DB

Chapter 9

Policy-Making Models

218

Dateline: Iran Crises

International crises are situations of high surprise, high threat, and short response time. A common characteristic of crisis situations is an action-reaction cycle in which the action of one side produces a quick response by the other. While each move may be calculated, the sum effect of the moves in an action-reaction cycle is the loss of control, as a conflict moves up an escalation ladder toward war. The June 2019 conflict between the United States and Iran was a crisis with an action-reaction cycle. The Iran crisis was not a bolt out of the blue but followed a series of calculated actions by each side designed to achieve their aims. For the United States, the aim was denuclearization (and perhaps regime change). For Iran, it was ending economic sanctions. The chronology of events leading up to the crisis are presented in box 9.1.

Box 9.1

Chronology of Events Leading up to the Downing of a U.S. Drone by Iran

· May 8, 2018. In response to Trump’s announcement that the United States was withdrawing from the 2015 Iran nuclear agreement, Iran’s President Hassan Routhani said that the country would continue to abide by its terms.

· May 21, 2018. Secretary of State Pompeo presents twelve demands that Iran must meet for a new agreement.

· August 7, 2018. The United States puts in place a first round of economic sanctions.

· November 5, 2018. A second round of sanctions is announced.

· April 8, 2019. Trump designates the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist group; Iran counters by designating the U.S. Central Command as a terrorism group.

· May 5, 2019. National Security Advisor Bolton announces that the United States is sending an aircraft carrier strike group and Air Force bombers to the Middle East in response to “troubling and escalatory indications and warnings” and that “any attack on the United States interests or those of our allies will be met with unrelenting force”; Trump states that there is a “chance” of military action against Iran.

· May 8, 2019. Trump announces a new round of economic sanctions; Iran announces that it is preparing to increase enriched uranium and heavy war production, which are not permitted by the 2015 agreement.

· May 12, 2019. Four ships, including two Saudi oil tankers, are damaged in sabotage attacks; Iran characterizes the incidents as “alarming and regrettable.”

· May 14, 2019. Houthi rebels in Yemen use drones to attack an oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia; the United States and Saudi Arabia blame Iran for supporting the Houthi attack, but Iran denies it.

· May 19, 2019. A rocket lands near the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. Trump tweets “If Iran wants to fight, that will be the official end of Iran”; Iran’s Foreign Minister responds that Trump had been “goaded” into “genocidal taunts.”

· May 24, 2019. Trump orders 1,500 additional troops to the Middle East and announces arms sales to Saudi Arabia and others in the region.

· June 13, 2019. Two tankers are crippled by explosives in the Gulf of Oman in an attack similar to the May 12 incident; one video shows a Revolutionary Guard patrol boat next to a tanker, removing an unexploded mine. U.S. reports speak of the tankers as being under attack; Iran describes the incidents as accidents and calls the allegations alarming, saying that “the U.S. and its regional allies must stop warmongering and put an end to mischievous plots as well as false flag operations in the region.”

· June 17, 2019. Iran says that it is within ten days of violating the 2015 agreement; the United States announces deployment of another 1,000 troops to the Middle East.

· June 20, 2019. Iran shoots down a U.S. surveillance drone.

The crisis trigger was Iran’s downing of an unmanned U.S.RQ-4 Global Hawk surveillance drone, which had taken off from an airbase in the United Arab Emirates, on June 29 at 4:05 a.m. local time (7:35 p.m. Wednesday, Washington time). It was shot down by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary National Guard Corps using a surface-to-air missile near the Strait of Hormuz, a body of water through which nearly 25 percent of the world’s oil travels. Iran claimed that the drone had entered Iranian air space, and that warnings had been sent and ignored, claiming that the last warning had been sent at 3:55 a.m. A second spy plane in the area, with thirty-five people aboard, responded to the warning and altered its course. After the incident, Iranian officials stated that “our borders are Iran’s red line, and we will react strongly against any aggression.” The United States denied that the drone had entered Iranian airspace and called the incident an unprovoked attack in international airspace.

Trump met with National Security Advisor John Bolton, Patrick Shanahan and Mark Esper (the acting incoming and outgoing heads of the Department of Defense, respectively), Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joseph Dunford Jr. at 7:00 a.m. to formulate a response.1 Accounts portray Trump at this meeting and later ones as being supportive of a military action. Later that morning, Trump Tweeted that Iran had “made a very big mistake” and gave the military the go ahead to prepare a military strike. Accounts state that he had been informed of the risks accompanying military action, including possible casualties, at this and subsequent meetings.

Around 11:00 a.m., administration and military officials met to review twelve response options, which were narrowed down to two. Although all favored some response, administration officials were split on how to respond. Bolton and Haspel supported military action. General Dunford urged caution because possible repercussions in the region could endanger U.S. forces and allies. Pompeo also supported a military strike but stressed the long-term effectiveness of economic sanctions.

In a different meeting that had already been scheduled, Congressional leaders from both parties were briefed by intelligence. In a public statement, Trump appeared to move away from military action, stating that “I find it hard to believe that it was intentional . . . it could have been somebody who was loose and stupid that did it.” Congressional leaders 221including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and the Chairs and ranking minority members of the House and Senate Intelligence and Armed Services Committees, returned to the White House in the afternoon with Trump, CIA Director Gina Haspel, Shanahan, and Esper, among others. They expected to be told of an upcoming attack, but this did not happen. Instead, a dialogue took place with Trump failing to endorse any specific plan and asking them to go to on television and defend him on Friday.

The Pentagon continued to plan for an attack and had a 6:00 p.m. meeting with Shanahan. About an hour later, two hours before the strikes were scheduled to start and with planes in the air, Trump held another meeting in the Oval Office, when he asked about civilian casualties and was told that there could be as many as 150; this figure came from Pentagon lawyers, was based on worst case scenarios, and had not been cleared by either Shanahan or General Dunford. Judging the number to be too high, Trump cancelled the attack. Pence, Pompeo, and Bolton were all out of the White House and caught off-guard when Trump made this decision.

Political and military maneuvering between the U.S. and Iran did not end with the decision not to conduct a military strike. First, the U.S. carried out a secret cyber strike against the database used by the Revolutionary Guard to target tankers in the Persian Gulf. Next, an action-reaction sequence occurred; Great Britain seized an Iranian tanker because it was believed to be going to Syria, violating a European Union economic blockade, and Iran seized a British oil tanker in retaliation. Iran also announced a series of moves that would have it exceed the nuclear enrichment limit set by the 2015 nuclear agreement. The United States responded with the threat of more sanctions. This was followed by a Houthi attack on major Saudi Arabian oil facilities. Secretary of State Pompeo blamed Iran and labeled it an act of war. Iran denied responsibility for the attack. Trump threatened military action against it but settled on sending additional military forces to Saudi Arabia to aid in protecting it from additional attacks.

Action-reaction cycles like the Iran drone crisis are common throughout history. One ended up starting World War I, the so-called war to end all wars (see the Historical Lesson).

