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Why would a political scientist write a biography of a U.S. national security advisor? Biography focuses on a single individual and has no guidelines on where or how to collect evidence or on how to organize that evidence. Nonetheless, a biography of General Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor to Presidents Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush, allowed me to provide a broad overview of forty years of U.S. foreign policy history, to conduct an in-depth study of the personnel and organization involved in the national security decision-making, and to narrate the life of an extremely influential and interesting public figure. Biography fulfills many of political science’s disciplinary objectives, in fact: it speaks to important issues of political science, it offers thick description and facilitates the drawing of causal inferences, it addresses agency and structure, it is falsifiable, and it is able to communicate with a larger public.

As National Security Advisor to President Gerald Ford, advisor to President Ronald Reagan, and as National Security Advisor to President George H. W. Bush, Brent Scowcroft was at the center of the ongoing debate over how to shape American foreign policy in the post-war world. As David F. Schmitz makes clear in his new biography, Scowcroft was a realist in his outlook on American foreign policy and an heir to the Cold War internationalism that had shaped that policy since 1945. During his most important service, as George H. W. Bush's national security advisor, Scowcroft sought to work with like-minded Republicans and Democrats to construct a post-Cold War foreign policy that would provide consistency and stability to American policymaking in a rapidly changing international environment, defend the internationalist position from challenges and criticisms, and buffer the conduct of diplomacy from the turbulence of domestic politics. The type of bi-partisan cooperation and internationalism that marked the pre-Vietnam War years served as Scowcroft's guide to how to defend American interests and promote U.S. values and institutions globally. While not always successful, Scowcroft provided a consistent internationalist voice in the midst of change.

[...]as the processing of intelligence from CIA and other intelligence agencies indicates, key players in the Bush administration had a clear bias in the selection and interpretation of information concerning the purported threat posed by Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD). \"19 The Joint Chiefs of Staff could have been encouraged to spell out the military pros and cons of the invasion plan and to state their misgivings, but this did not happen. [...]Secretary of State Dean Rusk could have spelled out his reservations concerning the exaggerated prospect for armed uprisings inside Cuba or his belief that an invasion from the United States naval base at Guantanamo may have provided a better escape route than the Bay of Pigs if things went badly. According to O'Neill, President Bush was not an active participant at many of the NSC meetings that the treasury secretary observed first-hand. [...]Abram Shulsky, a top neoconservative aide to Wolfowitz and an admirer of the political theorist Leo Strauss, had published an article with Gary Schmitt, a co-founder of The Project for the New American Century, that cited Strauss as an expert on close textual analysis, hidden, \"esoteric\" meaning, and the role of dissemblance.

The USA's announcement that it will stand by the transatlantic partnership seemed to be the key message from Washington for this year's Munich Security Conference. On other topics, [Joe Biden] tended to be more vague and referred to President Barack Obama's speech on the State of the Union, which is due to be held in the coming week. In contrast, Biden's meeting in Munich with the president of the Syrian opposition caused a sensation.

In this pathbreaking book, Amy Zegart provides the first scholarly examination of the intelligence failures that preceded September 11. Until now, those failures have been attributed largely to individual mistakes. But Zegart shows how and why the intelligence system itself left us vulnerable. Zegart argues that after the Cold War ended, the CIA and FBI failed to adapt to the rise of terrorism. She makes the case by conducting painstaking analysis of more than three hundred intelligence reform recommendations and tracing the history of CIA and FBI counterterrorism efforts from 1991 to 2001, drawing extensively from declassified government documents and interviews with more than seventy high-ranking government officials. She finds that political leaders were well aware of the emerging terrorist danger and the urgent need for intelligence reform, but failed to achieve the changes they sought. The same forces that have stymied intelligence reform for decades are to blame: resistance inside U.S. intelligence agencies, the rational interests of politicians and career bureaucrats, and core aspects of our democracy such as the fragmented structure of the federal government. Ultimately failures of adaptation led to failures of performance. Zegart reveals how longstanding organizational weaknesses left unaddressed during the 1990s prevented the CIA and FBI from capitalizing on twenty-three opportunities to disrupt the September 11 plot. Spying Blind is a sobering account of why two of America's most important intelligence agencies failed to adjust to new threats after the Cold War, and why they are unlikely to adapt in the future.

\"We need to have state and local communities together. If they're not together, it's not going to work,\" Brent Scowcroft, co-chairman of the now-defunct Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. \"The prospects were made to look positive for the community,\" Scowcroft said. \"The key thing is not to have a penalty forced upon the community.\" David Wright, a commissioner of the South Carolina Public Service Commission, testified Thursday that the \"consent-based\" approach is the way to go in making decisions on storing nuclear waste. But such an approach \"will require patience,\" he told subcommittee members.

\"We need to have state and local communities together. If they're not together, it's not going to work,\" Brent Scowcroft, co-chairman of the now-defunct Blue Ribbon Commission on America's Nuclear Future, told members of the Senate Environment and Public Works Subcommittee on Clean Air and Nuclear Safety. \"The prospects were made to look positive for the community,\" Scowcroft said. \"The key thing is not to have a penalty forced upon the community.\" David Wright, president of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners, testified Thursday that the \"consent-based\" approach is the way to go in making decisions on storing nuclear waste. But such an approach \"will require patience,\" he told subcommittee members.

Sparrow profiles former National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft during his second tenure in that office, during the presidency of George H. W. Bush. It is asserted that although Scowcroft was highly effective and influential, he suffered from the same flaws as the president and most of the administration.