Book Review: The strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the call of national security

• Author: Doyle Hodges
• DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20950487
• Published date: 01 January 2022
• Date: 01 January 2022
• Subject Matter: Book Review

2022, Vol. 48(1) 240 –242

Book Review

Book Review

Sparrow, B. (2015). The strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the call of national security. Public Affairs.

717 pp. $37.50 (hardcover), ISBN 978-1-58648-963-2.

Reviewed by: Doyle Hodges, Texas National Security Review/War on the Rocks, Washington

DC, USA

DOI: 10.1177/0095327X20950487

Bartholomew Sparrow’s The Strategist is an expansive, meticulous biography of an

enigmatic public figure who profoundly influenced U.S. foreign policy for almost

50 years. As a history of the George H.W. Bush administration in particular, it offers

fresh insights into and analysis of the 1991 Gulf War, relations with China, and U.S.

management of the fall of the Soviet Union, among other issues. Sparrow’s analysis

of the national security decision-making process and Scowcroft’s emergence as the

exemplar of the National Security Advisor’s role is excellent. As a biography of

Scowcroft himself, however, The Strategist falls short by focusing almost exclu-

sively on the public figure, offering little insight into what motivates the human side

of Brent Scowcroft.

The book is at its best in its description and analysis of events during the George

H.W. Bush administration. The list of sources interviewed by Sparrow reads like a

Who’s Who of national security, media, and political leaders from the period. In

addition to those interviews, the author conducted hours of interviews with Scow-

croft himself and thorough secondary source research. As a consequence, The Stra-

tegist paints a more detailed and nuanced picture of Scowcroft’s role in helping the

elder Bush navigate the turbulent events of his single term than can be found in

earlier works such as A World Transformed, the memoir cowritten by Bush and

Scowcroft (with a substantial contribution from Condoleezza Rice). While Spar-

row’s analysis does not contradict anything in the earlier volume, his description of

Scowcroft’s uniquely close and warm relationship with the president and mastery of

the national security process helps to make clear how much of the credit (or blame)

for the foreign policy accomplishments of the administration appropri ately rests

with Bush’s publicly self-effacing National Security Advisor. Sparrow narrates

major events skillfully, chronologically weaving the story of relations with China

pre- and post-Tiananmen with the decline and fall of the Soviet Union and the 1991

Gulf War in a way that allows the reader to appreciate the full scope and breadth of

the significant foreign policy events simultaneously confronting the administration

Armed Forces & Society

ªThe Author(s) 2020

Article reuse guidelines:

sagepub.com/journals-permissions

journals.sagepub.com/home/afs