It is one thing to recount key aspects of an important foreign policy decision, but how do you decide which influences were important in shaping the key decisions? One way to answer this question is to employ a foreign policy decision-making model. This chapter surveys five of the most frequently used models, highlighting both their strengths and weaknesses.2 It illustrates how they can be used to understand U.S. foreign policy making by applying three of them to the Cuban missile crisis.

Foreign Policy Decisions and Models

One former foreign policy maker has observed that “the business of Washington is making decisions.”3 What is a foreign policy decision? What is it we are trying to understand? Answering these questions is complicated by a number of factors. First, the notion of a decision is itself somewhat misleading. It suggests the existence of a specific point in time at which a conscious judgment is made about a problem. Reality is often far less organized. Decisions are seldom final or decisive, tend to lack concrete beginnings and endpoints, and often amount to only temporary breathing spells or truces before the same issue arises again. In addition, decisions are often made with far less attention to their full meaning and consequences than is commonly recognized: “A government does not decide to inaugurate the nuclear age, but only to try and build the bomb before its enemy does.”4

A second complicating factor is the relationship of the policy process to policy outcomes. Our intuitive sense is that if the policy process can be made to work properly, the policy outcome should also work. So bad policy can be attributed to bad decision-making. Unfortunately, the link between the two is imperfect. Good decision-making does not ensure good policy. According to a provocative account of the U.S. experience in Vietnam, the fundamental irony of Vietnam is that, while U.S. policy has been roundly criticized, the policy-making system worked5; it achieved its basic purpose of preventing a communist victory until domestic political opinion coalesced around a strategy of either victory or withdrawal. The political system produced policies responsive to the wishes of the majority and near the political center, while at the same time allowing virtually all views to be aired. The bureaucracy selected and implemented measures designed to accomplish these ends, and these policies were undertaken without illusions about their ultimate chances of success.

In an effort to make sense out of the complicated business of making decisions, models have been developed to help explain, describe, predict, and evaluate how U.S. foreign policy is made. Models are analytical tools that are designed to serve as simplified representations of reality. As simplifications, they leave out much of the detail and texture of what goes on in the policy-making process. Models can be distinguished from one another in terms of how they seek to capture and depict reality.

Before turning to descriptions of the models, two caveats need to be raised. First, these models can help us understand what happens during the policy-making process, but are not necessarily chosen consciously by policy makers. Second, they should not be judged in terms of right or wrong; a more useful standard is how helpful they are for explaining, describing, or evaluating the workings of the foreign policy process for the particular policy being studied.

The Rational Actor Model

The most frequently employed policy-making model is the rational actor model. At its core is an action-reaction process; foreign policy is viewed as a calculated response to the actions of another actor. In carrying out these calculations, the state is seen as being unitary and rational. Unitary means viewing the state as calculating and responding to external events as if it were a single entity; there is no need for the analyst to delve into the intricacies of governmental organization, domestic politics, or personalities in trying to understand why a policy was selected. The state can be treated as a black box, responding with one voice to the challenges and opportunities confronting it. For example, it is employed implicitly when speaking of Israeli goals, Argentine national interests, or Soviet adventurism.

The basic elements of a rational decision process are the following: (1) goals are clearly stated and ranked in order of preference, (2) all options are considered, (3) the consequences of each option are assessed, and (4) a value-maximizing choice is made. Broadly speaking, there are two ways of carrying out a rational actor analysis of policy making. The first is inductive, which is frequently employed in diplomatic histories. Analysts try to understand the foreign policy decision by placing themselves in the position of the government taking the action. The objective is to appreciate the situation as the government sees it and to understand the logic of the situation. The second approach, deductive, is best exemplified by game theory; it is frequently employed by military strategists and deterrence theorists. Here it is assumed that “a certain kind of conduct is inherent in a particular situation or relationship.”6 Rather than relying on actual events to support its analysis, the deductive approach relies on logical and mathematical formulations of how states should (rationally) behave under given conditions.

The rational actor model is attractive because it places relatively few informational demands on the observer. However, it is frequently criticized for essentially the same reason. Foreign policy is not just made in response to external events; it is heavily influenced by domestic political calculations, personalities, and organizational factors. In addition, the rational actor model assumes that “important events have important causes.” Doing so downgrades the importance of chance, accidents, and coincidence in foreign affairs. Critics also contend that the model’s information-processing demands exceed human capabilities. Goals are seldom stated clearly or rank ordered. The full range of policy options and their consequences are rarely evaluated. In making decisions, the need for value trade-offs is denied more often than it is faced.

Critics of the assumption of rationality often advance two other models. One is based on the concept of incremental decision-making, in which goals are only loosely stated, a limited range of options is examined, and the policy selected is one that “satisfies” (is satisfactory and sufficient) rather than optimizes.7 Another decision-making model, known as 224prospect theory, asserts that individuals tend to value what they have more than what they do not have; they prefer the status quo more often than one would predict; and they tend to be risk-averse with respect to gains and risk-accepting when it comes to losses. Prospect theory implies that leaders will take more risks to defend their state’s international position than to enhance it, and that, after a loss, leaders tend to take excessive risks to recover that position.8

A final challenge to the rational actor model centers on its methodology. Carried out either inductively or deductively, the rational actor model relies heavily on personal judgment in interpreting actions or in weighting policy payoffs. Graham Allison has captured this criticism in his rationality theorem: There is no pattern of activity for which an imaginative analyst cannot find objectives that are maximized by a given course of action. 9

The Bureaucratic Politics Model

Bureaucratic politics is the “process by which people inside government bargain with one another on complex public policy questions.”10 As this definition suggests, the bureaucratic politics model approaches policy making in a completely different way from the rational actor model. Policy making is seen as a political process dominated by conflict resolution, not problem solving. Politics dominates the decision-making process because power is shared, and the individuals who share power disagree on what should be done because they are located at different places within the government and see different faces of the problem.

Using military force to punish terrorists looks different to a Secretary of State, who must balance the diplomatic pluses and minuses of such a move, than it does to the military Chiefs of Staff, whose forces would be used, or to a presidential aide, who is most sensitive to the domestic implications of the success or failure of such a mission. Not everyone in the government is a participant in a particular policy-making “game.” Fixed organizational routines define the issue, produce the information on which policy decisions are made, link institutions and individuals together, and place limits on the types of policy options that can be implemented.

Furthermore, the players in the game are not equal in their ability to influence the outcome of the bargaining process. Deadlines, the rules of the game, and action channels confer power to some and deny it to others. Rules determine what kind of behavior is permitted and by whom. Can unilateral statements be made? Can information be leaked? Action channels link policy makers and determine who is in the best position to make a unilateral statement or to be included in a committee that approves action. Deadlines, which force issues by accelerating the tempo of the decision-making process and creating pressure for an agreement, take many forms, and may include a meeting with a foreign head of state, a presidential speech, or congressionally established reporting deadlines.

