The VP and the NSC

One of my great white whales has been the Bush team’s poor management of the foreign policy process. I had suggested two months ago that one cause of this was the fact that the Vice President had inserted himself into the National Security Council process in a way that deliberately or accidentally sabotaged the decision-making ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

One of my great white whales has been the Bush team's poor management of the foreign policy process. I had suggested two months ago that one cause of this was the fact that the Vice President had inserted himself into the National Security Council process in a way that deliberately or accidentally sabotaged the decision-making process:

One of my great white whales has been the Bush team’s poor management of the foreign policy process. I had suggested two months ago that one cause of this was the fact that the Vice President had inserted himself into the National Security Council process in a way that deliberately or accidentally sabotaged the decision-making process:

[T]he difficulty is that even cabinet-level officials can be reluctant in disagreeing with him because he’s the vice-president. This leads to a stunted policy debate, which ill-serves both the President and the country.

U.S. News and World Report has a story this week confirming this fear. The highlights:

[Richard] Clarke’s insider account opened a new window on policymaking at the National Security Council and on [Condoleezza] Rice’s role there–and the view isn’t pretty. “This is the most dysfunctional NSC that ever existed,” says a senior U.S. official. “But it’s not Condi’s fault. The person that’s made it so dysfunctional is Cheney.” For the first time, a vice president is sitting in on meetings with other NSC principals and is constantly involved in the policymaking. A copy of every NSC memo goes to the vice president’s staff, so that Cheney can play an active role on issues that interest him.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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