The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders Review

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The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders Review

The author, dean of the Yale business school, has rendered a most valuable service to the business leaders of America, and in the process opened the possibility that new forms of business education, new forms of business practice, and new forms of moral global governance might yet emerge in America.
Originally inspired by the "double-whammy" of 9-11 and Enron on business--(the one costing America, by Fortune's estimate for businesses alone, $150B in additional security measures, or close to 1.5% of the Gross Domestic Product; while others suggest 9-11 has reduced profits by 5-6%), the author provides an easy to read, well-documented overview of why CEOs have to engage in rebuilding the integrity of business, protecting the homeland, preserving global economic security and free trade, taking on global poverty, and influencing foreign policy.
The author excells at pointing out, in the most gracious way possible, how all of the preconceptions of the current administration, and in particular its penchant for unilateralist military bullying, have proven both unworkable in achieving their intended results, while also unsuitable in being translated to economic gains. Military power does not translate into economic power or added prosperity.
This book is *loaded* with common sense and specific ideas for getting business leadership back into the global stabilization dialog. The author focused on two ideas that I consider to be especially important: the need to reexamine how the taxpayer dollar is being spent on national security, with a view to redirecting funds (I add: from military heavy metal to what Joe Nye calls soft power: diplomacy, assistance, intelligence); and on the urgency of restoring the independence and expanding the mandate of the U.S. Information Agency so as to overcome the acute misperceptions of the US fostered by Saudi-funded schools for youths being taught to hate, and little else.
The non-governmental organizations come in for special scrutiny, and the author has many good ideas, not only for promoting better business-NGO partnerships, but for auditing the NGOs and not ceding to them the moral high ground. As he points out, many organizations that oppose globalization or specific business practices do not have any standards or transparency with respect to who funds them, how decisions are made, and so on.
Finally, the author concludes with a focus on business education. While citing many improvements made by many schools, he notes that a comprehensive study and reengineering overall has not occurred since the late 1950's and early 1960's, and that the time is long past when graduate business education must be completely revamped. He is exceptionally astute and credible throughout the book as he explores the many things that CEOs need to know but do not receive training on, to include understanding and dealing with government, NGOs, citizen advocates, and the real world. As he notes, Master's in Business Administration tend to train students for the first years in the corporation, not the long-haul. He places some emphasis on the need to consider continuing education as an extension of the original program, and I immediately thought of an MBA as a limited-term license that must be renewed by recurring personal investments in education.
As someone whose opening lecture line to citizens and businessmen is "if the State fails, you fail," I found this book extraordinarily valuable and urgent. We get the government we deserve. If citizens do not vote, if businessmen do not think of the larger social goods and social contexts within which they operate, then the government will prove incapable and at some point the party will be over.
Yale has always had an extra helping of morality and humanity; in this book the dean of the business school ably makes the case that business leadership and engagement in national security and global stabilization is the sine qua non for continued prosperity. He's got my vote--if I were a mature student looking for a place to learn, he's put Yale right at the top of my list.The Politics of Fortune: A New Agenda For Business Leaders Overview

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Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy Review

