How U.S. Bureaucracy Works – 1979

(Comment: I found this excerpt interesting in the following book: The U.S. Crusade in China, 1938-1945,  by Michael Schaller;  Published by Columbia University Press, New York, 1979; page 66.)

“The pro- and anti-conspiracy hounds of the 1940s and 1950s ignored the reality of how complex bureaucracies like the U.S. government operate.  Policy is debated and devised at many levels and frequently at cross purposes.  Because of the way they are applied (or the influence of objective conditions), many policies achieve vastly different purposes than those for which they were conceived.  Similarly, American policy making does not conform to the ideal that the War Department would make military policy and the State Department political policy.  Policies of importance in all fields are frequently conceived and carried out by individuals and groups outside the regular bureaucratic structure, or by regular bureaucrats acting outside their official capacities.  Franklin D. Roosevelt’s personal style made such irregular decision making even more prevalent.

The very essence of covert military activity required the development of special government organs.  During the war this was formally acknowledged by the creation of the Organization of Strategic Services (OSS), while the Cold War later spawned the Central Intelligence Agency.  However, even before Pearl Harbor the Roosevelt administration saw a need to utilize informal or semiofficial agents and agencies to spearhead an attack on an enemy it could not yet formally challenge.  This development of covert tactics served two functions.  Not only did it camouflage clandestine military operations – an obvious prerequisite for many activities – but it also insulated top officials and bypassed frequent opposition from the more tradition-bound factions within the foreign-policy making bureaucracy.”

(Comment:  First there is an assumption of an enemy.  Who determines who and what the enemy is?  Second: He notes that ” many policies achieve vastly different purposes than those for which they were conceived.” How can we be so sure that is the case?

I thought the author did a succinct overview as to how the bureaucracy worked but didn’t go far enough as to what was truly driving this behavior.

In my opinion this type of structure was dictated through the interest of the major Central Banks to maintain control over the human and natural resources).