The fifth edition of US National Security retains the structure and approach that have made this text so successful, but it has been revised and updated throughout to reflect the challenges faced by the Obama administration. The choices necessary in an increasingly budget-constrained environment, the broader range of national security issues, and the evolving nature of counterinsurgency doctrine and practice are among the currents that inform the authors’ clear presentation and appraisal of US security interests, politics, and processes.
This book was decent. It covered a lot, but I'm not really sure why it took so much space to say what it did. The overt political bias is entertaining, but it distracts from the reading, and the lack of objectivity makes me question the book's accuracy. The sections on the individual branches are useful, but the rest of it mostly just repeats in a hundred different ways (and often not even in different ways) that the president is the most important part of the national security process.