Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power.(Brief Article)(Book Review)

Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power DAVID J. ROTHKOPF. Public Affairs, $29.95 (756p) ISBN 1-58648-248-3

The NSC is a semi-defined group--the president, vice president, secretaries of defense and state, national security adviser and staff, and other officials as needed--with the open-ended mission of helping the president decide and coordinate military and foreign policy. Its institutional vagueness makes it an ill-chosen framework for this engaging but unfocused study of postwar American policy making. Working from interviews with NSC members, Rothkopf, an academic and Clinton administration …