Rarely do policy problems enter or leave the policy process in a clearly definable manner. More frequently, they flow through it in a fragmented state and become entangled in other ongoing policy issues. The result is that policy is not formulated with respect to any underlying conception of the U.S. national interest. Instead, its content is heavily influenced by the way in which the problem first surfaces and how it interacts with the other issues on the policy agenda.

In putting all of this together, advocates of the bureaucratic politics model argue that policy is not, and cannot be, a product of deliberate choice. Instead, policy is either a result of a political bargaining process or the product of organizational standard operating procedures.11 In either case, a new policy is not likely to differ greatly from the existing policy because bargaining is an expensive, time-consuming process. In addition, policy makers are often committed quite deeply to their positions. The need for agreement pushes policy makers toward acceptance of a minimal decision that will allow all sides to claim a partial victory. The inflexible and blunt nature of organizational routines and procedures reinforces the tendency for policy to change only at the margins. Administrative feasibility is a constant check on the ability of policy makers to tailor policy options to meet specific problems. In sum, from the bureaucratic politics perspective, the best predictor of future policy is not the policy that maximizes U.S. national interests, but the one that is only incrementally different from current policy.

The bureaucratic politics model makes important contributions to understanding U.S. foreign policy by highlighting the political and organizational nature of policy making. However, it has also been subjected to extensive criticism. First, by emphasizing compromise, bargaining, and standard operating procedures, this model makes it very difficult to assign decision-making responsibility.12 Second, it misrepresents the mechanism of bargaining by overstating the extent to which policy simply emerges from the policy process.13 Third, the bureaucratic politics model is chastised for artificially separating the executive branch bargaining process from the broader social and political context. Attention must also be given to the domestic political forces and the values of policy makers, not just to how policy-making games are played. Finally, the model is criticized for being too complex, a virtual “analytic kitchen sink” into which almost anything can be thrown that might be related to how an issue is resolved.14 The result is a story that may make for interesting reading, but it violates a fundamental rule: all things being equal, simple explanations are better than complex one

The Small-Group Decision-Making Model

A third policy-making model focuses on the dynamics of small-group decision-making. Advocates of this perspective hold that many critical foreign policy decisions are made neither by an individual policy maker nor by large bureaucratic forces. From a policy maker’s perspective, small-group 226decision-making offers a number of advantages over its bureaucratic counterpart:

· The absence of significant conflict; there are few viewpoints to reconcile

· A free and open interchange of opinion among members; there are no organizational interests to protect

· Swift and decisive action

· Possible innovation and experimentation

· The possibility of maintaining secrecy15

Three different types of small groups can be identified:16

1. Informal small group that meets regularly but lack an institutional base. The Tuesday lunch group in the Johnson administration and the Friday breakfast and Thursday lunch groups of the Carter administration are prominent recent examples.

2. Ad hoc group created to deal with a specific problem, then ceases to function once its task is completed. In the first week of the 1950 Korean crisis, six small-group meetings were held. During the Cuban missile crisis, the key decisions were made by the Executive Committee (ExCom), an ad hoc group of about fifteen individuals brought together by President John Kennedy specifically to deal with this problem.

3. Permanent small group that possesses an institutional base and is created to perform a series of specified functions. The subcommittees of the National Security Council (NSC) fall into this category. During the Carter administration, a Special Coordinating Committee (SCC) was set up to deal with crisis situations; during the Iranian hostage crisis it met at 9:00 a.m., at first daily and later less frequently to go over an agenda put together by the NSC staff.17 Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, the George W. Bush administration established a “war cabinet” consisting of some dozen people including Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

Despite its advantages, small-group decision-making often results in policy decisions that are anything but rational or effective. Pearl Harbor, the Bay of Pigs invasion, and key decisions in Korea and Vietnam have all been analyzed from a small-group decision-making perspective.18

Policy failures are seen as the result of strong in-group pressures on members to concur in the group’s decision. This pressure produces a “deterioration of mental efficiency, reality testing, and moral judgment” that increases the likelihood of the group’s making a potentially defective 227decision.19 Irving Janis coined the term groupthink to capture this phenomenon. He also identified eight symptoms that indicate its presence and divided them into three categories: overestimation of the group’s power and morality, closed-mindedness, and pressures toward conformity. Janis argued that the more symptoms are present, the more likely it is that concurrence-seeking behavior will result and that defective decisions will be made.  Table 9.1  aligns Tower Commission Report observations about the decision-making on the Iran-Contra Affair with Janis’ elements of groupthink. Although the match is not perfect (e.g., illusion of unanimity is better seen as an illusion of presidential support), the parallels are striking.

TABLE 9.1 Groupthink and the Iran-Contra Affair
Element of Groupthink	Findings of the Tower Commission Report
Illusion of invulnerability	The president “was all for letting the Israelis do anything they wanted at the very first briefing” (McFarlane, p. 131).
Unquestioned belief in group’s morality	The president distinguished between selling someone believed able to exert influence with respect to the hostages and dealing directly with the kidnappers (p. 39). The administration continued to pressure U.S. allies not to sell arms to Iran and not to make concessions to terrorists (p. 65).
Collective efforts to discount warnings	“There is a high degree of risk in pursuing the course we have started; we are now so far down the road that stopping . . . could have even more serious repercussions. We all view the next step as confidence building” (North, p. 167).
Stereotyping the enemy	Release of the hostages would require influence with the Hezbollah, which could involve the most radical elements of the Iranian regime. The kind of strategy sought by the United States, however, involved what were regarded as more moderate elements (p. 64).
Self-censorship	Evidence suggests that he [Casey] received information about the possible divergence of funds to the Contras almost a month before the story broke. He, too, did not move promptly to raise the matter with the president (p. 81). Secretary Shultz and Secretary Weinberger, in particular, distanced themselves from the march of events (p. 82).
Illusion of unanimity	“I felt in the meeting that there were views opposed, some (presidential support) in favor, and the President didn’t really take a position, but he seemed to, he was in favor of this project somehow or other” (Shultz, p. 183). “As the meeting broke up, I had the idea the President had not entirely given up on encouraging the Israelis” (Casey, p. 198).
Direct pressure against	“Casey’s view is that Cap [Weinberger] will continue to dissenters create roadblocks until he is told by you that the President wants this move NOW” (North to Poindexter, p. 232).
Emergence of mindguards	“I don’t want a meeting with RR, Shultz, and Weinberger” (Poindexter, p. 45). North directed that dissemination be limited to Secretary Weinberger, DCI Casey, McFarlane, and himself. North said McFarlane had directed that no copy be sent to the secretary of state and that he, McFarlane, would keep Secretary Shultz advised orally on the NSC project (p. 149).
Source: President’s Special Review Panel, The Tower Commission Report (New York: Bantam, 1987). Citations from Robert McFarlane, national security advisor, 1983–1985; Col. Oliver North, national security council staffer; George Shultz, secretary of state; William Casey, director of central intelligence; Adm. John Poindexter, national security advisor, 1985–1986; Caspar Weinberger, secretary of defense.

