United States National Security Council

Based on Wikipedia: United States National Security Council

The Room Where It Happens

Somewhere in the West Wing of the White House, there's a wood-paneled room where a small group of people regularly gather to make decisions that can start wars, end them, or reshape the global order entirely. This is the Situation Room, and the people who convene there form the core of the United States National Security Council—the president's inner circle for matters of war, peace, and everything in between.

The National Security Council, usually just called the NSC, is not merely an advisory body. It's the nerve center where the threads of American military power, intelligence operations, and diplomatic strategy all converge. When a crisis erupts—whether it's a terrorist attack, a nuclear standoff, or a pandemic—this is where the president turns for counsel and coordination.

But here's what makes the NSC truly unusual: it barely existed before 1947. For most of American history, presidents managed national security in a far more ad hoc manner. The creation of the NSC marked a fundamental shift in how the United States would approach its role as a global superpower.

Born from the Ashes of World War II

The NSC emerged from a specific historical moment. World War II had demonstrated, in the starkest possible terms, that modern warfare required unprecedented coordination. You couldn't have the Army doing one thing, the Navy doing another, and the State Department pursuing its own diplomatic strategy without anyone talking to each other. Pearl Harbor had been, among other things, a failure of intelligence coordination.

So in 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act, which did several things simultaneously. It created the Central Intelligence Agency (the CIA) to centralize intelligence gathering. It unified the military services under a new Department of Defense. And it established the National Security Council to tie everything together.

The immediate predecessor to this arrangement was something called the National Intelligence Authority, which Truman had set up just a year earlier to oversee the Central Intelligence Group—the CIA's short-lived forerunner. That earlier body included the secretary of state, the secretary of war, the secretary of the navy, and the chief of staff to the commander in chief. But policymakers quickly realized they needed something more comprehensive.

The driving force behind the NSC's creation was the Cold War. Diplomacy alone—what the State Department specialized in—seemed inadequate to contain the Soviet Union. The United States needed a mechanism that could coordinate every instrument of national power: not just diplomats, but spies, soldiers, and economic leverage too.

Who Sits at the Table

The composition of the NSC reveals what the government considers essential to national security. The president chairs it. The vice president attends by statute—meaning it's written into law. So do the secretary of state, the secretary of the treasury, the secretary of defense, and the secretary of energy.

Notice what's included there. The treasury secretary's presence acknowledges that economic power is a form of national power. The energy secretary's seat reflects how critical energy security has become—control over oil, natural gas, and now the rare earth minerals essential for modern technology can determine the fate of nations.

Then there are the advisors who attend but aren't technically statutory members. The national security advisor—officially titled the assistant to the president for national security affairs—runs the NSC staff and typically wields enormous influence. The attorney general attends because national security often intersects with law enforcement and constitutional questions. The secretary of homeland security deals with threats on American soil. The United Nations ambassador provides insight into international diplomacy.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff serves as the military advisor—the person who can explain what military options are actually feasible and what they would cost in lives and resources. The director of national intelligence—a position created in 2004, after the September 11 attacks exposed intelligence coordination failures—advises on what the government knows and doesn't know about threats around the world.

The Principal, Deputies, and Committees

The full National Security Council meets relatively rarely, and usually for the most consequential decisions. The day-to-day work happens through a layered system of committees.

At the top sits the Principals Committee, a cabinet-level group convened and chaired by the national security advisor. When the secretaries of state, defense, and treasury sit down with the CIA director and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to hash out a policy recommendation, that's a Principals Committee meeting. They debate the options and try to reach consensus before bringing a decision to the president.

Below that is the Deputies Committee, where the deputy secretaries—the second-in-command at each major agency—do much of the heavy lifting. They review issues, monitor implementation, and often resolve disagreements before they reach their bosses. The Deputies Committee also oversees the Policy Coordination Committees, which are the workhorses of the system.

Policy Coordination Committees focus on specific regions or issues. There might be one for the Middle East, another for cybersecurity, another for counterterrorism. Senior directors on the NSC staff chair these committees, working alongside assistant secretary-level officials from relevant agencies. This is where the detailed policy development actually happens—where options are researched, papers are drafted, and recommendations are formulated.

