A new book by international scholar and author Michael J. Glennon examines the idea that in reality there are two U.S. governments – the one elected by the people and the one that actually makes policy decisions.
His book – entitled National Security and Double Government – also compares the U.S. security policies of the Bush and Obama administrations and finds that very little has changed since the Republican president left office.
Glennon is not just any author spewing personal political views without real connections to the institutions he writes about. He is actually a constitutional and international law scholar, served as legal counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and consulted for various congressional committees and the State Department.
“I was curious why a president such as Barack Obama would embrace the very same national security and counterterrorism policies that he campaigned eloquently against,” Glennon asks in his book. “Why would that president continue those same policies in case after case after case? Obviously there is something else going on when policy after policy after policy all continue virtually the same way that they were in the George W. Bush administration.”
Glennon concludes that the reason for the unchanged policies and seemingly identical security agenda in the Obama administration is because of the virtually impossible task of any U.S. government branch to actually create new policies. The roles of the president, congress and judiciary have become largely illusory, he argues, as they seem incapable of putting forth agendas supported by constituents, and fail to follow through on any meaningful implementation.
“Now, there are many counter-examples in which these branches do affect policy,” Glennon told the Boston Globe in an interview about the book. “But the larger picture is still true - policy by and large in the national security realm is made by the concealed institutions.”
In the book, he asserts: “The ultimate problem is the pervasive political ignorance on the part of the American people. And indifference to the threat that is emerging from these concealed institutions.”
The author’s arguments make a lot of sense when one examines specific polices that remain unchanged - Guantanamo Bay remains open, the NSA has become even more aggressive in the surveillance of citizens, drone strikes have increased, the oil industry continues to have free reign over regulators, and little has changed in most areas of foreign policy.
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