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Since 1986, presidents have been required to submit an annual National Security Strategy (NSS). Recent years have seen a proliferation of national strategies of other kinds, linked in part to the NSS. The National Security Council, led by the national security advisor and employing its committee system and the interagency process, develops the NSS. The integration of all the necessary elements within the NSS involves an opaque and irregular set of rolling negotiations among national security principals. The 2006 NSS is best viewed in comparison to the 2002 version, which was issued in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It stipulates that the United States is at war with transnational terrorism fueled by a perversion of Islam and proposes stable democracy as the primary solution, supported by aggressive efforts to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the option of taking preemptive military action. Criteria for assessing national security strategies can be process oriented or results based. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the implications of the war on terrorism for the progress made to date and the likely future of environmental security efforts in the national security state? To put the evolving post-September 11th environmental security challenge facing the U.S. military in perspective, this article begins with a synopsis of the doctrinal, tactical, operational, and regulatory dilemmas faced by the U.S. military in the post-Cold War era. Next, the article reviews how and why the 1990s bequeathed a set of misaligned administrative systems that make existing and future progress in balancing national security with environmental and natural resources protection extremely vulnerable to shifts in the political economy surrounding this issue in the post-September 11th era. The article concludes with a review of how September 11th has affected the patterns of politics surrounding this issue since those tragic events. Despite recent increases in the defense budget, this analysis suggests that conflict over this issue will continue, rendering structural realignment a daunting challenge and further complicating the integration of national security and environmental and natural resources responsibilities in the post-September 11th era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is concerned with the ability of the U.S. policy organization to support national security objectives and how to improve that ability. Special attention is given to the development of this organization and to forms of policy making over the last 30 years. The author outlines five major ways in which national security policy making affects American security interests and evaluates their effectiveness. The article then proceeds with a survey of policy making since World War II, focusing on the U.S. National Security Council and its development. Organizational politics will always play a large role in national security decision-making, the author concludes. Further, the five noted criteria have been unequally served. Social scientists must determine not only whether organizational elaboration is an effective response to national security problems, but also whether these national security policy-making organizations themselves fulfill the purposes for which they were created.

The article describes the procedures and conceptual underpinnings of the three basic budgeting processes used in the U.S. Department of Defense since its unification in 1947 and evaluate theft strengths and weaknesses. The first period was that of U.S. President Harry S. Truman-Dwight D. Eisenhower years, and the system of fixed allocations to each service used pleased no one, its only advantage being the early imposition of a spending ceiling. The second, the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara Period, is best characterized by the complete control exercised by the Secretary of Defense and by the introduction of the planning programming and budgeting system (PPBS). The third system is that in use since 1968; its most important aspects are the decentralization of power and modified retention of PPBS. Despite the improvements in the system, there are still serious shortcomings in the budgeting process. The author concludes that while much progress has been made in the budgetary process, there is still considerable room for improvement. Two primary constraints, however, will remain its inherent political nature, and the near irrelevancy of planning.