Groupthink is a phenomenon that occurs regardless of the personality traits of group members. It is not an inevitable product of a tight-knit decision group, nor is it necessarily the cause of a policy fiasco. Poor implementation, changed circumstances, or accidental factors also produce policy failures. Groupthink exists as a tendency that is made more or less likely by three sets of antecedent conditions: the coherence of the decision-making group, structural faults of the organization, and the nature of the decision context. At its core is the assumption that concurrence-seeking behavior is an attempt on the part of group members to cope with stress by developing a mutual support base.20

Because groupthink is a tendency and not a condition, in theory, it can be avoided. Recognizing that each proposed solution has its own drawbacks, Janis puts forward several measures to improve the quality of small-group decision-making.21 They include establishing multiple groups for the same task (multiple advocacy), establishing a devil’s advocate, and having a “second chance” meeting at which decisions can be reconsidered one final time.

Three general lines of criticism have been directed at the groupthink approach to small-group decision-making. First, Janis’ proposed solutions probably will not work. Consider the idea of multiple advocacy, which attempts to ensure that all views, “however unpopular,” will receive serious attention.22 Two dangers exist here. In each case, they are brought on by overloading the intellectual capabilities of policy makers and by highlighting the ambiguity of the evidence before them. One outcome is that policy makers will simply choose whatever policy option is in accord with their preexisting biases. If a wide range of options are all made to appear respectable and doubts exist about the effectiveness of each, why not “let Reagan be Reagan” and select the one that best fits his image of the world? The other, equally undesirable, outcome is paralysis. Confronted with too many policy options, all of which appear to have problems, policy makers may end up doing nothing.

Second, criticism is directed at the criteria used to establish a good decision.23 The standard used (vigilant appraisal) virtually duplicates the logic of the rational actor model. The point remains: If the rational actor model is an unrealistic benchmark for judging decision-making, isn’t the same true for vigilant appraisal?

A third criticism is more theoretical in nature. The groupthink approach is grounded in a conflict model of individual decision-making. According to this model, individuals often confront decision-making situations in which they feel “simultaneous opposing tendencies to accept and reject a given course of action.”24 According to the cybernetic approach to decision-making, individuals do not necessarily attempt to resolve value conflicts and tensions in making decisions. From this vantage point, attention should be directed toward how uncommitted thinkers make decisions.25

Even with these problems, recent decision-making studies continue to point to the importance of groupthink.26 The approach has also been extended from just explaining a defective decision to explaining shifts in a stream of policy decisions. These include the war on terrorism and the invasion of Iraq.27

Elite Theory and Pluralism

During the 1960s and early 1970s, elite theory and pluralism served as the focal point for an intense debate raging among political scientists over how best to understand the process of public policy making. Although no longer the center of attention, they remain important approaches for understanding how U.S. foreign policy is made.

 Elite theory represents a quite different perspective on foreign policy making than the three approaches examined so far. It is concerned with the identities of those individuals who make foreign policy and the underlying dynamics of national power, social myth, and class interests. Elite theory stresses the ties that bind policy makers rather than the forces that divide them.

From this perspective, foreign policy is formulated as a response to demands generated by the economic and political system. Not all demands receive equal attention, and those that receive the most attention serve the interests of only a small sector of society. These special interests are transformed into national interests through the pattern of office holding and the structure of influence that exists within the United States. Those who hold office are seen as a stable and relatively cohesive group of people who share common goals, interests, and values.

Disagreements exist only at the margins; they surface most frequently as disputes over policy implementation, not policy goals. Those outside the elite group are held to be relatively powerless. Furthermore, public reactions are often “orchestrated” by the elite rather than being expressions of independent thinking on policy matters. This explains why certain policy proposals routinely fail to attract serious attention: Ideas that do not build on the relatively narrow range of value assumptions shared by the elite and rooted in the underlying dynamics of the socioeconomic structure are rejected as unworkable, fundamentally flawed, or fatally naïve. Elite theory also suggests that the basic directions of U.S. foreign policy will change slowly, if at all.

Although consensus is broad, elite theorists do disagree on a number of points:

1. Constraints on elite behavior. Some elite theorists see few, if any, constraints on the type of policies that elites can pursue. Others see a more open policy process subject to periodic “short-circuiting” by the public.

2. Conspiring elites. Some elite theorists pay great attention to the social backgrounds and linkages among members of the elite class, but others deemphasize these features in favor of attention to the broader and more enduring forces of a capitalistic economic system that drives U.S. foreign policy to be expansionist, aggressive, and exploitive.28

Several recent administrations have been the subject of conspiratorial-style elite analysis. In the case of the Carter administration, the object of attention was the presence of large numbers of members of the Trilateral Commission in policy-making positions. The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 to foster cooperation among the United States, Western Europe, and Japan. During the Reagan administration, analysis focused on links between his appointees and the Committee on the Present Danger, a group established in the 1970s to warn against the continuing threat posed by the Soviet Union. In the George W. Bush administration, the focus was the influence of neoconservatives on foreign policy decisions. Unlike the other two groups, the neoconservatives were not part of an institution; rather, neoconservative refers to a broad philosophical outlook on America’s role in world politics.

 Pluralism is regarded as the orthodox interpretation of how the U.S. policy-making system works. Like elite theory, no single comprehensive statement of the argument exists. Still, six common themes can be identified:

1. Power in society is fragmented and diffused.

2. Many groups in society have power to participate in policy making.

3. No one group is powerful enough to dictate policy.

4. An equilibrium among groups is the natural state of affairs.

5. Policy is the product of bargaining among groups and reflects the interests of the dominant group(s).

6. The government acts as an umpire, supervising the competition and sometimes compelling a settlement.

Pluralists acknowledge that power resources are not distributed evenly throughout society. However, they hold that merely possessing the attributes of power (wealth, status, etc.) is not equal to possessing power itself29 because the economic and political sectors of society are considered separate. In addition, power resources may be substituted for one another. 231Large numbers may offset wealth; leadership may offset large numbers; and commitment may overcome poor leadership. One example of pluralism was the grassroots movement in the United States to force South Africa to end apartheid. What began as a movement on college campuses in the late 1970s and early 1980s to force companies to disinvest from South Africa gradually succeeded in sensitizing policy makers and the American public to the problem; as a result, by 1985, U.S. policy toward South Africa began to show signs of change.

A number of flaws have been suggested in the pluralists’ argument.30 Pluralists assume that competition between groups produces policy makers who compete over the content of policy. What happens when policy makers do not compete over policy but instead are so fragmented that they rule over separate and self-contained policy areas? Theodore Lowi suggests that such conditions better describe the operation of the U.S. government than the pluralist model; when this happens, the government is not an umpire but a holding company. Pluralism then exists without competition, as interest groups capture different pieces of the government and shape its policies to suit their needs. New groups or the poorly organized are effectively shut out of the decision-making process. Just as important, interest-group liberalism reduces the capacity of the government to plan, because it is unable to speak with one voice or examine problems from a national perspective.

