Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power by David J. Rothkopf

From the Publisher

A behind-the-scenes look at"the most powerful committee in the history of the world," the small group of men and women who work, often in secret, within the White House to make the most fateful decisions of our time

Never before in the history of mankind have so few people had so much power over so many. The people at the top of the American national security establishment, the President and his principal advisors, the core team at the helm of the National Security Council, are without question the most powerful committee in the history of the world. Yet, in many respects, they are among the least understood. As deputy undersecretary of commerce, David Rothkopf served in senior positions in the U.S. government and knows personally many of its key players of the last twenty-five years. In Running the World he pulls back the curtain on this shadowy world to explore its inner workings, its people, their relationships, their contributions and the occasions when they have gone wrong. He traces the group's evolution from the final days of the Second World War to the post-Cold War realities of global terror-exploring its triumphs, its human dramas and most recently, what many consider to be its breakdown at a time when we needed it most.

Drawing on an extraordinary series of insider interviews with policy makers including Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 150 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.

Author Biography: David J. Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, served in the Clinton Administration, and formerly as managing director of Kissinger Associates. A well-known commentator for leading newspapers and magazines, he has taught international relations at Columbia University; written, co-authored or edited five other books on international and information age themes; and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the President's Advisory Council of the U.S. Institute of Peace. He lives in Washington DC.

The New York Times - Evan Thomas

David J. Rothkopf has written an enlightening insider's history of what he calls ''the committee in charge of running the world.'' Formally, the N.S.C. comprises the president, the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense and other cabinet secretaries as designated by the president; but as a practical matter, it consists of the president's inner circle of foreign policy advisers, served by up to 200 staff members writing papers and proposals. The N.S.C. tends to work well when the president uses it to think through problems, and to fall apart when it becomes either too much like a debating society or too ''operational'' (think of Lt. Col. Oliver North's escapades during the Reagan administration).

The Washington Post - Warren Bass

… Rothkopf, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a former Commerce Department official, does give free and chatty rein to some of the most memorable personalities in the foreign policy world. The national security adviser gang is all here: the icy, imperious McGeorge Bundy; Brent Scowcroft, perhaps the most successful holder of the job, the low-key embodiment of Republican realpolitik and competence who was at the helm as the Soviet Union imploded; the pallid Anthony Lake, weighed down by principle and feckless in practice as Bosnia and Rwanda burned; the garrulous, indefatigable, disorganized and powerful Sandy Berger, a fine foreign policy amanuensis for the freewheeling President Bill Clinton; and above all, Henry Kissinger, the shrewd accumulator of power and ruthless bureaucratic infighter who forever transformed the job of national security adviser. With relish, Rothkopf recounts old feuds among the foreign policy principals: the Buddha-like Dean Rusk watching his State Department lose ground to an NSC staff that New Frontier wags started calling "Bundy's State Department"; Zbigniew Brzezinski and Cyrus Vance brawling during the Iran hostage crisis; the legendary Reagan-era combat and contempt between Secretary of State George Shultz and Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger; the sharp-elbowed, bullying, wheedling Kissinger against all comers.

Publishers Weekly

The NSC is a semi-defined group-the president, vice president, secretaries of defense and state, national security adviser and staff, and other officials as needed-with the open-ended mission of helping the president decide and coordinate military and foreign policy. Its institutional vagueness makes it an ill-chosen framework for this engaging but unfocused study of postwar American policy making. Working from interviews with NSC members, Rothkopf, an academic and Clinton administration commerce official, examines the NSC's history from its 1947 inception onward, reviewing its performance in major foreign policy crises and tracing the rising influence of the NSA post. He delves into bureaucratic minutiae, but focuses on such "Shakespearean" human factors as the character and managerial style of the president and the personal "chemistry" and patronage networks among his cabinet and advisers. Rothkopf prefers a centrist, internationalist security policy, with experienced hands restraining ideologues; he therefore gives high marks to the NSC under Nixon, Carter and Bush 41, while castigating the Reagan and Bush 43 administrations. He presents a wealth of information, but the NSC's ad hoc purview, unstable structure and personality-driven dynamics make it hard to discern a coherent outline of American policy among its wranglings. Agent, Esmond Harmsworth. (June) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Foreign Affairs

The birth of the National Security Council did not exactly make the headlines. When the National Security Act established the NSC in 1947, The New York Times gave top billing to the creation of a new post of secretary of defense. Only on page 2 did the story get around to mentioning that "the legislation also provides for a National Security Council," composed of the most senior national security officials, whose "meetings will be presided over by the President."

In the half century since, the NSC has become a central institution — in important ways, the central institution — of U.S. foreign policymaking. And over this period, its basic character has changed: from a council of senior cabinet members deliberating with the president to a group of White House staff members headed by the assistant to the president for national security affairs, known as the national security adviser. Over the years, the NSC has increased the power of the NSA and the president but weakened those cabinet members without strong ties to the man in the Oval Office. All told, the advent of the NSC represents one of the most important organizational innovations of the U.S. government since 1945.

What People Are Saying

Zbigniew Brzezinski
Zbigniew Brzezinski, former U.S. National Security Advisor
An impressively comprehensive, revealing, and insightful examination of the most powerful foreign policy making institution in the U.S. Government and of the key individuals who made it so. Invaluable to scholars, practitioners and concerned citizens.

Richard Clarke
The history of America's national security for the last 55 years has been the history of the NSC system and the NSC Staff. Rothkopf expertly captures how the skills and shortcomings of the NSC Staff have over the years translated into America's successes and failures, with real consequences for people around the world.
—(Richard Clarke, author, Against All Enemies, former U.S. Counter-Terrorism Czar and senior official in the administrations of four U.S. Presidents)

Jeffrey E. Garten
Jeffrey E. Garten, Dean, Yale School of Management, former official in four U.S. presidential administrations
Deeply researched, extraordinarily well written, and filled with colorful anecdotes and the kind of insider information that comes only with extensive interviewing, David Rothkopf's book is both an essential read and a highly entertaining one.

Robert M. Gates
Robert M. Gates, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, former Deputy National Security Advisor
"Running the World is not only an outstanding history of the NSC, it uniquely portrays the personal chemistry among each president's most senior advisers and between those advisers and the presidents they served. Rothkopf has captured the critical impact of personality and personal relationships at the highest level in American national security decision-making over the past half a century. Agree or not with the author's prescription for the future, this is the best -- and most readable -- book on the history of the NSC I have seen.

Richard Holbrooke
Richard Holbrooke, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nation
At last, a real history of the National Security Council, from its origins after World War II through its transformative Nixon-Kissinger era to its present role at the center of American national security policy-making. As an insider, Rothkopf knows how it works; as a skilled storyteller and historian, he brings it to life, in a book rich with new insights and new information.

James Woolsey
James Woolsey, former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
The National Security Council is the mechanism by which history's most powerful nation deals with the outside world in telling its story Mr. Rothkopf has combined graceful prose, thorough research, and an eye for the heart of the matter. Not to be missed.

Samuel R. Berger
Samuel R. Berger, former U.S. National Security Advisor
David Rothkopf's Running The World does masterful job of telling the story of our modern Presidents and their inner circles, using meticulous research, lively writing and his extraordinary access to the key players to bring critical events in recent world history alive. It is likely to be seen as the definitive history of the NSC.

General Wesley Clark
General Wesley Clark, former Democratic Candidate for President, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe.
The definitive history of the National Security Council. With unique personal insight, David Rothkopf vividly illustrates how a small group of people around the President has shaped the major events of our time. This is a must-read for anyone interested in International Affairs.

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