Policy Organization in American Security Affairs: An Assessment

National security policy, like all foreign policy, is a matter of reconciling necessary behaviors with resources that are available to support them. This article is about one kind of resource to support national security objectives: the policy organization of states, which defines what national objectives are necessary, distinguishes alternative uses of capabilities to attain them, decides among these alternatives, and then implements the actions decided upon. Policy organization, as Klaus Knorr has pointed out, can be an element of a state's power in its own right, insofar as it makes more effective whatever levels of other human or nonhuman resource strengths that state possesses at the moment.1 Like those other forms of capability, security objectives are enhanced for a given purpose when capabilities are increased, or, conversely, when limitations upon mobilizing putative capabilities are reduced. A well-developed structure of policy making can substitute in part, although not completely, for weaknesses in other forms of national security capability. At the same time, policy organization has its own sources of inevitable limitations, one being that the inevitable narrowing of choice in decision making may exclude some potentially useful courses of action. The major interest here is in how policy organization can be, and is, refined to widen the net of pertinent information and options for state behavior brought to the attention of national leaders for decision, and to enhance generally the preconditions of national achievement.