Historical Lesson

The War to End All Wars

Known to many simply as “the Great War,” World War I was an international system-changing event. The action-reaction cycle setting World War I in motion began with the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the heir to the Austrian-Hungarian throne, by a Serbian nationalist on June 28, 1914.

Existing alliance systems that divided the European Great Powers into two groups contributed to the speed with which events unfolded. Britain, France, and Russia formed the Triple Entente. Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy made up the Triple Alliance.

On July 23, Austria-Hungary issued to Serbia a set of ten demands that were deliberately constructed to be unacceptable. When they were rejected, Austria-Hungary broke off diplomatic relations, mobilized its troops, and declared war on Serbia on July 28, 1914. The next day, Russia mobilized its forces in support of Serbia. Germany asked Russia to cease mobilization and drop its support. Germany also sent a communication to France requesting that it not support Russia. When Russia refused, Germany declared war on Russia. Germany then demanded that France remain neutral but began mobilizing in accord with the Schlieffen Plan, Germany’s prewar military plan, which saw invasion of France as necessary to protect its western borders before sending troops to fight Russia. On August 3, Germany declared war on France. On August 4, Britain declared war on Germany. The United Sates declared war on Germany on April 6, 1917.

By the time World War I ended on November 11, 1918, with a death toll exceeding nine million, a number of significant events had occurred. Four empires had been destroyed: Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire. Russia had experienced one of the world’s most important revolutions; in 1917, Russia’s czar was overthrown and a communist government came to power, committed in principle to the overthrow of capitalism around the world. The United States had established itself as a major power and brought to that role a very different interpretation of international politics than the European Great Powers. The League of Nations was created. The map of Europe was redrawn as Poland, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, and Turkey came into existence as independent states.

Given these far-reaching consequences, you would think that avoiding the onset of the Great War would have been a major concern to policy makers and the public alike. Yet this was not the case. For almost a hundred years, the Great Powers had worked together through a series of alliances that had provided them with a mechanism for managing political and military affairs in Europe in a way that minimized the potential occurrence of systemic disruptions. Public fears of a systemic changing war were calmed by Norman Angell’s argument in The Great Illusion, first published 1909; he argued that, while war was not impossible, it would be economically harmful to both the winners and losers due to the dynamics of economic interdependence. The conclusion was clear: war should be rejected and reason and respect for international law should be embraced as the logical path to follow in managing world affairs.

You might also expect national memories of World War I to be consistent. Yet, they differ greatly. France looks back upon it as a tragic but noble cause. Great Britain views it with mixed feelings. Germany came out of the war humiliated and required to pay heavy reparations to the victors, a combination many see as laying the domestic political foundations on which Hitler rose to power.

Japan also emerged from World War I with a sense of having been dishonored; as a victorious Allied Power, Japan entered the Paris Peace Talks expecting to gain control of German colonies in Asia just as France and Great Britain had acquired control over territories ruled by Germany and the Ottoman Empire in Africa and the Middle East. Japan also expected to be treated as an equal; to that end, it put forward a racial equality clause for inclusion in the League of Nations charter. Neither goal was realized. For its part, the United States championed the concept of a League of Nations and then declined to join it, instead adopting a policy of disengagement from the power politics of Europe and Asia.

While debates continue over whether World War I made World War II possible, caused it, or was irrelevant to it, it is clear that World War I did not end global wars. What is unclear is the possibility of reappearance of the factors that contributed to its outbreak. Niall Ferguson suggests that many of those factors are already in place in today’s international system:31 (1) imperial overstretch (Great Britain was showing signs of tiring in its role as the keeper of global peace and prosperity); (2) growing imperial rivalry (between Germany and Russia); (3) instability of existing alliance systems; (4) support by rogue regimes (e.g., Serbia) of international terrorism (the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand); (5) the rise of a revolutionary terrorist group hostile to capitalism (emergence of the Bolsheviks). Today, Ferguson argues that the United States is overstretched militarily; a rivalry is growing between the United States and China; NATO is struggling to define its role; states are sponsoring international terrorism or are reluctant to challenge it; and al-Qaeda is much more of an Islamo–Bolshevist terrorist group than an Islamo–fascist group.

Applying the Lesson

1. Are today’s crises different from the one which set of World War I? Explain your answer.

2. What is the most dangerous step to be avoided in an action-reaction cycle, and why?

3. What decision-making models are best suited for studying crises, and why?

Integrating Models

Given the complexity of the situations faced and the variety of factors that might go into selecting a course of action, it stands to reason that no single foreign policy model will be able to help us understand a foreign policy decision or outcome completely. Such an understanding often requires integrating several different models. Typically, integration can be attempted in four ways. The first is to shift from model to model as the focus of the analysis changes. For example, from the rational actor perspective, the decision to send U.S. troops to Korea in 1950 is a single decision. From the bureaucratic or small-group perspective, a series of separate decisions might be identified. A distinction can also be made between the sociopolitical aspects of policy making and the intellectual task of choosing a response.32 The pluralist and bureaucratic politics models help us understand why policy makers act as they do once they are “in place,” but they tell us little about how they got there or the values they bring to bear in addressing a problem. To answer these questions, we might turn to elite theory or the rational actor model for insight.

A second way to integrate policy-making models is to recognize that some are more appropriate for analyzing some problems or issue areas, than for others. Generally, the more open the policy process and the longer the issue is on the policy agenda (as is typically the case for structural and 234strategic issues), the more useful the bureaucratic and pluralist models will be. For more closed processes and quicker responses, the rational actor, elite theory, or small-group model are more applicable.

A third way to integrate these models is to shift from one to another as the policy problem develops over time. The elite or rational actor model might be especially helpful for understanding how the United States got involved in Vietnam, but the small-group or bureaucratic politics model might be most helpful for understanding key decisions during the course of the war. The poliheuristic decision-making model suggests another way to combine approaches, arguing that individuals only engage in a rational calculation of the costs and benefits of a limited number of alternatives in a second stage of decision-making, after most alternatives have been eliminated.33 Similarly, individuals are likely to approach policy implementation differently than policy selection.

A final way of integrating these models is based on the values that guide analysis. As has already been suggested, although the rational actor model may be deficient as a description of the policy-making process, it is still valuable for the purpose of evaluating the policy process. However, be careful in using models in this way, for embedded in each are assumptions about how policy should be made that are not always readily apparent. For example, implicit in the rational actor model is a belief in the desirability of a strong president and the ability to act quickly. The model does not place great value on widespread participation in decision-making or on a system of checks and balances.

The Cuban Missile Crisis

This section examines the Cuban missile crisis, one of the most important events in U.S. foreign policy. Many consider it the defining foreign policy crisis of the Cold War. The section begins with an overview of how the crisis unfolded, and then employs three models—rational actor, bureaucratic politics, and small-group decision-making—to show how models can help you understand foreign policy.

