Managing National Security Policy: The President and the Process.

By William W. Newmann. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2003. 304p. $36.95.

The issues associated with homeland security call for an evaluation of the structural processes by which national security decisions are made. Similarly, the factors that shape the president's use of advice in making such decisions have reassumed the critical importance accorded to them during the Cold War. Of particular importance is the who/whom question: Who has the president's ear and for whom will this advisory process have consequences? In sum, presidential decisions are peculiar because, while their consequences can be momentous, their evolution is often highly informal and idiosyncratic. Presidents are surrounded by vast advisory systems but often choose to restrict deliberation to a small circle of sympathizers.

William W. Newmann's concern is with presidential management styles regarding the national security advisory system and how this advisory process evolves over the course of an administration. He employs in-depth case studies of the making of arms-control policy in the Carter, Reagan, and Bush administrations in order to elucidate the formulation and development of their decision-making organizations. His analysis posits two central themes: “First, presidents feel pressure to centralize decision making in the White House in an effort to gain more direct control over the policy process” (p. 2); and secondly, “the key to understanding the decision-making process rests upon the study of the relationship between the president and his chief advisors” (p. 2). Most important, Newmann seeks to account for the dynamics of the national-securing policymaking process; in particular, he argues for a model that would identify a discernible pattern of presidential decision making that persists across administrations.

His “evolution model” has two basic components: One is spatial; the other is temporal. At the beginning of each administration, the new president makes a stated commitment to a broad, formalized, interagency advisory process for national security decision making. Over time, this decisional space narrows into smaller ad hoc groups and, finally, to an informal coterie of confidantes. For Newmann, the key contribution of the evolution model is its attention to the way in which the structure of the decision-making unit changes over time. He also asserts that the particular advisory process employed determines presidential preferences: “Each president brings with him into office his own administrative personality. It is his preferred way of receiving information and advice, making decisions, and involving himself in the process” (p. 56).

For example, Newmann notes that “Carter's confidence allowed him to push the other structures aside, rely on Brzezinski's almost exclusively, and make decisions that he believed were the correct ones” (p. 100). As to Reagan, however, his “detached style and his willingness to allow the hardliners and pragmatists to continue their rivalry allowed the formal interagency process to capture the informal structure and obliterate the confidence structure” (p. 135). George H. W. Bush and his senior advisors “understood the pressures that they faced. However, they refused to follow the path toward deep centralization that Carter had, and they were unhampered by philosophical divisions. They adapted … adding informal and confidence structures … to their formal structures…. It also explains why the Bush administration does not provide a tale of bureaucratic rivalry, as in the Carter administration, or vicious competition, as in the Reagan administration” (pp. 164–165).

If the comparison of these management styles suggests a preference for that of the first President Bush, one would be correct. Newmann begins his concluding chapter with this observation: “The ultimate purpose of the study of national security decision making is to uncover ways in which presidents can avoid the problems such as those encountered by Carter and Reagan, while steering their decision processes toward the type of structures that helped Bush avoid these problems” (p. 171). Almost as standard operating procedure, the Bush administration started at a point to which other administrations would evolve, that is from an initial reliance on a formalized interagency process to one with a more circumscribed number of participants and more informal decision-making process. In sum, it is the president's personal style of leadership that will ultimately determine the effectiveness of the decision-making process.

Managing National Security Policy makes an unquestionably valuable addition to the scholarly literature on the processes by which presidential decision making is constructed. Newmann has provided a particularly good elaboration of the dynamic structures of the advisory process. However, the recommendability of a model of decision making must be judged against three judgmental criteria: degree of innovation, explanatory value, and an evaluation of the quality of decisions produced. In this, his evolution model must be judged somewhat wanting. First is the question of just how new the premises are. It is a commonplace of American foreign policy that presidents are free to consult whomever they wish (their barber included). Secondly, the evolution from formal to informal to confidential decision making is an often noted phenomenon in an environment where presidents soon discern that their only friends may be White House staffers, relatives, and, as Truman observed, their dogs. Moreover, Newmann correctly recognizes the extraordinary power of the assistant for national security affairs; however, he does little to analyze the conceptual roles—such as coordinator, counselor, agent—that these assistants have adopted to suit presidential preferences. Finally, his model seems to accept this narrowing of the advisory circle to be not only inevitable but also desirable. Newmann mentions Lyndon Johnson's Tuesday Lunch and the contraction of his advisory circle to Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow, but he does not speculate on the likelihood and consequences of a confidence structure's becoming a self-referential camarilla.

However, this is perhaps to criticize prematurely what will likely be a successor study. Newmann's study is a valuable addition to the literature on national security policymaking and will be welcomed for its careful evaluation of the relationship between process and policy over three administrations in the complex area of strategic weapons. Furthermore, the evolution model should become a staple of graduate seminars in American foreign policymaking for its capacity to generate further empirical and theoretical research.