Decision-Making in American Foreign Policy

The formulation of a policy that will satisfy several values and interests more or less compatible is a classic problem of political decision making. This phenomenon by which there can be, in a foreign policy issue for example, several divergent values and interests was named value-complexity by Alexander George. When facing a value complexity problem, a decision maker must choose some values and some interests over others. The choice he makes will not necessarily be the one made by other decision makers. This can result in a serious impediment to the decision making process. The American foreign policy towards the Middle East faced, for the major part of the Cold War era, a value-complexity problem because it looked to reconcile four hard-to reconcile values and interests. The Reagan government was confronted rather acutely with this problem in the making of its Iranian policies. The administration was split in at least two factions over Iran : one who thought primarily of containing the Soviet Union in the Middle East region and the other for whom the political stability of moderate regimes threatened by revolutionnary Iran should be the most important priority. The existence of these factions, consequence of value-complexity, produced the making and the implementation of two distinct Iranian policies.

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DUAL-TRACK DECISION MAKING AND THE AMERICAN FOREIGN POLICY SYSTEM

Can Governments Learn? ◽

10.1016/b978-0-08-032401-2.50012-5 ◽

1985 ◽

pp. 141-169

Author(s):

Lloyd S. Etheredge

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

Policy System

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Struggle for the Turf

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2010249 ◽

1985 ◽

Vol 37 (3) ◽

pp. 403-415

Author(s):

Henry Trofimenko

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

Policy Process ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

The United States ◽

Political Decision ◽

Political Decision Making ◽

Insight Into ◽

The U.S

For anyone whose job is to study the United States, the memoirs of its statesmen provide more than merely entertaining reading. They not only give you a closer insight into the “kitchen” of statesmanship and political decision making; they also provide an opportunity to check the assumptions and paradigms that were constructed earlier to analyze the policy of any particular administration. The memoirs confirm that in spite of hundreds of books and thousands of articles in the U.S. press that discuss specific policies, as well as daily debates in Congress and its committees, press conferences, and official statements, the policy process is not as open as it might seem at first glance. Rather, American foreign policy is made within a very restricted circle of the “initiated”—official and unofficial presidential advisers, including selected members of the Cabinet.

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Deterrence Theory Revisited

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2009945 ◽

1979 ◽

Vol 31 (2) ◽

pp. 289-324 ◽

Cited By ~ 115

Author(s):

Robert Jervis

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

International Relations ◽

Empirical Evidence ◽

Recent Work ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

Third Wave ◽

Deterrence Theory ◽

The Third

Because of its parsimony and power, deterrence theory is the most important American theory of international relations. Yet it has many faults. The boundaries outside of which it does not apply are not clear; it does not tell how a state can change an adversary's motives; it does not deal with the use of rewards. Current scholarship of the third wave of deterrence theory, including George and Smoke'sDeterrence in American Foreign Policy, has increased our knowledge by providing empirical evidence on when and how deterrence fails. Examination of the details of decision making reveals the ways in which attempts to deter can go wrong. Recent work stresses the role of each side's intrinsic interest in an issue, and argues that earlier formulations of the theory exaggerated the importance of commitment. The third wave also introduces a larger political element by focusing attention on states' goals and the context of their behavior.

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“Bureaucratic Bargaining”: An American Foreign Policy Simulation

Political Science Teacher ◽

10.1017/s0896082800000052 ◽

1988 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 6-9 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Heidi H. Hobbs ◽

Dario V. Moreno

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

A Priori ◽

Complex Structure ◽

Policy Decision ◽

Decision Making Process ◽

Actor Model ◽

The Individual ◽

Beginning Students

The complexities of the governmental machinery and personal perceptions involved in the formulation of American foreign policy are difficult for students to comprehend from the confines of the classroom. Beginning students often enter the study of international relations/political science with a simplistic view of policy making. They tend to accept a priori what Graham Allison (1971) calls the “rational actor model” in which students “package the activities of various officials of a national government as action chosen by a unified actor, strongly analogous to an individual human being.” Students often believe that foreign policy is set by a cohesive group of individuals who share common goals and preferences. The additional tendency to anthropomorphize the state leads undergraduates to write papers in which nation-states are portrayed with such diverse human qualities as sympathy, cruelty, greed, and aggression.Modern scholarship on decision making has expanded beyond this traditional view to encompass differing variables. There is an ongoing debate in the discipline as to what is the most potent variable in American foreign policy. One group of scholars contends that the bureaucratic or role variable is more important. While agreeing that role is a powerful restriction, particularly at the lower levels of the bureaucracy, other scholars argue that the individual perceptions and beliefs of policy makers are more important in the decision-making process.Given the complicated nature of this debate, a creative way to expose beginning students to American foreign policy decision making is through a simulation. Simulations are useful for the study of the decision-making process because the standard lecture-discussion format, which provides a linear overview of the subject, does not adequately communicate the complex structure and multiplicity of factors in operation.