The Crisis: An Overview

The Cuban missile crisis, which took place over thirteen days (October 16–28, 1962), is widely regarded as a major turning point in the Cold War.34 Never before and never after did the United States and the Soviet Union appear to be on the brink of nuclear war. At the time of the crisis, President John Kennedy estimated that the odds of averting such an outcome were between one in three and 50/50.35

Soviet weapons shipments to Cuba had been taking place since the summer of 1960. A slowdown occurred in early 1962, but the pace quickened again in late July. By September 1, the inventory of Soviet equipment in 235Cuba included surface-to-air missiles (SAMs), cruise missiles, patrol boats, and large quantities of transportation, electrical, and construction equipment, as well as over five thousand technicians and other military personnel.36 The first strategic missiles, medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs) with a range of 1,100 nautical miles, arrived secretly in Cuba on September 8. Forty-two of these missiles reached Cuba before the crisis was resolved. Equipment for the construction of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and IRBM sites also began arriving, although no IRBMs actually reached Cuba. Finally, Soviet shipments in September included IL-28 jet bombers and MIG-21 jet fighters, plus additional SAMs, cruise missiles, and patrol boats.

Intelligence on the exact dimensions of the Soviet buildup in Cuba came from a number of different sources: refugee reports, CIA agents operating in Cuba, analyses of Soviet shipping patterns, and U-2 spy plane overflights. Not all of the information was reliable, nor did it all come together at the same time and place for analysis. For example, refugees were reporting the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba before Cuba began receiving weapons of any kind from the Soviet Union, and great care had to be taken in processing reports from agents operating inside Cuba. The United States Intelligence Board met on September 19 and approved an intelligence estimate indicating that the Soviet Union would not introduce offensive missiles into Cuba.

This conclusion was not shared uniformly in the administration. In late August, Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) John McCone told President Kennedy, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara, and Secretary of State Dean Rusk that the Soviet Union was preparing to place offensive missiles in Cuba. In late September others began to agree with McCone, and a U-2 overflight over western Cuba was considered. No U-2 overflights over this area had been authorized since September 5 because of recent mishaps with U-2 overflights in Asia. Fearful that all U-2 flights might be canceled if another incident occurred, the Committee on Overhead Reconnaissance (COMOR) had decided not to send any U-2s over western Cuba, where SAM sites were known to be under construction. On October 4, COMOR did approve a U-2 overflight over western Cuba. A jurisdictional dispute between the Defense Department and the CIA over who would conduct the mission led to an unsuccessful flight on October 9, and it was not until October 14 that a successful U-2 flight took place. Its photographs firmly established the presence of Soviet offensive missiles in Cuba. On October 22, President Kennedy went on national television to announce the discovery.

Kennedy called together a special ad hoc advisory group known as the ExCom of the National Security Council (NSC) to deal with the crisis. During ExCom’s first meeting on October 16, it began to identify the options open to the United States. Six major options surfaced: (1) no action, (2) diplomatic pressures either at the United Nations or at the Soviet Union, (3) a secret approach to Castro with the option of “split or 236fall,” (4) invasion, (5) a surgical air strike, and (6) a naval blockade.37 The first option seized on was the surgical air strike.38 The blockade was not lobbied for strongly until the end of the day, and Kennedy’s initial response to this option was skeptical, as he was not sure how a blockade would get Soviet missiles out of Cuba.

By the end of the first day, Kennedy identified three options. Participant accounts suggest that attention focused primarily on two of these, the surgical air strike and the blockade. (The third option appears to have been invasion.) In his October 22 statement, Kennedy also announced that a naval quarantine would be imposed on Cuba on October 24; he threatened future action if the missiles were not removed. The blockade was chosen both for what it did and for what it did not do. It was a visible, forceful, military response, but it did not put the Soviet Union into a position where it had no choice but to fight. In fact, it placed responsibility for the next move back on Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev. A number of additional measures were taken publicly to impress on the Soviets the depth of U.S. resolve and to make credible Kennedy’s threat of additional action: Squadrons of U.S. tactical fighters were moved to points from which they could attack Cuba; an invasion force of two hundred thousand troops was readied in Florida; some fourteen thousand thousand air force reserves were called up; and U.S. forces around the world were put on alert.39

The air strike remained a live option. One had tentatively been scheduled for October 20 but was postponed in favor of the blockade. On October 27, one day before Khrushchev offered to remove the missiles, at an ExCom meeting Kennedy approved plans for an October 29 air strike on Soviet missile silos, air bases, and Cuban and Soviet antiaircraft installations. At that same meeting, ExCom concluded that an invasion would follow. McNamara held that an “invasion had become almost inevitable,” and he felt that at least one missile would be launched successfully at the United States.40

The blockade did bring an end to Soviet military shipments to Cuba, but it did not bring a stop to the construction of Soviet missiles and missile sites in Cuba. SAMs became operational during the crisis and shot down a U-2 on October 23. According to President Kennedy’s original orders, if this happened the United States would destroy the site that had launched the missile. However, when the incident occurred, Kennedy delayed retaliating to allow additional time for quiet diplomacy to bring about the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles.

Recent accounts of the Cuban missile crisis suggest that Kennedy would not have ordered an air strike had Khrushchev not responded favorably to U.S. demands, and that the president was prepared to pursue additional negotiations—perhaps through the United Nations—to resolve the crisis.41 These accounts also argue that U.S. policy makers felt a sense of urgency in their deliberations, not out of a fear that Soviet missiles might 

soon become operational, but because the longer the missiles remained in Cuba, the more legitimate they would come to be seen by other states.

On October 28, Khrushchev agreed publicly to remove Soviet missiles in Cuba in return for a U.S. pledge of nonintervention into Cuba, allowing both sides to achieve their publicly stated goals. The United States got the missiles out of Cuba, and the Soviet Union could claim that it had succeeded in protecting Cuba from U.S. aggression (which was the justification given for having placed the missiles in Cuba when confronted by Kennedy). Recently released documents reveal the existence of a secret agreement between Kennedy and Khrushchev with terms different from those that officially ended the crisis. In order to entice Khrushchev into removing the missiles from Cuba, Kennedy promised to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. The secret offer was made by Robert Kennedy to Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on October 27. Dobrynin was also told that a commitment was needed from the Soviets the next day if the crisis was to end on these terms. For reasons of domestic politics and international prestige, Kennedy had refused to publicly accept this trade-off, which had been repeatedly called for by the Soviets and suggested to him by some members of ExCom. Implementation of the U.S. part of the agreement was made conditional on the Soviets’ maintenance of secrecy about the agreement.

