Summary and Implications

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Policy Implications ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
The World ◽  
And Behavior

This chapter summarizes the book's empirical findings and explains their practical policy implications as well as their significance for international relations theory. The selective attention thesis is pitted against the capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis for each of the three historical episodes of intentions assessment. The selective attention thesis is more successful than the capabilities, strategic military doctrine, and behavior theses in accounting for the empirical patterns observed for the three cases. The evidence shows that when assessing intentions, decision makers rely on their personal impressions and are influenced by indicators that are consistent with their own theories about how the world operates as well as their preexisting stance toward an adversary. In contrast, intelligence organizations pay selective attention to those indicators that match their bureaucratic expertise. The chapter concludes by suggesting important avenues for further research.

Theories of Intentions and the Problem of Attention

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Ideal Type ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
The Status ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
Defense Theory

This chapter outlines the theoretical foundations of the selective attention thesis and three competing ones: the capabilities, strategic military doctrine, and behavior theses. It divides perceived political intentions into five ideal-type categories based on the degree to which the enemy is believed to have the determination required to revise the status quo and the extent of its revisionist intentions: unlimited expansionist, limited expansionist, unlimited opportunistic, limited opportunistic, and status quo powers. The chapter proceeds by offering a set of hypotheses as to how civilian decision makers and intelligence organizations conduct intentions assessment. In particular, it considers the vividness hypothesis, the subjective credibility hypothesis, the organizational expertise hypothesis, and the offense–defense theory. It also explains the methodology used in the three case studies.

Introduction

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
World War ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
And Behavior

This book explores the question of how policy makers gauge their adversaries’ intentions and the implications of such intentions assessment for international relations and world affairs. It advances a framework called the selective attention thesis and compares it to three well-known explanations of perceived intentions: the capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. All four theses are tested using three cases: British assessments of Nazi Germany’s intentions in the period leading to World War II; U.S. assessments of Soviet intentions under the administration of Jimmy Carter; and U.S. assessments of Soviet intentions in the years leading to the end of the Cold War during the second administration of Ronald Reagan. Drawing on these historical episodes, the book considers which indicators are used or ignored by decision makers and intelligence organizations when making intentions assessments.

Sovereignty at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leonard V. Smith
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
International Relations ◽  
International System ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Great Power ◽  
World War ◽  
Treaty Of Versailles ◽  
The World ◽  
Paris Peace Conference

We have long known that the Paris Peace Conference of 1919 “failed” in the sense that it did not prevent the outbreak of World War II. This book investigates not whether the conference succeeded or failed, but the historically specific international system it created. It explores the rules under which that system operated, and the kinds of states and empires that inhabited it. Deepening the dialogue between history and international relations theory makes it possible to think about sovereignty at the conference in new ways. Sovereignty in 1919 was about remaking “the world”—not just determining of answers demarcating the international system, but also the questions. Most histories of the Paris Peace Conference stop with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles with Germany on June 28, 1919. This book considers all five treaties produced by the conference as well as the Treaty of Lausanne with Turkey in 1923. It is organized not chronologically or geographically, but according to specific problems of sovereignty. A peace based on “justice” produced a criminalized Great Power in Germany, and a template problematically applied in the other treaties. The conference as sovereign sought to “unmix” lands and peoples in the defeated multinational empires by drawing boundaries and defining ethnicities. It sought less to oppose revolution than to instrumentalize it. The League of Nations, so often taken as the supreme symbol of the conference’s failure, is better considered as a continuation of the laboratory of sovereignty established in Paris.

US Decision Makers’ Perceptions of Soviet Intentions

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
National Security ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Jimmy Carter ◽  
Individual Decision ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The U.S

This chapter examines the indicators used by U.S. President Jimmy Carter and two key decision makers in his administration, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, to assess the intentions of the Soviet Union during the period 1977–1980. Using evidence from U.S. archives and interviews with former U.S. decision makers, it compares the predictions of the selective attention thesis, capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. After discussing the U.S. decision makers’ stated beliefs about Soviet intentions, the chapter considers the reasoning they employed to justify their intentions assessments. It then describes the policies that individual decision makers advocated and those that the administration collectively adopted. It also explores whether decision makers advocated policies that were congruent with their stated beliefs about intentions and evaluate sthe impact of beliefs about intentions on U.S. foreign policy at the time.

