The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security

Abstract

The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security By Bartholomew Sparrow New York, NY: PublicAffairs, 2015 752 pages $34.99 [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Few people have influenced US national security policy as much as Brent Scowcroft. Some luminaries burned more brightly--Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski come to mind--but their time in the spotlight was shorter. Scowcroft was a senior policy maker in both the Ford and George H.W. Bush administrations, and an influential figure in Washington policy circles between and after his stints in the White House. And he was there for some of the most seminal events in American history including the final collapse of South Vietnam and the end of the Cold War. As Bartholomew Sparrow puts in The Strategist, his massive new authorized biography of Scowcroft, "... no other official or analyst has consistently had such a profound impact on the national security policy of the United States. For many in Washington, Brent Scowcroft is a pillar of the foreign policy community and a global strategist par excellence." (xii) Capturing a career of this magnitude is an ambitious undertaking so Sparrow's book includes well over 500 pages of primary text. It draws deeply from both secondary and primary material--including Scowcroft's personal files--as well as extensive interviews with Scowcroft himself and dozens of his colleagues and associates, many of them central architects of American security policy. Sparrow's admiration for Scowcroft is evident on every page. At times it tips so far toward imbalance that it detracts from the power of the book: the author consistently gave Scowcroft credit for everything that worked out well and absolves him of responsibility for what might seem to be missteps. For instance, when recounting components of the Bush policy that were less than successful or outright failures such as Afghanistan and Yugoslavia, Scowcroft recedes into the background. On successful endeavors such as the Bush administration's response to Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, he moves to the fore as when Sparrow argues that Scowcroft "Almost single handedly ... determined what the United States' response to the invasion of Kuwait was going to be" (385). Still, there is much to be drawn from this impressive book. Two questions are particularly important. Sparrow places great stress on the idea that Scowcroft is the model of a national security adviser, combining a detailed grasp of complex issues with realism, pragmatism and a willingness to work behind the scenes rather than hogging the limelight. Sparrow notes George H.W. Bush described Scowcroft as "the perfect national security advisor. …