Book Review Essay

Intended as a textbook for university under- graduates, this volume uses the "realist" per- spective to examine American diplomatic his- tory from 1914 to 1945. The authors also include information on the nation's military policy in an effort to add a national security dimension to their discussions. Instructors who find the "realist-idealist" alternatives meaningful will find this text valuable. The realist critique is used to analyze major American diplomatic events, giving particular emphasis to the idealist-moralist shortcomings of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. The text includes some counterfactual analysis, asking "what if" Wilson had handled World War I intervention differently or what if Roosevelt had negotiated successfully withJapan in 1941. The technique may stimulate student discussion provided the instructor assigns readings to supplement the brief text summations. While "realist" interpretations have gone out of fashion among some scholars, Thomas H. Buckley and Edwin B. Strong, Jr., faced a new professional problem in seeking to add national security policies to their text. His- torians and political scientists have not agreed on what "national security policy" means when it integrates diplomatic and military affairs. Buckley and Strong are aware of the need to integrate but use the term "national security" too loosely. Sometimes it is the equivalent of the Navy General Board's war plans; at other times it describes the State Department's peace, trade, and commercial policies. Moreover, they discuss the military ideas of Alfred Mahan and Halford MacKin- der but not those of diplomatic advocates such as Paul Reinsch or nonmilitary realists such as Max Weber and Reinhold Niebuhr. Because the problem of defining "national security policy" may be unimportant to most undergraduates, this work should be consid- ered by instructors. It remains for scholars to find the best approach to study national secu- rity by integrating diplomatic and military policies. The creation of the National Security Council (NSC) in 1947 should have solved the issue but most presidents have been unable to exert the bureaucratic control necessary to unify those activities. Under Ronald Reagan, the NSC seems to have become another group to be integrated.

This book serves its purpose well. It clearly walks the reader through elements of national security, the actors, processes, and how Americans have traditionally approached it. With a unique perspective on the military element of power, the book also covers regional security issues and early twenty first century topics. As a senior level undergraduate text or as a basis to launch into discussion in graduate level seminars, American National Security conveys the fundamentals of U.S. security policy in a clear, articulate manner.

Jordan and Taylor both taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point in the early 1970's. Mazaar joined them for the 5th edition after directing the Millennium Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The book was designed to convey the basics of policy and process in American national security. The fifth edition is currently in use at the Army's Command & General Staff College for officers at ...