is obvious: presidents who happened to be good leaders managed their NSC and APNSA well; presidents who were poor leaders or weak on foreign policy did not manage their NSC well. APNSAs who were humbly seeking to serve the president generally did well; APNSAs who were high on their own supposed brilliance or were not interested in advising didn't do so well. So...there you go.
Wow, it did take me six months and a day to finish this book. Perhaps that is a review in itself?
Wow, it did take me six months and a day to finish this book. Perhaps that is a review in itself?
March 28, 2025
My evaluation of this book changed a great deal throughout, but it generally improved as I continued to read. I would say that some chapters and profiles are a lot more worthwhile than others. If time is limited, stick to:
Kissinger
Brzezinski
Powell
Scowcroft !!
Rice !!!
Hadley !
I thought this could have used more detail about their personal biographies and their responsibilities in the role. A lot of it is pretty narrowly focused on how they responded to issues and their relationship with their president, rather than investigating what types of things they did in their role. The concluding chapter is really solid though.
Kissinger
Brzezinski
Powell
Scowcroft !!
Rice !!!
Hadley !
I thought this could have used more detail about their personal biographies and their responsibilities in the role. A lot of it is pretty narrowly focused on how they responded to issues and their relationship with their president, rather than investigating what types of things they did in their role. The concluding chapter is really solid though.
June 8, 2021
3.75. Interesting but definitely more for academic purposes than leisurely reading
June 9, 2025
Great history from the nsa side.
May 15, 2017
A well written book on an important topic. Certain areas were lacking were the framework of the Cold War and the thinking (interplay) between principals. Almost no discussion on nuclear arms. These in addition to bias push me to give a three star rating.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews