Buying National Security: How America Plans and Pays for Its Global Role and Safety at Home

The tools of American statecraft-defense, diplomacy, foreign and security assistance, homeland security and intelligence-are rarely examined together. Adams and Williams fill this gap by examining how these tools work, how they are planned for, and how they are budgeted. Seeing policy through the lens of the budget can help decision-makers and ordinary citizens discern the genuine priorities of national leaders from the oftentimes illusory ones portrayed in rhetoric. Simply put, policies and strategies cannot be carried but without a corresponding allocation of resources.

Gordon Adams, is a professor of international affairs at the School of International Service at American University and a Distinguished Fellow at the Stimson Center. He is the author of The Iron Triangle: the Politics of Defense Contracting and co-author of Transforming European Militaries: Coalition Operations and the Technology Gap. Cindy Williams is a principal research scientist in the Security Studies Program of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the editor of Holding the Line: U.S. Defense Alternatives for the Early 21st Century and Filling the Ranks: Transforming the U.S. Military Personnel System.