Tai Lieu Chat Luong Foreign Policy Analysis This page intentionally left blank Foreign Policy Analysis: A Comparative Introduction Marijke Breuning Foreign Policy Analysis Copyright © Marijke Breuning, 2007. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner what- soever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. First published in 2007 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN™ 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.
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Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN-13: 978-0-3122-9619-3 ISBN-10: 0-312-29619-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Breuning, Marijke, 1957– Foreign policy analysis: a comparative introduction / Marijke Breuning. Includes bibliographical references and index.
International relations—Research. International relations—Study and teaching.1—dc22 2007014791 A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: November 2007 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.
Contents List of Tables vii Preface ix Chapter 1 Why Study Foreign Policy Comparatively? 1 Chapter 2 Do Leaders Shape Foreign Policy? 27 Chapter 3 How Leaders Make Sense of the World 53 Chapter 4 Leaders Are Not Alone: The Role of Advisors and Bureaucracies 85 Chapter 5 Leaders in Context I: Domestic Constraints on Foreign Policy Making 115 Chapter 6 Leaders in Context II: International Constraints on Foreign Policy Making 141 Chapter 7 Who or What Determines Foreign Policy? 163 Glossary 177 Bibliography 187 Index 203 This page intentionally left blank Tables 1. Levels of analysis and the study of foreign policy 12 1. Levels of analysis and causation 15 1. Foreign policy analysis and social scientific terminology 19 2.
Classification of leader personality types 40 2. The operational code: determining the philosophical and instrumental beliefs of leaders 42 2. Leadership trait analysis 44 3. Comparing normative and empirical rationality 60 4.
Comparison of executive management styles 92 4. Models of decision making 97 6. Measures of capabilities 145 6. Geographic circumstances 148 This page intentionally left blank Preface This text reflects a specific point of view about the field of foreign policy analysis.
It places the individual decision maker at the heart of the foreign policy decision making process. For this reason, the book starts with a dis- cussion of the role of leaders and then proceeds to situate these individual decision makers in the context of advisors and bureaucracies, as well as domestic and international constraints. Each chapter is organized around puzzles and questions to which undergraduate students can readily relate. The book does not assume prior study of international relations.
Quite the contrary, this text assumes no prior knowledge of either international rela- tions or foreign policy analysis. Hence, the focus is on explaining concepts and theories rather than on authors and literature. The book’s focus on the individual decision maker makes it easy for stu- dents to identify with the problems inherent in foreign policy making and to place themselves in the shoes of decision makers. The case studies that help explain the concepts are drawn from a variety of countries and time periods and include non-crisis as well as small state foreign policy making.
Most of the concepts discussed in this book have been developed in the context of the study of U. Their applicability to other countries has been tested only infrequently. This book does not test the applicability of these concepts in a systematic way, but suggests the value of a comparative approach to foreign policy analysis. This text reflects my perspective on foreign policy analysis first and fore- most, but it is also the product of the many people who assisted me along the way.
Of those, I would specifically like to thank David Pervin, who first persuaded me to take on this project. David was instrumental in the initial conceptualization of the book and provided important feedback on early chapters. John Ishiyama convinced me that it was a worthwhile endeavor and served as an important sounding board for my ideas. His insights and his questions have helped me to write a better book than would have been possible without our many conversations.
My students at Truman State University provided positive feedback on the draft chapters I assigned in sev- eral classes. They liked what they read and encouraged me to complete the book. Toby Wahl at Palgrave made sure that I did. His insistence shortened x PREFACE the road to the completion of this project.
I owe a great debt to these and many other individuals who have, in small and large ways, shaped my thinking about the field of foreign policy analysis. Of course, the responsi- bility for the final product is mine alone. Last, but not least, I want thank my spouse, John, and my daughters, Fasika and Bedelwa. You deserve my undivided attention, but accepted much less.
Maybe now that the book is done, we can travel without the lap- top coming along. Chapter 1 Why Study Foreign Policy Comparatively? Chapter Preview • Explains what distinguishes foreign policy analysis as an approach to the study of international politics. • Explains the difference between foreign policy options, decisions, behaviors, and outcomes. • Explains the difference between individual, state, and system levels of analysis.
• Explains the value of studying foreign policy comparatively and the basics of the comparative method. Why Study Foreign Policy? eaders have made many puzzling foreign policy decisions across the L years. Although some of those decisions turned out to be of little con- sequence and have been largely forgotten, on many occasions such deci- sions have plunged countries into major crisis or war. Consider the following decisions, which both reporters at the time and historians who wrote about them later found puzzling.
Saddam Hussein, leader of Iraq, invaded Kuwait in the early 1990s only to find that the United States, under President George H. Bush put together a coalition to push him back out. Saddam Hussein knew that the United States was more powerful and much better armed than Iraq. Although Iraq had, in those days, one of the stronger militaries in the region, it was no match for a superpower.
