To what extent is US national security policy determined by bureaucratic tribal warfare?

Sciences politiques | 5 pages | 05-03-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

In his book The Power Game, Hedrick Smith speaks of the foreign policy game in the United States as a “bureaucratic tribal warfare”, using a tribal metaphor to describe the fierce fights which take place in Washington, DC. The notion of bureaucracy emerged in the early 20th century, with the work of a German sociologist, Max Weber, who described the process of rationalization in Western administrations. For Weber, the term was positive, but it has now negative implications, for it evokes red tape, lengthy procedures and complexity. The machinery of US national security policy is indeed bureaucratic, since it involves many agencies and governmental departments, and unlike in other Western countries, where foreign policy is run by professional diplomats, political appointees shape the US diplomacy. Since 1945, the United States has asserted itself as the policeman of the world and has generated a huge bureaucracy, along with an enormous military might: the National Security Act of 1947, under Truman, is a watershed date, from which the US never escaped its global responsibilities, even when it was willing to retreat.

At a time of strong American exceptionalism, one can wonder to what extent the US national security policy is determined by this “bureaucratic tribal warfare”. It will be argued here that, if the battle of bureaucracies is part of the making of the US security policy, hierarchy makes sense too, because the power of decision lies mostly in the hands of the President: bureaucracies are powerful as far as the President listens to them. In the field of foreign policy, much power is concentrated within the White House, which has all the power resources to circumvent the bureaucracies.

Battling bureaucracies have a strong imprint on US national security policy, but one needs to take into account the huge power resources that lie with the President ...

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