Orchestrating the Instruments of Power: A Critical Examination of the U.S. National Security System

National security, a topic routinely discussed behind closed doors by Washington’s political scientists and policy makers, is believed to be an insider’s game. All too often this highly specialized knowledge is assumed to place issues beyond the grasp—and interest—of the American public. Author D. Robert Worley disagrees. The U.S. national security system, designed after World War II and institutionalized through a decades-long power conflict with the Soviet Union, is inadequate for the needs of the twenty-first century, and while a general consensus has emerged that the system must be transformed, a clear and direct route for a new national security strategy proves elusive.

Furnishing the tools to assist in future national security reforms, Orchestrating the Instruments of Power articulates and synthesizes the concepts of America’s economic, political, and military instruments of power.

D. Robert Worley is a senior fellow at the Johns Hopkins University Center for Advanced Governmental Studies. He is the author of Shaping U.S. Military Forces: Revolution or Relevance in a Post–Cold War World.