43 pages • 1 hour read
The Situation Room: The Inside Story of Presidents in Crisis
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Themes
The Nature of Presidential Decision-Making
Throughout The Situation Room, Stephanopoulos examines many of the crises that the 12 most recent US presidents have faced and how the Situation Room was utilized to manage them. The Situation Room was created as a management tool “by providing intelligence, communications, briefing, display and monitoring functions” to the president (19). Through exploring key moments in The Situation Room, Stephanopoulos also examines the nature of presidential decision-making.
Each of the 12 US Presidents who have held office since the Sit Room was constructed has made difficult decisions concerning domestic policy or national security. Stephanopoulos discusses one such decision in Chapter 5, which examines President Carter’s response to the Iran Hostage Crisis. When months of diplomatic efforts failed to get the hostages returned, Carter decided to act on a rescue mission. A Joint Task Force honed the details, identified commanders, and trained in a secret location, but “the president preferred not to put it into action if there was any chance of ending the crisis diplomatically” (97). On April 11th, 1980, Carter informed the NSC that he was considering the rescue mission known as Desert One and asked for the members’ opinions. However, the rescue mission failed due to inadequate preparation, and the decision cost Carter a second presidential term.
While Carter’s Desert One rescue mission was a failure, another operation with many similar features took place almost exactly 31 years later. When Barack Obama took office in 2009, he made bringing Osama bin Laden to justice his number one objective. After the CIA found bin Laden’s possible location in Pakistan, Obama was faced with a difficult decision. Obama decided to send special forces to capture him, and, in a final Sit Room meeting, he asked every person in the room their opinion, even the aides and advisors who typically accompany the principals and sit quietly. Stephanopoulos contrasts Obama’s success with Carter’s failure to highlight how the strategizing and decision-making in The Situation Room became more effective over time under certain presidents.
Stephanopoulos also ties how the presidents used The Situation Room to wider characteristics of their presidency. Stephanopoulos criticizes both Nixon and Trump, implying that their attitude to The Situation Room was part of a wider behavioral pattern: Nixon avoided The Situation Room, which Stephanopoulos suggests was indicative of his suspicious nature, while Trump did not take the Room and its protocols seriously, which Stephanopoulos suggests reflects Trump’s more chaotic approach to presidential decision-making. In these ways, Stephanopoulos presents The Situation Room as providing illumination into how presidents exercise their power.
The Role of Technology in Governance
The role of technology in governance is another major theme in The Situation Room. In Chapter 1, Stephanopoulos discusses the genesis of the Situation Room, which military advisors recommended to President Kennedy over concerns about the Cold War. The recommendation advised that the Situation Room “should be equipped with the most up-to-date communications, display and briefing equipment. The communications system should provide maximum speed and security for both world-wide and internal service” (10). Technology has thus played an important role since The Situation Room’s inception.
In Chapter 2, examining the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson, Stephanopoulos argues that one piece of technology that “outranked all others in terms of cachet and importance” was what became known as the “hotline”—MOLINK, or Moscow Link (41). The line is a direct connection to the Kremlin in Russia to better facilitate communications between the US president and the Russian leader in times of crisis. It was created in 1963 after the Cuban Missile Crisis because communications between President Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev were delayed by having to go through diplomatic channels. For four years, the hotline was not used other than each side sending 12 messages per day to assure it was working, but in 1967, LBJ got word that Soviet Premier Alexi Kosygin needed to get a message through. Kosygin’s message was to ask for help in urging an immediate ceasefire between Israel and Egypt in the Six-Day War.
Another technological advancement in governance is that of video technology. In Chapter 7, Stephanopoulos examines the numerous international democratic revolutions and armed conflicts that took place in 1989 during the presidency of George H.W. Bush. Late in that year, a coup attempt took place in the Philippines when army forces loyal to ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos attempted to overthrow the new, democratically-elected president, Corazon Aquino. Several of the NSC members were out of the country at a summit, so those remaining decided to try the new secure video technology system (SVTS) in the Sit Room complex to run the crisis. According to Stephanopoulos, “[T]he Philippines coup attempt marked the beginning of regular use of the SVTS room. Eight months later, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, video conferencing became a crucial tool in formulating a U.S. response” (158).
In conclusion, although the Sit Room technology in 1961 was certainly state of the art for the time, the changes over the last 60 years have been drastic. Stephanopoulos argues that the biggest recent change in Sit Room technology, and governance technology in general, has been “the rise of computers and the internet” (22). Stephanopoulos thus suggests that technology will continue to shape both the use and effectiveness of The Situation Room.
The Evolution of National Security Practices
Throughout his examination of various presidencies, Stephanopoulos explores how national security practices evolved within The Situation Room in response to various domestic and international crises.
The construction and equipping of the Situation Room in 1961 was in response to Cold War tensions. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought the USA and Soviet Union closer to outright warfare than any other event, which marked a high point in the tensions between the two superpowers. The threat of a potential nuclear war affected the US government’s approach to both national security and the logistics of presidential decision-making. The creation of The Situation Room reflected these changing geopolitical realities, aiming to provide the president with a center for making serious decisions in moments of crisis—often in response to international developments.
Similarly, the implementation of the Defense Readiness Condition, or DEFCON, in 1959, concerned a crisis during the Nixon administration. In 1973, during the Yom Kippur War between Israel and a coalition of Arab states, Henry Kissinger brokered a cease fire, but Israel violated it twice within days. This led Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev to use the hotline to offer an ultimatum to Nixon, which Kissinger saw as a direct threat. As a result, the military alertness was raised to DEFCON 3. Stephanopoulos explains that 5 on the scale is “normal readiness,” 4 is slightly heightened alertness, 3 is “high alert,” 2 is even higher, and 1 is “war” (65). At the time, the US had only been above DEFCON 4 one time, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, more than 10 years earlier.
In Chapter 6, Stephanopoulos writes about a classified four-day exercise in 1982 undertaken by Ronald Reagan, meant to assess the US government’s readiness for nuclear war. The exercise, code-named “Ivy League,” involved more than 1,000 people in different locations and actual helicopter evacuations, which the president was able to watch on the screens in the Sit Room. The exercise, which is another example of the evolution of national security practices, had a profound impact on Reagan and “deepened his determination to eradicate the threat of nuclear war” (130). Reagan’s response reflects the growing emphasis on nuclear de-escalation throughout the 1980s.
Stephanopoulos thus examines throughout The Situation Room how national security practices and concerns have changed during the Room’s history, presenting them as a key component of each presidency and the Room’s use. In doing so, Stephanopoulos emphasizes how the Room has played a key role in many moments of international tension.
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