American National Security

10. Putting the Pieces Together: National Security Decision Making

208 10 Putting the Pieces Together: National Security Decision Making National security decision making is complex and fascinating because of the two worlds it involves. As Samuel Huntington explains: “One [world] is international politics, the world of balance of power, wars and alliances, the subtle and brutal uses of force and diplomacy to influence the behavior of other states. The other world is domestic politics, the world of interest groups, political parties, social classes with their conflicting interests and goals.”1 National security affairs have an impact on and are influenced by both worlds, for national security often involves the application of national resources to the international arena in an attempt to make the domestic society more secure. The institutional arrangements that have evolved to advise and assist the president in security matters are often referred to as the national security decisionmaking process, or the interagency process (after the agencies that participate). When trying to understand American foreign and national security policy and actions , such factors as the global environment or domestic politics will tell only part of the story. How decisions are made can be at least as important, so understanding the national security decision-making process is essential. The national security decision-making process is a system of formal and informal coordination within the executive branch intended to ensure that issues requiring presidential attention are identified and raised in a timely manner; national interests and objectives are clearly defined; viable options are thoroughly considered ; costs, benefits, and risks are deliberately evaluated; and overall coherence of policy is maintained. The process encompasses the full breadth of national security decisions, from developing national strategy to determining the content of particular presidential speeches. The national security decision-making process doubles as a management system that helps the president carry out his or her responsibilities as head of the executive branch by enabling the president’s staff to adjudicate and coordinate issues that straddle department and agency seams. The president’s staff—specifically, the National Security Council (NSC) and Homeland Security Council (HSC) staffs in concert with others in the Executive Of- fice of the President—actively administers the process. The backbone of the formal process is a constant churn of interagency meetings, commonly referred to as the NSC system (and, since 2001, the HSC system), supported by formally prepared and staffed memoranda, intelligence estimates, and other papers.At the top, the meetings include the president, the president’s senior advisors, and the heads of departments and agencies, known as the principals. Below this level, all presidents have been served by some structure of subordinate councils and working groups (see Chapter 4). The majority of activity occurs in these subordinate meetings, without the president ’s or the principals’direct participation.Around this formal apparatus, a set of informal arrangements invariably evolves in response to the needs of the president. The cousin of the national security decision-making process is the annual president ’s budget process. These processes are fed by many diverse and important systems internal to departments and agencies. These internal systems are augmented by a growing number of lateral agency-to-agency coordination mechanisms and an increasing number of interagency centers, such as the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) discussed in Chapter 7, that integrate elements of various agencies into a single organization with a specific mission. The national security decision-making process is actually a system of processes that extends from the White House deeply into a variety of executive branch entities. It is tempting to assume that the interagency process operates in a regularized way according to rules and timelines. Sometimes it does; more often, it does not. For every rule governing how the interagency process is supposed to function (e.g., “this committee handles that issue”), there are exceptions. Indeed, there is no real rule book, though documents that purport to be such abound.2 The processes used to support major decisions have differed significantly across administrations and even within the same administration on different issues. Factors That Shape the Formal Process A key component of the national security decision-making system is the formal process. This section surveys the important factors that shape its nature. The Presidency. The president’s job is unique. In the words of Richard Neustadt: “No one else sits where he sits or sees quite as he sees; no one else feels the full weight of his obligations.”3 The president, unlike most...