The National Security Council was created in 1947 to advise and assist the president on national security and foreign policy. Seven decades later, the NSC has become, as George W. Bush said, the chief executive’s "personal band of warriors.” In this comprehensive history of one of the government’s most secretive and powerful agencies, Gans, a Pentagon speechwriter under Obama and now head of the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House Global Order Program, profiles the work of every national security advisor, assesses the contributions of lower-level NSC staffers, and traces NSC influence in events including the Iran-Contra scandal, the intervention in Bosnia, and the invasion of Iraq. Drawing on archival sources and extensive interviews, Gans traces the inexorable rise of the NSC’s dominance in American foreign policy and the concurrent increase in the nation’s hawkishness and polarization.