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Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy ReviewThis book is much more about what the problem is than how to solve it, but the two things are not really separable, and the analysis of the problem here is invaluable.
This is a detailed and extensively researched look at the interactions among the three branches of our federal government, and the checks and balances employed - or the lack thereof. Shane takes a long view and sees 1981 and the Reagan presidency as the most radical break with the past, albeit the creation of a new era dramatically advanced by George W. Bush, following lesser advances by his father and Bill Clinton. Shane looks at domestic governance as much as foreign policy, and examines the relationships that departments and agencies have with the White House and with Congress.
It is now routine for the White House to send cabinet secretaries to swing electoral districts for political purposes. No department head sneezes without the president's permission. And the entire federal government is thought of as part of the executive branch -- with the exception of Congress, which is left to constitute the legislative branch all on its own. But look at how the Constitution viewed things. It devoted Article I and over half the length of the entire Constitution to Congress, which it gave virtually every power conceived of, touching on many of the current departments of the federal government, and then explicitly stipulating that Congress should have any other necessary powers as well. Congress, according to the Constitution, has the power . . .
"To make all laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States or in any Department or Officer thereof."
Stubby little Article II gives very few powers to the president, nowhere suggesting that he or she should have ownership or command over the various agencies of government, and in fact not mentioning any other than the military, except to say that the president can make appointments, and to say this:
"He may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices."
This does refer to the departments as "executive departments," and Article II does begin by giving "the executive power" to the president. But it's worth pausing and stepping outside our own era for just long enough to wonder what "executive" means. Article II also says what the president is required to do, namely:
"He shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed."
Congress, until relatively recently, was understood to be central to our government. Only Congress is given the power to borrow money, to regulate commerce with foreign nations, to handle immigration and bankruptcies and the creation of money, transportation, the post office, the punishment of crimes, establishment of courts, defining and punishing crimes by other nations, declaring war, ending war, raising and spending money, creating and maintaining and overseeing the military, repelling invasions, and so on. These days, the White House is considered central to everything. Laws are made by "executive order" (an "executive order" is something like a faithful betrayal, a self-contradiction), by "signing statement" (a "signing statement" is a statement that one is NOT signing a bill as written) and by drafting legislation in the White House and insisting that Congress pass it out of loyalty to the president.
Imagine the absurdity today of suggesting that a president has the right to ask department heads to report on what they are doing. They are doing what he has told them to do. What Shane suggests is not that the EPA or the Department of Labor should be moved from the executive branch to the legislative, but that there are appropriate roles for both Congress and the president, not just the latter.
I cannot touch here on all of the rich and informed discussions in "Madison's Nightmare," which include perceptive condemnations of the secretive and unaccountable decision-making processes that led to wars in Vietnam and Iraq. I would fault Shane here only with too much generosity in assuming that the presidents in these cases were trying to learn anything that they failed to learn. But Shane is right that Congress must not only have the power to declare war or refuse to; it must also have the power to make public the deliberations that precede that decision. Shane is wrong, however, in my opinion -- and this seems to follow from his analysis -- in omitting from his recommendations at the end of the book any sort of accountability, prosecution, impeachment, or punishment. He does propose that the lawyers who facilitated torture be fired. However, they are -- with a couple of key exceptions -- already out of office. And why would someone as smart as Shane believe that lawyers should be dismissed for writing what they were asked to, but propose no penalty whatsoever for the president or vice president who did the asking? Indeed, how does Shane not notice that (had his book come out earlier) it would have been the torturer in chief who would have had to dismiss his own obliging lawyers?Madison's Nightmare: How Executive Power Threatens American Democracy Overview

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American National Security Review

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American National Security ReviewThis book serves its purpose well. It clearly walks the reader through elements of national security, the actors, processes, and how Americans have traditionally approached it. With a unique perspective on the military element of power, the book also covers regional security issues and early twenty first century topics. As a senior level undergraduate text or as a basis to launch into discussion in graduate level seminars, American National Security conveys the fundamentals of U.S. security policy in a clear, articulate manner.
Jordan and Taylor both taught in the Department of Social Sciences at West Point in the early 1970's. Mazaar joined them for the 5th edition after directing the Millennium Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The book was designed to convey the basics of policy and process in American national security. The fifth edition is currently in use at the Army's Command & General Staff College for officers at the rank of major enrolled in strategic studies. It serves well as a foundation to discuss national security strategy and policy.
The book has two weaknesses. It is due for a revision given the dynamic nature of the post Cold War environment, especially since 9/11. It also lacks the standard amount of pictures, graphs and charts that normally accompany today's college texts. The book contains all black and white text with limited charts, maps and cartoons. Although this has not been a problem at the master's level, it could be perceived as a drawback to generating undergraduate interest in the subject matter.
Notwithstanding the above criticism, Taylor, Jordan and Mazaar have created a text that lays out the basics of national security policy, actors and institutions. Highly recommended.American National Security Overview

