The NSC Staff: Rebuilding the Policy Crucible

The Iran-Contra affair, if it accomplished nothing else, put an institutional spotlight on the National Security Council Staff, subjecting it to scrutiny unparalleled in its 40-year history. If we are to glean anything meaningful from this tawdry episode, other than entertainment value, it is critical that the right institutional lessons be learned and that appropriate systemic remedies be applied. The most basic lesson is that the affair manifested the much deeper problem that has plagued every administration since Truman -- the absence of clearly defined and functionally adequate responsibilities for the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs and the National Security Council Staff he heads. Even a cursory review of postwar national security decision making reveals that different presidents have created different national security structures with differing degrees of success. At the same time, it appears that inexorable forces in the contemporary international system are driving modern presidents into more intimate involvement in national security affairs and the executive branch itself into what Zbigniew Brzezinski has described as a White House-centric presidential system of decision making. It is no accident, for example, that every president since JFK has found the State Department wholly inadequate in the formulation of national security policy. Diplomacy, it would now seem, is too important to be left to the diplomats. Given the factors of centralized decision making and the functional requisites, and with the caveat that no two presidents will structure the system identically, there should nonetheless be basic similarities across administrations in answering three fundamental questions What should the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs do How should the NSC Staff be configured and How should Staff responsibilities be articulated This article answers these questions and outlines an NSC Staff model for the future.