This book excerpt is part of Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.

After successfully completing the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (more commonly known as the Iran nuclear deal), the Obama White House faced a minor scandal. Ben Rhodes, one of the president’s chief deputies for national security affairs, gave a quote for a New York Times Magazine profile in which he bragged about creating an “echo chamber” of voices supporting the president’s plan. The White House provided the talking points, and outside experts at think tanks, universities, media outlets, and advocacy organizations validated the administration’s argument while maintaining the pretense of political independence. Obama’s domestic opponents cried foul, but Rhodes’ tactic had precedents in past campaigns of much grander scale, more lasting consequence, and in some cases more devious purpose. 

The President’s Echo System is about presidents, private organizations, and the pursuit of ambitious foreign policy goals. But unlike most other treatments of the subject, it does not make the case that nefarious outside forces bribe, cajole, or bamboozle policymakers into betraying the national interest in favor of delivering benefits to a select few. Instead, the book explores an under-examined but crucial aspect of U.S. national security politics: collaborations between the White House and extra-governmental organizations. In contrast to the coercive relationships often presumed to explain misbegotten adventures, administrations facing political headwinds initiate symbiotic partnerships with like-minded private groups that help overcome public resistance and congressional opposition to their ambitious national security goals. Together, they mobilize popular support for use as leverage to secure legislative authorization and funding.

These partnerships have shaped the ecosystem of national security influence as it has evolved since its beginnings in the interwar years. The national security establishment tends to support an aggressive form of internationalism, which served the nation well during World War II and the early Cold War, but has also produced disasters in Vietnam and Iraq. The collaborations explored in this book contribute to this tendency. Because they involve serious political risks, presidents only choose to initiate them when they deem it necessary. That necessity arises more often (thought not exclusively) in the pursuit of aggressive, interventionist policies, which involve substantial investment in material resources and military mobilization that exceeds the president’s discretionary authority. Groups that help the White House achieve its goals flourish. They gain access to political, professional, and informational resources that yield advantages in the competitive environment of foreign policy influence. Whether these themselves policies succeed or fail, the collaborations that promote them empower participating organizations. The President’s Echo System explores their origins, evolution, and legacy.

The excerpt presented here appears in the book’s preface. It addresses two of the cases at the center of the Global War on Terror, the most prominent expression of U.S. grand strategy after the Cold War. Indeed, it was the Iraq War that motivated me to embark on this research. President Obama’s Afghanistan surge and Biden’s ultimate withdrawal reaffirmed what I learned in writing the book. And while I anticipated President Trump’s war in Iran, it had not yet begun when I wrote the preface, so I did not include any mention of it. Nevertheless, my argument helps to explain why the foreign policy establishment seems opposed to the policy: not because Washington’s foreign policy experts disagree with the claim that Iran........

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