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Freeing Speech: The Constitutional War over National Security Review

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Freeing Speech: The Constitutional War over National Security ReviewIf you hold that America's fortunes rest in robust exercise of its democratic potential, then John Denvir's "Freeing Speech" is the brief you want to carry into court. The reason you are likely to find yourself in court, however, is that the trend in the latter half of the 20th Century has been to weaken democratic potency in favor of what Denvir terms the National Security Presidency. The tendency's foremost feature is the unilateral power of a president to commit the nation to military conflicts, not merely defensive in nature. Once this grave step is taken, speech's capacity to undo it is hamstrung.
Because democracy's role rests at the heart of the Constitution itself, courts must, under the system of checks and balances envisioned by the Founders, set straight an overreaching executive branch. All to often, the Supreme Court fails in its responsibility.
Taking a page from Karl Llewellyn's "legal realism," Denvir's analysis distinguishes an "official" Constitution, the one reliably announced by the highest court, from a "challenger" constitution, that is, an interpretation vying to replace the current official version. Moreover, where lacunae exist a third "de facto" constitution emerges, one in the First Amendment's realm, reflecting the preferences of local administrators seeking to avoid the untidiness of street marches and rowdy demonstrations in public parks.
Denvir eschews the cynicism of certain "critical legal studies" scholars, and refuses to lose hope that an allegiance to democracy, epitomized in his own "challenger" theses, will not one day triumph. In the face of a conservative court majority, inclined to sidestep its duty to "say what the law is" by resort to cheap technicality, such as denial of "standing," Denvir's call is indeed courageous.
The book's text, while exhibiting a law professor's care of reasoning, possesses a welcome narrative flow, as well as a command of historical context, an element that is essential at every step to Denvir's commentary. This is especially true of the sections dealing with the crucial importance of popular speech in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War eras. In Martin Luther King's words (cited by Denvir), "Almost always, the dedicated creative minority has made the world better."
Denvir dissects presidential claims to secrecy, national security investigations, limitations on press access to war zones, and other hallmarks of the contemporary "war on terror," including insightful reference to recent publications by Goldsmith, Yoo, and Tushnet.
For those familiar with Denvir's previous work "Democracy's Constitution" (2001), "Freeing Speech" offers further elaboration of his contention that the Constitution's ideals demand judicial rulings actively promoting the rights of its citizens. It is not sufficient that the Supreme Court's civil liberties rulings restrain the hand of government. To the contrary, when controversies arise courts must fashion positive rules designed to advance free expression.
Without judges committed to this doctrinal view, the republic will lack the full-bodied debate needed to inform decisions by the president and Congress.
Howard J. De Nike is a legal anthropologist, who lectures at the Fromm Institute, University of San Francisco.
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In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times Review

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In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times ReviewProfessor and Judge Baker is one of the finest national security law scholars of our time, and in this volume he has produced the clearest, most coherent, and most legible of the current challenges we face. If you have any questions about this area of the law, are engaged in a class at a law school in this field, or are in general interested in this topic, this book would be an outstanding addition to your library.In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times Overview

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Techno Security's Guide to Securing SCADA: A Comprehensive Handbook On Protecting The Critical Infrastructure Review

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Techno Security's Guide to Securing SCADA: A Comprehensive Handbook On Protecting The Critical Infrastructure Reviewi got this because it was fairly recent, but not as useful as the the other SCADA protection books out there (which are cheaper). It is broad in scope as it covers assessments, physical security, but barely touches on the mechanics of the types of cyberattacks that SCADA systems are vulnerable to. I found even the "Securing SCADA Systems" by Krutz more helpful, as it was basic but clearly written. I also found the Botnet detection books and malware forensics helpful to cover this book's cyber threat gap. Clearly, a collection of experts in the field, but more substance and editing and less war stories would have created a better product.Techno Security's Guide to Securing SCADA: A Comprehensive Handbook On Protecting The Critical Infrastructure Overview

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