Harold Brown: Offsetting the Soviet Military Challenge, 1977-1981

Secretaries of Defense Historical Series #9

by Edward C. Keefer

THE NINTH VOLUME IN THE Secretaries of Defense Historical Series focuses on President Jimmy Carter's defense secretary, Harold Brown, who brought stability to an office that had seen three different secretaries in the last four years under the Nixon-Ford administrations. When Brown began his tenure in January 1977, he and his staff confronted an array of national security and international policy concerns, especially the Warsaw Pact's conventional and nuclear theater forces superiority over NATO and the Soviet threat to U.S. land-based missiles. Within the context of the national security and foreign policy challenges of Carter's administration, this volume describes the role of the Pentagon chief, the advice he gave the president, and his interactions with other senior political and military leaders. It is also a history of the management of the Defense Department, including the continual development of the All-Volunteer Force and the organizational changes that saw improved policy formulation and acquisition decisions.

815 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Edward C. Keefer received a PH.D in history from Michigan State University in 1974. For 34 years he was an editor of the U.S. Department of State’s official documentary series, Foreign Relations of the United States, serving as the General Editor of the series from 2002 until his retirement in 2009. He is currently a historian at the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s Historical Office.