The Oxford Companion to American Military History

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National Security Council

National Security Council.
Since its origins in 1947, the interagency, cabinet‐level National Security Council (NSC) has played major roles, ranging from advising the president and coordinating various strands of policy to formulating and ratifying policy decisions. Because it is primarily an instrument of presidential power, each president has employed the NSC as he has seen fit. Since the 1960s, however, presidents have made sporadic use of the council itself but have assigned its White House–based staff important roles in policymaking not anticipated by the NSC's inventors. Moreover, the president's national security adviser, a position unforeseen in 1947, has become central to national policymaking.

The NSC was part of a compromise, fashioned in 1947, in postwar decisions over armed services unification. The council as a mechanism to coordinate foreign and military policy was first proposed in the Eberstadt Report (1946), sponsored by Navy...

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