October 28 marks the conventional ending point for the Cuban missile crisis, but it, in fact, continued for several more weeks as both sides struggled with implementation of the agreement. Particularly troublesome issues involved defining what was meant by “offensive” weapons (the United States insisted that the IL-28s be removed), and establishing a date for ending the blockade (the Soviets wanted the blockade ended and a no-invasion pledge issued before removing the bombers). Within the U.S. government, the earlier debate on how to proceed was repeated: take unilateral military action to resolve the issue, tighten the blockade, or concede the point and go on to other matters? Diplomacy again came to the rescue when, on November 20, Kennedy announced that the Soviet Union had agreed to remove the IL-28s and that the blockade was coming to an end.

Applying the Rational Actor Model to the Crisis

The preceding account of the Cuban missile crisis is largely consistent with a rational actor interpretation of U.S. foreign policy making. It emphasizes the thorough canvassing of alternatives once a problem has been identified and the selection of a value-maximizing choice. For U.S. policy makers, the goal directing the search for policy options was clear: Get the Soviet missiles out of Cuba without appearing to appease the Soviets and without starting a war. A hardline stance was dictated in part by domestic political considerations. Cuba had become an important and recurring emotional issue in American electoral politics since Fidel Castro had come to power 238there in 1959, and Kennedy was vulnerable. The Bay of Pigs fiasco had made Cuba his political Achilles’ heel, raising questions about his judgment and leadership. The Republican Senate and congressional campaign committees had already identified Cuba as the major issue in the upcoming 1962 election. Therefore, inaction (a possibility suggested at one point by McNamara) and quiet diplomacy were not policy options capable of achieving both the removal of the missiles and a demonstration of political resolve. The air strike was rejected because the Air Force could not give Kennedy a 100 percent guarantee that the missiles would be knocked out. Similar problems confronted the option of invasion. The blockade, coupled with highly visible signals of further military action, was selected as the option that offered the greatest likelihood of getting the missiles out and demonstrating U.S. resolve without running a high risk of setting off a war between the United States and the Soviet Union.

As the rational actor model suggests, the blockade itself was structured to fit the needs of U.S. policy makers. It was not implemented until U.S. officials were sure that Soviet leaders had been able to communicate with Soviet ship captains, and the blockade was placed closer to Cuba than was militarily prudent in order to give the Soviet leadership the maximum amount of time to formulate a peaceful response. The first ship stopped—a U.S.-build World War II Liberty ship registered in Lebanon, owned by a Panamanian firm, and under lease to the Soviet Union—was carefully selected to minimize the possibility of a hostile Soviet response; it did not carry missiles. Two ships that clearly did not carry missiles were allowed to pass through the blockade.

A similar analysis of policy options and consequences late in the crisis would identify Kennedy’s secret offer to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey as the logical follow-up move. The blockade did buy time and show U.S. resolve; however, it could not, in and of itself, remove the missiles. Domestic political considerations again limited Kennedy’s options, as did the continued inability of the military to guarantee that an air strike or invasion would prevent Soviet missiles from reaching the United States. Kennedy’s publicly announced deadline ensured that the military option, with all of its drawbacks, would be used unless Khrushchev could be convinced to take the missiles out of Cuba. The key was to find a face-saving way out for the Soviets that was also true to Kennedy’s stated objectives. This was accomplished by the combined secret agreement and public pledge of the removal of Soviet missiles from Cuba in return for a nonintervention pledge by the United States.

Applying the Bureaucratic Politics Model to the Crisis

The bureaucratic politics perspective on decision-making during the Cuban missile crisis paints a very different picture. Rather than emphasizing the logic of policy making, it stresses its political and organizational context. 239Politics is first evident in the discovery of missiles in Cuba. Consider the following:

· As early as August, DCI McCone had voiced concern about Soviet offensive missiles being placed in Cuba, but he was overruled by McNamara and Rusk.

· No U-2 flights were directed over the area most likely to have Soviet missiles from September 5 until October 14;

· The October 14 flight had been authorized on October 4, but a jurisdictional dispute over who would fly the aircraft and which aircraft would be used delayed it. (The agreed-upon solution was that an Air Force officer in uniform would fly a CIA plane.)

Moreover, evidence now points to the fact that the United States underestimated by one-half the number of troops (forty-two thousand) the Soviet Union had sent to Cuba. Had this figure been known or had the United States discovered the missiles earlier, the nature of policy options considered, the reading of Soviet goals, and U.S. objectives might have been quite different.

The “logic” of the blockade also suffers when the air strike option is examined more closely. First, the Air Force did not specifically design an option to meet ExCom’s goal of removing the Soviet missiles. Instead, it merely dusted off an existing contingency plan that also called for air strikes against arms depots, airports, and artillery batteries opposite the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Second, Air Force calculations of its ability to destroy the Soviet missiles were based on an incorrect labeling of the missiles as mobile field-type missiles; they were actually movable missiles that required six days to be switched from one location to another. Because the Air Force believed that the Soviet missiles might be moved between the time the last reconnaissance mission was flown and the time of the air strike, it was only able to offer Kennedy a 90 percent guarantee that it could knock out all of them. The limits of rational choice are also revealed in the implementation of the blockade. The Navy, like the Air Force, did not tailor its plans to meet ExCom’s needs. After-the-fact reconstructions of the timing of ship stoppings show that, contrary to Kennedy’s orders, the Navy placed the blockade in the location originally proposed rather than moving it closer to Cuba.

The bureaucratic politics model also raises a number of troubling questions about the logic of the agreement that ended the Cuban missile crisis. One point centers on the nature of Soviet goals. No one in ExCom gave serious consideration to the possibility that the Soviet Union was genuinely concerned with deterring a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Evidence now suggests that this, along with balance-of-power considerations, was one of Khrushchev’s goals. Moreover, it appears that it was the possibility that the United States might use the crisis as a pretext for invading Cuba, not the threat of nuclear retaliation, that led to the decision to remove the missiles. 240The formal ending of the crisis on the Soviet side also raises troubling questions. Early accounts suggested that Khrushchev was not in full control of the Politburo, so contradictory messages were being received in Washington concerning the terms for ending the crisis. Evidence now suggests that faulty intelligence, not lack of political control, may have been responsible for the mixed messaging. The first, more conciliatory note was sent when Soviet intelligence was indicating an imminent U.S. attack on Cuba. The second, more stringent, communiqué was sent once it became clear that there would not be an invasion.

Applying the Small-Group Decision-Making Model to the Crisis

Early accounts of the Cuban missile crisis from the small-group decision-making perspective praised ExCom for not falling victim to groupthink. Janis credits ExCom with actively trying to understand what led the Soviets to try to place missiles in Cuba secretly, rather than stereotyping them.42 Janis cites Robert Kennedy’s concern about a Pearl Harbor in reverse as evidence of sensitivity to the moral dilemmas involved in the air strike option. He also notes that members of ExCom frequently changed their minds and eventually came to the conclusion that there were no good policy options at their disposal. President Kennedy is credited with having learned from the Bay of Pigs fiasco and practicing a leadership style that maximized the possibility of ExCom producing quality decisions. To encourage free debate, Kennedy did not attend all of its meetings, and he split ExCom into smaller groups to debate the issues and reexamine the conclusions reached by other participants.