British Decision Makers’ Perceptions of Nazi Germany’s Intentions

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
Selective Attention ◽  
Prime Minister ◽  
Decision Makers ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
National Archives

This chapter examines the evolution of the views held by Britain’s key decision makers, including Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, about Nazi Germany’s intentions, the indicators they used to make inferences about the nature and scope of Adolf Hitler’s intentions, and the policies they advocated that reflected their assessments. Drawing on documents in the British National Archives, the chapter provides evidence that strongly supports the selective attention thesis along with the vividness and subjective credibility hypotheses, adequately supports the behavior thesis’ current actions hypotheses, and only weakly supports the capabilities and strategic military doctrine theses. While Hitler’s costly actions played a relatively important role in the intentions assessments of some decision makers, indicators associated with the capabilities thesis or strategic military doctrine thesis and Germany’s past actions were less central to the process of inferring Hitler’s political intentions.

Indicators of Nazi Germany’s Intentions and the Coming of World War I, 1934–39

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keren Yarhi-Milo
Keyword(s):  
World War I ◽  
Selective Attention ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
Military Doctrine ◽  
World War ◽  
Adolf Hitler ◽  
And Behavior

This chapter focuses on British assessments of Nazi Germany’s intentions during the interwar period (1934–1939). It outlines the predictions generated by each of the four explanations about perceived intentions and examines changes in German military capabilities, doctrine, and actions during this period. The chapter first considers the hypothetical arguments of the selective attention thesis and highlights its predictions for this case, focusing on the vividness hypothesis, the subjective credibility hypothesis, and the organizational expertise hypothesis. It then derives predictions for each of the competing theses, namely: capabilities thesis, strategic military doctrine thesis, and behavior thesis. The findings suggest that Britain’s perceptions of Germany from 1934 to 1939 were shaped by costly actions that had been undertaken by the latter well before Adolf Hitler rose to power in January 1933.

Introduction: Diversity and Disciplinarity in International Relations Theory

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Steve Smith
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Structural Realism ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
English School ◽  
International Theory ◽  
The World

This text argues that theory is central to explaining International Relations (IR) and that the discipline of IR is much more relevant to the world of international relations than it has been at any point in its history. Some chapters cover distinct IR theories ranging from realism/structural realism to liberalism/neoliberalism, the English school, constructivism, Marxism, critical theory, feminism, poststructuralism, green theory, and postcolonialism. Oher chapters explore International Relations theory and its relationship to social science, normative theory, globalization, and the discipline’s identity. This introduction explains why this edition has chosen to cover these theories, reflects on international theory and its relationship to the world, and considers the kind of assumptions about theory that underlie each of the approaches.

Challenges to Traditional International Relations Theory Posed by Environmental Change

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hugh Dyer
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Environmental Change ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
International Relations Theory ◽  
The World ◽  
Practical Challenge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Over Time

Changes in the environment can impact international relations theory, despite enjoying only a limited amount of attention from scholars of the discipline. The sorts of influence that may be identified include ontology, epistemology, concepts, and methods, all of these being related to varying perspectives on international relations. It is likely that the most profound implications arise at the ontological level, since this establishes assumptions about, for example, whether the world we wish to understand is both political and ecological. However, more recently the recognition of the practical challenge presented by the environment has become widespread, though it has not yet translated into a significant impact on the discipline of international relations, even when theoretical implications are noted. It is now almost obligatory to include the environment in any list of modern international relations concerns, as over time it has become necessary to include peace, underdevelopment, gender, or race, as they quite rightly became recognized as significant aspects of the field. Moreover, the environment, as a relatively novel subject matter, has naturally brought some critique and innovation to the field. However, studies of the environment are also subject to such descriptors as “mainstream” and “radical” in debates about how best to tackle the subject. As is often the case, the debates are sharpest among those with the greatest interest in the subject.

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