Line of the day that nearly made me choke on my waffles

Posted By Daniel W. Drezner Friday, December 5, 2008 - 7:16 PM Share

Henry Kissinger, "Team of Heavyweights," Washington Post, December 5, 2008:

The maxim that the national security adviser should act as a traffic cop, not a participant in the policy process, is more theoretical than practical.

Really, Henry? Whatever do you base this on? In all fairness, it's not a bad op-ed, and includes this insightful point: "Geopolitical and strategic considerations have no organic constituency. Though a Policy Planning Council exists, its activities are often shunted off into non-operational, semi-academic sideshows or, most frequently, into speechwriting." I'll have more to say about that in the coming year. UPDATE: Swampland's Karen Tumulty offers some further context with regard to Kissinger and Obama.

EXPLORE:U.S. FOREIGN POLICY, HENRY KISSINGER, POLICY PLANNING

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BRETT

10:39 PM ET

December 5, 2008

He did make a very good point

He did make a very good point about the Secretary of State position that touched on some of my concerns about the Hillary Clinton appointment. You basically need someone who is going to keep their disagreements strictly private and with the President and his team, while supporting him utterly in public so as to prevent the weakening of the Secretary of State's power.

ZATHRAS

5:02 AM ET

December 6, 2008

Kissinger explains his

Kissinger explains his reasoning pretty clearly, actually. The NSA is down the hall from the President; the President can ask him anything he wants to, and the NSA while insisting on options from the departments is not obligated to be impartial among them. To me, the red line is not an NSA's failure to be impartial but rather his attempting to be a participant in the implementation of policy, usurping the role of a department head, usually the Secretary of State. This is a particular danger when the Secretary of State is not personally close to the President. Another danger is obviously what happened in Bush's administration, when the NSA sees his (or her) job as making the President personally comfortable and allows department heads to run roughshod as long as that objective is achieved. This is probably not as big a danger in an administration not headed by George W. Bush.

I have to point out that the language of this Op-Ed, particularly in the section describing the role of the Secretary of State, is close enough to language Kissinger has used before (particularly in his memoirs) as to raise the question of whether he directed a ghostwriter to assemble this piece and approved the final product, rather than writing it himself.

ROBERT

7:53 PM ET

December 6, 2008

I'm not sure he is advocating

I'm not sure he is advocating that the NSA not play the role of traffic cop. I thought he was simply emphasizing that the NSA will also, inevitably, have a role in making policy and not simply controlling the flow of information to the President. Although I could be reading that wrong.

DUST

5:35 PM ET

December 8, 2008

It's obvious that HAK based

It's obvious that HAK based this recommendation on his own experience: he was the most notorious national security advisor to usurp the role of the secretary of state. It's unavoidable in the imperial presidency. In the West Wing, Leo McGarry (as White House Chief of Staff) conducted his private negotiations with the Cubans.