Saddam Hussein may have cal- culated that the United States was too preoccupied with the demise of the 2 FOREIGN POLICY ANALYSIS: A COMPARATIVE INTRODUCTION Soviet Union and the collapse of the latter’s economy to worry about his invasion of a small neighboring state. A meeting with the American ambas- sador to Iraq, career diplomat April Glaspie, reinforced his assessment. She made the now-famous statement that “we have no opinion on the Arab- Arab conflicts like your border disagreement with Kuwait.”1 Saddam Hussein may have interpreted this to mean that the United States would not take action if his military attacked Kuwait. Should he have realized that the United States, no matter how much it appeared to be otherwise engaged, could not accept his seizure of the small, but oil-rich Kuwait? Decades earlier, Neville Chamberlain, prime minister of Britain, made a fateful deal with Adolph Hitler of Germany during the infamous Munich conference of 1938.
Britain would not object to Germany’s seizure of the Sudetenland, a portion of Czechoslovakia bordering on Germany and with a German-speaking population, as long as Hitler promised he would respect the sovereignty of the remainder of Czechoslovakia.2 This small country in the heart of Europe was a very recent creation at that time: it had been carved out of the Austro-Hungarian Empire at the end of World War I, just two decades earlier. It was a multiethnic state, home to the Czechs and Slovaks as well as German, Hungarian, and other smaller eth- nic minority groups. Chamberlain returned home confident he had made a deal that would preserve the peace in Europe—an important considera- tion in a time when the memory of World War I and its enormous toll in human lives was still very fresh. He thought that meeting personally with Hitler had allowed him to judge the latter’s character and trustworthiness.
He could not have been more wrong. Hitler continued his conquests and soon Europe found itself immersed in World War II. In the early 1960s, Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union made a deci- sion to build launching sites for nuclear missiles in Cuba and soon found himself embroiled in a crisis. American U-2 spy planes photographed the launchpad while it was still under construction.
The discovery came on the heels of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, during which American-trained Cuban exiles had attempted, and failed, to topple Fidel Castro, Cuba’s communist leader. The Cold War was still in full swing, and President Kennedy was presiding over a military buildup that would give the United States clear superiority in strategic weapons—something Khrushchev could not ignore. Under those circumstances, the possibility of being able to reach U. soil by placing missiles in Cuba was quite tempting, especially since the Soviet Union did not yet have the capacity to launch intercontinental missiles.
In addition, the United States had missiles close to Soviet soil in Turkey. Khrushchev may have concluded that placing missiles in Cuba was comparable. Should Khrushchev have been able to foresee that no American WHY STUDY FOREIGN POLICY COMPARATIVELY? 3 president during the Cold War could have accepted that the Russians were building missile-launching capacities so close to American shores? Each of these leaders made a decision that was, certainly in retrospect, puzzling. Saddam Hussein stumbled into a war with a coalition of coun- tries headed by the United States that he could not win and that became a prelude to another war a little over a decade later.
In the interim, Iraq suf- fered the economic consequences of the destruction during and the sanc- tions that followed the war of the early 1990s.3 Neville Chamberlain lost his position as Prime Minister of Britain and is frequently cited as the man who gave appeasement its bad name. Nikita Khrushchev stumbled into the Cuban Missile Crisis, which brought his country to the brink of war and contributed to the premature end of his political career. From the vantage point of a foreign observer or with a historian’s hind- sight, the decisions made by these leaders are puzzling mostly because they “should have known better.” Often, such decisions are deemed “irrational,” and the leaders who made them are judged to be crazy or just fools. While being dismissive of such policy choices and the leaders who made them may be tempting, it does not help us understand these puzzling decisions very well.
There are on occasion leaders whose rationality may be ques- tioned, but there are far fewer such individuals than those who are com- monly labeled irrational. Hence, when seeking to explain foreign policy decisions, it is more fruitful to start with the assumption that the leaders who made these puzzling decisions were rational human beings trying their best to make “good” foreign policy decisions for their countries.4 Once we make that assumption, however, we must also begin to ponder what motivates these leaders, what they understand about the situations they face, and what factors made their decisions turn out to be “bad” ones. Before we proceed, let’s consider two important concepts introduced in the last paragraph: rationality and good foreign policy decisions. It can be difficult to accept that Saddam Hussein was not crazy, Chamberlain not naive, and Khrushchev not a fool.
Commonsense notions of rationality demand that each of these leaders should have known better. Yet if we stop to think about the world from the perspective of each leader, knowing what that leader knew at the time of the decision, it becomes a little more diffi- cult to maintain this attitude.