Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-making and the Persian Gulf War - Softcover

Yetiv

Softcover

ISBN 10: 080187811X ISBN 13: 9780801878114

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 2004

Synopsis

Scholars of international relations tend to prefer one model or another in explaining the foreign policy behavior of governments. Steve Yetiv, however, advocates an approach that applies five familiar models: rational actor, cognitive, domestic politics, groupthink, and bureaucratic politics. Drawing on the widest set of primary sources and interviews with key actors to date, he applies each of these models to the 1990-91 Persian Gulf crisis and to the U.S. decision to go to war with Iraq in 2003. Probing the strengths and shortcomings of each model in explaining how and why the United States decided to proceed with the Persian Gulf War, he shows that all models (with the exception of the government politics model) contribute in some way to our understanding of the event. No one model provides the best explanation, but when all five are used, a fuller and more complete understanding emerges. With its use of the Persian Gulf crisis as a teachable case study and coverage of the more recent Iraq war, Explaining Foreign Policy will be of interest to students and scholars of foreign policy, international relations, and related fields.

About this title

About the Author

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Steve A. Yetiv is an associate professor of political science at Old Dominion University.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080187811X
• ISBN 13: 9780801878114
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 296