When the Iran-Contra scandal broke in late 1986, the National Security Council and national security adviser came under serious attack for having covertly traded arms for hostages and secretly transferred funds to the Nicaraguan Contras. Critics recommended more transparency and more congressional oversight of the NSC and the national security adviser, and Donald Regan, President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, appointed the three-person Tower Commission to investigate the scandal and make recommendations.
As one of those three members, Brent Scowcroft had responsibility for drafting the sections of the commission’s report focused on what went wrong with the NSC system and how to fix it. He did what members of presidential commissions do: point out mistakes, while ultimately providing cover for the government. Drawing from his experiences in the Nixon and Ford administrations and his observations of the Reagan White House, he reaffirmed the central role of the NSC and the indispensable place of the national security adviser as an independent counselor to the president and manager of the interagency committee process. He recommended a larger role for the NSC’s legal counsel. And he called for the national security adviser to oversee the procedures governing covert actions.
Less than two years later, Scowcroft got the chance to put his prescriptions into practice when President George H.W. Bush appointed him national security adviser. Scowcroft was able to use the NSC system to coordinate with Secretary of State James Baker and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney, key members of Congress, foreign government officials and the media, and to thereby brilliantly help orchestrate the peaceful reunification of Germany within NATO, the successful eviction of Iraqi troops from Kuwait, and the almost entirely nonviolent collapse of the Soviet empire and, with that, the demise of the “Second World.” He mastered the system he once had been tasked with fixing.
A generation later, the roles of the national security adviser and NSC staff remain more or less as Scowcroft designed them — subject to the president’s management style and political priorities, of course. This has become known as the “Scowcroft model.” Its chief components are bureaucratic by nature: the impartial referral of policy proposals from the national security principals and their staffs to the president; the organization of interagency committees at different levels of seniority to discuss, coordinate and, through the relevant departments, execute policy; and having the confidence of the president so he (or she) can give personal advice. While national security advisers and NSC staffs come and go, the Scowcroft model continues to be seen as the gold standard for administering the NSC system.
Scowcroft, who died in August at the age of 95, leaves a legacy as the most effective national security adviser since the NSC was created in 1947. Leaving an even greater legacy is his larger record of public service on behalf of the U.S. Air Force, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Reagan and two Bush administrations; as a member of important presidential commissions (often as chair or co-chair); as a mentor to junior colleagues; and as a key contributor to the George H.W. Bush presidential library, West Point, the Air Force Academy, the Atlantic Council, the Aspen Strategy Group and other institutions. For many years, Scowcroft was the Washington “wise man.”
Ironically, I wasn’t sure if I would like Scowcroft when I first met him in 2006, as I considered whether I wanted to write a biography. He was a career military man and staunch Cold Warrior. He had worked for Nixon and Henry Kissinger and had supported the Vietnam War. He believed firmly in executive privilege. His name had been connected to Iraq-gate. He had secretly visited Beijing soon after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. He was behind the United States’ intransigent response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. And he had co-founded three separate international consulting firms after working for presidents Ford and Bush 41—using his experience as national security adviser to help U.S. companies and to make money. Despite this initial skepticism, I wanted to find out more about General Scowcroft’s role in making and organizing U.S. national security policy, given his seeming omnipresence and how little attention he had received from journalists and academics.
After dozens of conversations with Scowcroft and his friends, associates and family members, along with other research, I came to a fuller appreciation of the man that caused me to rethink the so-called “Scowcroft model.” Yes, Scowcroft was an “honest broker,” in that he presented the advice and policy recommendations of other principals accurately and impartially. Yes, he wanted to organize the NSC staff and the interagency committees so as to bridge the gaps between top and midlevels of government and those across the separate participating departments and agencies. And yes, he was close to the presidents with whom he worked (well, as close to Nixon as he allowed people to get).
But there was a lot more to Scowcroft’s effectiveness. He considered the near-term and long-term consequences of diplomatic initiatives, international commitments and military interventions. He built trust, using his influence to appoint people who got along and persuading them to buy into the decision-making process; it was because the principals agreed on how and why national security policy was being made that policy execution and implementation could be well-coordinated. And at times he served as the president’s “fixer” for handling sensitive issues or communicating through back channels.
As importantly, Scowcroft kept his sight on the larger objectives of national security policy. He sought to preserve his country’s “blood and treasure.” Preserving “blood” meant protecting Americans’ lives and those of U.S. allies and potentially others, which in turn meant prioritizing diplomacy, intelligence and other methods short of war. Preserving “treasure” meant safeguarding and increasing individual, corporate and national wealth as well as protecting physical assets, spending money wisely and promoting U.S. business interests. Keeping the United States globally dominant advanced both goals. The sophistication, size and structure of the military had to match the threats it likely faced, to be sure, but U.S. leadership also depended on soft power. It demanded farsighted and skillful diplomacy, participation in international organizations and the cultivation of personal ties with the heads of foreign government.
The United States also benefited from leading by example — just as it had for most of the 20th century during and after the two world wars and with the Cold War. The promotion of political, religious and economic freedoms, the fair treatment of people of different races and cultures, and honoring human dignity enhanced the credibility of the United States. How the United States traded off between these and other objectives depended on sound judgment—the kind of judgment that comes from a deep familiarity with world history, an appreciation for long-term American interests, and a commitment to the institutions of U.S. government.
Brent died a much-loved and a much-loving man: kind, thoughtful, modest, grateful and patriotic. His integrity, discretion and great capacity for friendship co-existed with an iron will, an exceptional work ethic, and expert knowledge of the ways of the nation’s capital and international affairs. He was “a national treasure” in the words of many. The “Scowcroft model” captures only the bureaucratic components of its namesake’s achievements, however; Scowcroft’s unexampled record was predicated on far more than a handful of organizational principles.