The Power of the National Security Advisor

The person who often matters most in this entire apparatus isn't the president—who has a thousand other demands on their attention—but the national security advisor. This individual runs the NSC staff, controls what information reaches the president, shapes how options are presented, and chairs the Principals Committee meetings that hammer out recommendations.

Some national security advisors have been titans. Henry Kissinger, serving under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, essentially ran American foreign policy, sometimes overshadowing the secretary of state. Zbigniew Brzezinski under Jimmy Carter was similarly powerful. Others have been coordinators rather than commanders, facilitating consensus rather than driving it.

The role's power depends heavily on the president's preferences. Some presidents want a strong national security advisor who can cut through bureaucratic noise. Others prefer to hear directly from their cabinet secretaries and use the advisor purely as a process manager.

Moments That Shaped History

The NSC has been present at nearly every major inflection point in American foreign policy since its creation. During the Korean War, it coordinated the American response to North Korea's invasion of the South. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy convened his advisors—many of them NSC principals—in the famous ExComm meetings that navigated the closest the world has come to nuclear war.

In the Eisenhower administration, the NSC produced policy papers that shaped the early Cold War confrontation with Communist China. One paper proposed backing Taiwan's raids against the mainland. Another outlined strategies to support anti-communist Chinese elements. A third mapped out how to deny the People's Republic of China full international recognition—a policy the United States maintained for decades.

After September 11, 2001, the NSC became central to what the George W. Bush administration called the War on Terror. It coordinated military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, intelligence operations worldwide, and the domestic security apparatus that would eventually be formalized as the Department of Homeland Security.

In 2009, President Barack Obama merged the staffs supporting the National Security Council and the Homeland Security Council into a single National Security Staff. The two councils continued to exist legally as separate bodies, but their support structures were combined. The name reverted to National Security Council Staff in 2014, but the integration remained.

The Kill List

Among the NSC's most controversial responsibilities is its role in what has been called the "kill list"—the process by which the United States government identifies individuals, including American citizens, deemed to be threats requiring lethal action.

This isn't hyperbole. The NSC helps determine who will be targeted for assassination by drone strike or special operations forces. When someone is added to this list, no public record of the decision is created. The legal justification rests on two pillars: first, that Congress authorized the use of military force against militants after September 11; second, that international law permits a country to defend itself.

The most famous case is Anwar al-Awlaki, an American citizen and radical cleric who had become a senior figure in Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. In 2011, he was killed by a drone strike in Yemen—an American executing an American without trial, based on a secret determination that he was too dangerous to leave alive.

John Brennan, who served as homeland security advisor before becoming CIA director, helped develop the criteria for these decisions through something called the Disposition Matrix—a database that tracks terrorists and the options for dealing with them. Brennan described the Obama administration's approach as demanding "the highest possible standards and processes" to ensure targeted killings were "legal, ethical, and wise."

Whether secret assassination authority can ever meet that standard is a question that divides legal scholars, ethicists, and citizens to this day.

Pandemic Preparedness and Its Dismantling

One of the NSC's more obscure functions received sudden attention in 2020: pandemic preparedness. In 2016, following the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, the Obama administration created the Directorate of Global Health Security and Biodefense within the NSC. Its mission was straightforward—prepare for the next disease outbreak and prevent it from becoming a pandemic.

In May 2018, this directorate was effectively eliminated. John Bolton, President Donald Trump's national security advisor, reorganized the NSC staff, and the pandemic preparedness office was absorbed into a combined directorate covering counterproliferation and biodefense. The senior director for global health security, Rear Admiral Tim Ziemer, resigned. Remaining staff were reassigned elsewhere.

Tim Morrison, who took over the combined portfolio, characterized this as streamlining rather than dissolution. He called criticisms "specious" and described the previous structure as "bloat." When asked about these cuts during a February 2020 press conference—as the COVID-19 pandemic was beginning to spread globally—Trump defended them on financial grounds.

