Restructuring the National Security State: President Richard M. Nixon, the War in Vietnam, and Executive Reorganization

Abstract

My dissertation explains how and why President Richard M. Nixon directed a fundamental rebuilding of the National Security State. I argue that Nixon worked hard to sideline major executive departments, as well as Congress, and elevated the role the National Security Council played in the forging of US foreign policy. President Nixon worked deliberately to build a presidential-driven foreign policy apparatus because he believed that without major restructuring of the executive branch, America’s role as a stabilizing global force was in danger. He believed that rival power centers within the United States government, including Congress but also the State Department, had weakened America’s global reach and endangered America’s international interests. He refashioned the national security policymaking architecture to reduce the power of those rivals and to increase his own autonomous capacity to reshape the world. He believed that only with strong presidential leadership, supported by a tightly controlled intelligence and policy “shop,” could the United States take on the powerful threats that were confronting the American nation. I illustrate how Nixon irrevocably changed the architecture of the national security state and the power of the modern presidency.