Making a Difference (My Role in Shaping National Security Policy and Civil Liberties from Kennedy to Clinton)

A memoir of power, war, diplomacy, and dissent from a longtime participant in US national security policymaking.

From the Pentagon Papers to the Nixon White House, from Vietnam and nuclear arms negotiations to civil liberties battles at the ACLU and diplomacy in the Clinton administration, Morton H. Halperin spent more than half a century involved in many of America’s most significant political and foreign policy debates. In Making a Difference, Halperin takes readers inside the institutions where major policy decisions were made, working alongside figures such as Robert McNamara, Henry Kissinger, Clark Clifford, and Madeline Albright during the Cold War and after.

A young Harvard scholar who entered government expecting to stay only briefly, Halperin instead became a participant, critic, and observer in a series of influential policy debates and national security crises. Halperin recounts internal disputes over Vietnam strategy, secret bombing campaigns, nuclear arms control, Okinawa reversion, the Pentagon Papers, government surveillance, civil liberties, and the role of American democracy in international affairs. He examines how policy is shaped through bureaucratic processes, political relationships, competing priorities, and institutional conflict.

This account of Washington during a period of political and international upheaval traces Halperin’s evolution from academic to policymaker while exploring his long-standing concerns about democratic accountability and constitutional rights. It offers an insider’s perspective on the development of American foreign policy and the challenges faced by those involved in shaping it.