"Some of the people we cut, they haven't been used for many, many years," the president said. This was factually problematic, given that the team had been created in 2016 and disbanded in 2018. "And rather than spending the money—and I'm a business person—I don't like having thousands of people around when you don't need them."

The team before cuts numbered around 430 people. In January 2021, President Joe Biden reinstated the directorate and appointed Elizabeth Cameron—who had held the position under Obama—as senior director.

Disinformation and the Military

A 2024 Reuters investigation revealed a troubling episode involving the NSC. According to the report, the United States military ran a propaganda campaign to spread disinformation about the Sinovac COVID-19 vaccine, which was developed in China. Using fake social media accounts, the campaign falsely claimed the vaccine contained pork-derived ingredients, making it forbidden—haram—under Islamic law.

This disinformation targeted populations in countries where Sinovac was widely available, potentially discouraging vaccination. The campaign was described as "payback" for COVID-19 disinformation that China had directed against the United States.

The campaign began in 2020. In spring 2021, the NSC ordered the military to stop spreading anti-vaccine messages. The campaign reportedly continued until summer 2021 before finally terminating. The episode raises uncomfortable questions about the use of psychological operations, the ethics of health-related disinformation, and civilian control over military activities.

Restructuring Under Different Presidents

Every president shapes the NSC to their preferences, and these reorganizations can be revealing. When Donald Trump took office in January 2017, he restructured the Principals Committee in ways that raised eyebrows. His initial memo stated that the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence would only attend Principals Committee meetings when issues specifically pertaining to them arose—a departure from their regular attendance under previous administrations.

Critics worried this would marginalize military and intelligence perspectives. The White House chief of staff clarified the next day that they were still invited to attend. By April 2017, a new memo walked back the changes: the director of national intelligence and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs "shall" attend Principals Committee meetings.

That same April memo removed the White House chief strategist—at the time, Steve Bannon—from the Principals Committee, after controversy over his presence on what is traditionally a national security body rather than a political one.

By Trump's second term, starting in 2025, the changes were more dramatic. The Financial Times observed that the NSC had been "drastically pared back, with dozens of foreign policy and national security experts ousted from their jobs." One official told the newspaper that "the traditional Washington foreign policy process led by the NSC has largely broken down in this administration."

Climate Enters the Security Framework

During the transition to the Biden administration in early 2021, the incoming president signaled a new priority by creating the position of United States Special Presidential Envoy for Climate. The occupant of this role—initially former Secretary of State John Kerry—would sit on the National Security Council.

This organizational choice reflected a specific argument: that climate change is not merely an environmental issue but a national security threat. Rising seas, shifting agricultural zones, climate-driven migration, and competition for resources could all fuel conflicts. By placing the climate envoy on the NSC, Biden ensured that climate considerations would be integrated into the highest levels of security planning.

The Permanent Tension

At its best, the National Security Council brings coherence to the vast, sprawling apparatus of American national power. It forces the military to consider diplomatic implications. It makes diplomats confront military realities. It ensures the president hears competing perspectives before making decisions that could reshape the world.

At its worst, it can become a source of paralysis or, alternatively, a vehicle for bypassing the expertise resident in the departments. The NSC staff—which has grown from a handful of people under Truman to several hundred in recent administrations—can second-guess the State Department's diplomats, the Pentagon's strategists, and the CIA's analysts, substituting the judgment of young White House staffers for that of experienced professionals.

The balance matters. Too little coordination and agencies work at cross-purposes. Too much centralization and the NSC becomes a bottleneck, slowing decisions while expertise withers in the departments.

What remains constant is the fundamental purpose: when the president of the United States faces a threat to national security, there needs to be a mechanism for bringing together everything the government knows, everything it can do, and everyone who needs to be heard. The NSC, for all its evolution and controversies, remains that mechanism.

The decisions made in that wood-paneled room ripple outward across the globe. Wars begin or end. Alliances form or fracture. Lives are saved or lost. And in most cases, the public never sees the deliberations—only the consequences.