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THE U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL IN CONTEMPORARY AMERICAN INTERNATIONAL STUDIES

MGIMO Review of International Relations ◽

10.24833/2071-8160-2016-4-49-181-189 ◽

2016 ◽

pp. 181-189

Author(s):

V. V. Pavlov

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

National Security ◽

Security Council ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

The United States ◽

Decision Making Process ◽

National Security Council ◽

White House ◽

The U.S

Established in accordance with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947, the U.S. National Security Council is the main advisory body to the President of the United States tasked with helping the head of state to make the right decisions on matters related to national security. NSC system has been constantly evolving for some 70 years, and the NSC staff became a separate 'ministry' of a kind, allowing presidential administrations to focus ever-increasing control over American foreign policy in the White House. That is why serious attention is devoted to the National Security Council by American researches studying foreign policy decision-making. Here, a 'three-pronged consensus' exists: functioning and efficiency of the decision-making process is primarily a result of presidential actions; the President will make the best decision after becoming aware of the whole range of possible alternatives and assessing the consequences of each policy option; the position of the National Security Advisor, who is often one of the closest officials to the President and serves as a coordinator of the decision-making process, is considered to be one of the most notable in today's U.S. presidential administrations - and the most influential of those not being a subject to approval by the legislative branch of U.S. government. Any fundamental changes in the practice of U.S. foreign policy mechanism, as well as a decline of the White House influence on foreign policy are unlikely in the short term.

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The Nixon-Kissinger Foreign Policy System and U.S.-European Relations: Patterns of Policy Making

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2010028 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 1-43 ◽

Cited By ~ 19

Author(s):

Wilfrid L. Kohl

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Economic Policy ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

Policy Making ◽

Process Model ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

Policy Formation ◽

Policy Outcomes ◽

Organizational Process ◽

Royal Court

No single model adequately explains the American foreign policy-making process. At least six models are required, singly or in some combination, to understand recent American foreign policy formation under the Nixon Administration. The six models are: democratic politics, organizational process/bureaucratic politics, the royal-court model, multiple advocacy, groupthink, and shared images or mind-sets. After a review of the rules of the foreign policy game in Washington and the main elements of the Nixon-Kissinger National Security Council system, the article seeks to apply the models to a number of cases in recent American policy making toward Europe. U.S.-Soviet relations, the “Year of Europe,” and Nixon's New Economic Policy of August 1971 are examined as cases of royal-court decision making. A second category of cases exhibits mixed patterns of decision making: SALT, the Berlin negotiations, U.S. troops in Europe, MBFR, and U.S. trade policy. Bureaucratic variables alone explained policy outcomes in international economic policy making in the autumn of 1971, and an organizational process model was found to be dominant generally in the formation of recent international monetary policy, led by the Treasury Department. The conclusion considers the relationships between the models and certain kinds of policies.

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Political Gaming and Foreign Policy Making during Crises

World Politics ◽

10.2307/2010041 ◽

1977 ◽

Vol 29 (4) ◽

pp. 610-625 ◽

Cited By ~ 10

Author(s):

Robert Mandel

Keyword(s):

Decision Making ◽

Foreign Policy ◽

Policy Making ◽

American Foreign Policy ◽

Rand Corporation ◽

International Crises ◽

Policy Makers ◽

National Governments ◽

Crisis Situations

This article evaluates one means—political gaming—for coping with the distorted processes and perceptions that are present in foreign policy making during crises. Political games are exercises in which teams representing national governments meet and discuss crisis situations presented in scenarios. American foreign policy makers have engaged in this activity since the late logo's at the RAND Corporation, M.I.T., the Pentagon, and the C.I.A. Several hypotheses are developed on the changes in decisionmaking processes generated through political gaming, and on the nature of international perceptions during crises, as reflected through political gaming. These hypotheses are evaluated by means of data from the only unclassified professional-level games on international crises (those at RAND and M.I.T.), from a series of student games conducted at Yale, and from insights gained by the author's direction of two C.I.A. games. The results show that political gaming is indeed effective in improving decision making during crises, and they introduce some new aspects into accepted wisdom about international perceptions during crises.

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