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In the United States, the body which under the same act of 1947 that created the CIA is designed to ‘advise the president with respect to the integration of domestic, foreign, and military policies relating to the national security …’. Its statutory membership consists of the president (who chairs its meetings), the vice president, the secretaries of state and defense, the director of the CIA, and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In addition to these, the president can invite anyone he likes, for example his personal national security advisor. Though limited by statute to an advisory role, ‘coordination is predominance’, as Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security Advisor to President Carter, points out in his memoirs. As a result, a tussle for control over foreign policy between the NSC and the State Department, as well as other executive branch agencies, has been a much noted feature of Washington politics since the first half of the 1960s. |
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