More recent accounts of ExCom’s deliberations suggest that its escape from groupthink was far less complete than was originally believed.43 At least three decision-making defects surfaced that are fully consistent with the groupthink syndrome:

1. ExCom operated with a very narrow mandate: It was to consider the pros and cons of a variety of coercive measures. Kennedy had declared off-limits any consideration of either acquiescence to the Soviet move or diplomacy. True to that mandate, 90 percent of ExCom’s time was spent studying alternative uses of troops, bombers, and warships. So it did not engage in a full search for policy options or operate as an open decision-making forum.

1. Those who sought to expand the list of options under consideration and break out of the group consensus were ostracized. U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson initially opposed the use of force and wrote Kennedy a note cautioning him on the dangers of this option. Kennedy was annoyed by the note and blocked efforts by McNamara and Stevenson to include diplomacy on the options list. Stevenson also suggested a trade of Soviet missiles for U.S. missiles 241in Turkey or for the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base. He came under sharp personal attack by Kennedy and was frozen out of the core decision-making group for these suggestions.

2. Theodore Sorensen, special counsel and advisor to President Kennedy, and Attorney General Robert Kennedy acted as surrogate leaders, reporting back to the President on the discussion and pushing group members to reach a consensus. Here, too, the impact was to limit the number of policy alternatives and stifle discussion. Stevenson observed that “we knew little brother [Robert Kennedy] was watching and keeping a little list where everyone stood.” On Friday night, October 25, President Kennedy informed ExCom that he had chosen the blockade. The very next day, the consensus within ExCom for the blockade began to unravel. At that point, Kennedy told his brother to “pull the group together quickly.” Sorensen would tell the group that they were “not serving the president well,” and Robert Kennedy would tell them that the president could not possibly order an air strike.

Models: A Critique

As you have seen, decision-making models involve dissecting a complex set of political activities. Inevitably, the result is that certain features of the decision-making process receive greater attention and are accorded greater importance than others. For these reasons, policy makers often are uncomfortable with decision-making models. They see the models as oversimplifying policy decisions by putting forward a mechanistic, highly segmented interpretation of a process that is better seen as a seamless web of activity involving efforts at consensus-building, problem-definition, and problem-solving. They contend that generalizations about decision-making are dangerous because each situation is unique in terms of both the problem at hand and the domestic political context in which decisions are made.

For these reasons, many prefer conveying the intricacies of decision-making through memoirs or historical narratives of the type written by David Halberstam on Vietnam and Bosnia and by Bob Woodward on Iraq.44 Constructed as stories, memoirs and historical narratives place individuals at the center of the decision-making process, rather than abstract concepts and forces such as value-maximizing choices, bureaucratic routines, mind guards, and elites.

Over the Horizon: Individual-Centered Models

The central role those personal characteristics play in Donald Trump’s foreign policy decision-making suggests the need to better incorporate individual-centered decision-making models into studies of U.S. foreign policy. Two possible starting points for doing so are also suggested by Trump’s presidency: intuitive decision-making and impulsive decision-making. On the surface, both are consistent with Trump’s statement about how he makes decisions: “I don’t think about them,..I don’t think about, you know, how I make them. I make what I consider the right decision.”45

Intuitive decision-making operates on the basis of knowledge stored in long term memory and moves to a decision automatically at a subconscious level. In contrast, deliberative decision-making is sequential, moving from collecting information to evaluating it and making a decision. Intuitive decision-making examines multiple pieces of information simultaneously and immediately arrives at a judgment without any conscious awareness of how the decision was reached. The dangers of intuitive decision-making include overconfidence, inappropriate application of past experiences, a lack of openness regarding the reasons that decisions are made, limited consideration of alternatives, and prejudice, which causes flawed experiences to overrule accepted facts and evidence.

Impulsive decision-making can be broken down into four dimensions:

1. Urgency. Feeling the need to act quickly with a strong sense of purpose and force.

2. Lack of premeditation. Insensitivity to potential long-term consequences.

3. Lack of perseverance. An inability to remain focused.

4. Sensation seeking. Taking pleasure in making the decision.

Based on these traits, impulsive decision-making leads to risky decisions that focus on short-term gains and jeopardize long-term goals.

The challenge is how to incorporate individual decision-making into the array of policy making models currently used to study foreign policy.46 Possible approaches include examining whether intuitive and impulsive decision-making are more likely under certain circumstances than others or in certain issue areas. Another approach is to look at how these decision-making styles link up with different stages in the decision-making process and the models with which they are best paired. For example, former Secretary of Defense Mattis is known to have ignored or resisted directives from Trump or limited the options presented to him regarding military action against North Korea, Iraq, and Iran. Trump is known to allow dissent but not disloyalty or self-promotion in the media to advance a position.47

Critical Thinking Questions

242

1. What are the strengths and limitations of using models to understand U.S. foreign policy making?

2. How might the pluralist and elitist models explain the Cuban missile crisis?

3. Which model might be most helpful in trying to understand the foreign policy of China, Iran, or Russia, and why?

Key Terms

· action channels, 224

· black box, 223

· bureaucratic politics, 224

· elite theory, 229

· groupthink, 227

· Model, 221

· Pluralism, 230

· Poliheuristic decision-making, 234

· Prospect theory, 224

· Rational actor, 223

· Small-group decision-making, 225

· Standard operating procedures, 225

243

Further Reading

Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston, MA: Little, Brown, 1971).

This landmark study of the policy-making process and its impact on policy presents readers with three alternative explanations for the Cuban missile crisis.

John Donovan, The Cold Warriors: A Policy Making Elite (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1974).

This volume examines the backgrounds, careers, thinking, and interactions of key figures in a series of case studies on American foreign policy making during the early Cold War period.

Leslie Gelb and Richard Betts, The Irony of Vietnam: The System Worked (Washington, DC: Brookings, 1979).

This provocative study argues that, rather than contributing to the failure in Vietnam as many argue, the American political process worked as intended and can be said to have succeeded.

David Houghton, The Decision Point (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013).

This book examines six post–World War II cases in U.S. foreign policy decision-making through bureaucratic, group decision-making, and psychological decision-making models.

Irving L. Janis, Groupthink: Psychological Studies of Policy Decisions and Fiascos, 2nd ed. (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1982).

This classic study examines the dynamics of small-group decision-making and the ways in which they lead to flawed foreign policy decisions.

Alex Mintz and Carly Wayne, The Polythink Syndrome: U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions on 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and ISIS (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2016).

Where groupthink emphasizes conformity in group decision-making, polythink emphasizes the impact of a plurality of opinions and perspectives. This book examines the dynamics and consequences of polythink and makes recommendations to improve group decision-making.

Paul Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy and War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs 84 (2006), 15–27.

The author, a retired intelligence professional, provides a cogent account of how intelligence and politics interacted in the lead-up to and conduct of the Iraq War.

2