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

A former senior official in the Clinton Administration himself, David Rothkopf served with and knows personally many of the NSC's key players of the past 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 Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 130 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.
"1122988174"
Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power
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.

A former senior official in the Clinton Administration himself, David Rothkopf served with and knows personally many of the NSC's key players of the past 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 Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 130 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.
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Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power

Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power

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

Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power

by David Rothkopf

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Overview

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.

A former senior official in the Clinton Administration himself, David Rothkopf served with and knows personally many of the NSC's key players of the past 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 Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, senior officials of the Bush Administration, and over 130 others, the book offers unprecedented insights into what must change if America is to maintain its unprecedented worldwide leadership in the decades ahead.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780786736003
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Publication date: 04/28/2009
Sold by: Hachette Digital, Inc.
Format: eBook
Pages: 304
Sales rank: 895,009
File size: 1 MB

About the Author

David Rothkopf is the CEO and editor of the FP Group, which is the publisher of Foreign Policy magazine, ForeignPolicy.com, and presenter of FP Events. He is also president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, an international advisory firm. He is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he chairs the Bernard L. Schwartz Program in Competitiveness and Growth Policies.

He is the author of Power, Inc.: The Epic Rivalry Between Big Business and Government--and the Reckoning that Lies Ahead; Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making; and Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.

What People are Saying About This

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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)

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