The National Security Enterprise: Navigating the Labyrinth - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158901698X ISBN 13: 9781589016989

Publisher: Georgetown University Press, 2011

Synopsis

Recent foreign policy crises have all referred to the increasingly complicated and often dysfunctional "interagency" process that drives American foreign policy deliberations over national security issues. In the literature of national security studies, however, there is little attention given to the specific dynamics or underlying organizational cultures that often drives the bureaucratic politics of American foreign policy. This book offers a broad overview and analysis of the interagency process, Congressional checks and balances, and the role of the media and other private sector organizations in the U.S. national security enterprise. The book takes a consciously "Washington" perspective, focusing on the headquarters' mentalities, as most strategic decisions are made inside the Beltway. The central premise is that the dysfunction often described in the current national security system gives little rigorous attention to the internal organizational cultures that make it up; moreover, no conceptual or structural fix to the current system is likely to succeed unless it understands the organizations and people that make up that system.

About this title

About the Author

Roger Z. George teaches national security policymaking at Georgetown University and the National War College. He has also worked at the CIA, National Intelligence Council, the State Department's Policy Planning Staff, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Harvey Rishikof is a professor of law and national security studies at the National War College and the chair of the American Bar Association Standing Committee on law and national security. He has served as legal counsel to the deputy director of the FBI, as a federal appellate law clerk, and as administrative assistant to the chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Edition details

• Publisher: Georgetown University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 158901698X
• ISBN 13: 9781589016989
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384
• Editor: George Roger Z., Rishikof Harvey