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Planning to Prevail
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12315 |
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BOOK WORLD
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| Issue
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1 / 1987 |
2,864 Words |
| Author
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Donald Senese
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GAME PLAN
How to Conduct The U.S.-Soviet Contest
Zbigniew Brzezinsk
Boston and New York: The Atlantic Monthly Press
1986
THINKING IN TIME
The Uses of History for Decision Makers
Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May
New York, The Free Press
1986
The struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union is comparable to a global chess game in which the countries of the world, the oceans, and even the frontier of space serve as an international chessboard. Strategy is essential, correct moves crucial, and survival (or mastery) the ultimate goal. Accepting this analogy, the two books under consideration, Game Plan and Thinking in Time, serve as handy rule books for United States policymakers participating in this game.
Both these works go beyond merely discussing foreign-policy developments and move cautiously and carefully into the broader analytical sphere of examining the decision-making process of policy-planners. The authors have intentionally directed their books to those with the heavy responsibility of deciding what is the foreign policy of the United States. Emphasis is on the need for strategy, planning, information, thoughtful analysis, and responsibility in making decisions that reflect the position of the United States in the world and may affect the fate of millions of people in other nations as well.
No One-Minute Foreign-Policy Managers
The peripheral view of foreign affairs the average American receives through news media encourages attention to a two- or three-minute spot on some crisis area - South Africa, Nicaragua, EI Salvador, Angola, Iran, Afghanistan - rather than allowing a focus on a broader strategic concept of what could be a common link in these developments. "Crisis management" is thus enhanced over "strategic performance." Unfortunately, the same approach can be said to be common among policymakers in the United States who tend to be reactive to crises rather than proactive to opportunities to advance American interests.
Authors Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Richard E. Neustadt, and Ernest R. May bring a wealth of experience and effective arguments for changing this casual approach to world affairs in favor of a more analytical and substantial treatment. Brzezinski, like Kissinger before him, spent many years in the academic world teaching foreign policy before becoming President Carter's Special Assistant for National Security Affairs (1977-1981). He divides his time presently as Professor of Government at Columbia University and as Counselor for the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., Both Neustadt and Mary are professors at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and teach a course on the uses of history in decision making, the basis for their book. Neustadt, the son of an official in the Roosevelt administration, has been trained in political history and served as a consultant during the Kennedy and Johnson administrations; May worked as a historian for
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