Ole R. Holsti

The Structure of Foreign Policy Attitudes among American Leaders

The recent renaissance of interest in public opinion and foreign policy has generated a vigorous debate about the dimensions that characterize foreign policy attitudes. This paper assesses a scheme that emerged from Wittkopfs analyses of the Chicago Council on Foreign Policy surveys. Two dimensions (militant internationalism and cooperative internationalism) are crossed to create four types: hard-liners (support MI, oppose CI), internationalists (support both MI and CI), isolationists (oppose both MI and CI), and accommodationists (oppose MI, support CI). After developing scales for MI and CI, the scheme is tested with data from nationwide surveys of opinion leaders undertaken in 1976 (N = 2,282), 1980 (N = 2,502), and 1984 (N = 2,515). The MI/CI scheme is tested--and strongly supported--by examining the pattern of responses by hard-liners, internationalists, isolationists, and accommodationists to a broad range of questions from the three surveys of opinion leaders. The background attributes and other political attitudes associated with the four types are then examined. Correlations are strong for ideology and party; moderate for occupation; and weak for gender, age, education, travel, and military service. The conclusion raises some questions about the isolationist category and speculates about the broader implications of the findings.

Measuring Affect and Action in Inter National Reaction Models

The Cuban crisis of October 1962 may be analyzed from several perspectives. The investigator may focus his attention on the unique characteristics of the situation and sequence of events which are outlined here. The analyst of international relations may, as is suggested in this paper, examine these events so as to permit relevant comparisons with other crisis situations, both those resolved by war and those eventually resolved by non-violent means. The conceptual framework for this analysis is a two-step mediated stimulus-response model in which the acts of one nation are considered as inputs to other nations. Such psycho-political variables as perceptions and expressions of hostility are traced over time by means of content analysis of documents to test the consistency of the model. In the Cuban crisis, both sides tended to perceive rather accurately the nature of the adversarys actions and then proceeded to act at an appropriate level. Efforts by either party to delay or reverse the escalation toward conflict were generally perceived as such, and responded to in like manner.

Vietnam, Consensus, and the Belief Systems of American Leaders

Based on a sample of 2,282 leaders in all walks of American life, this study probes the impact of U.S. involvement in Vietnam on the perceptions, convictions, and belief systems of those who occupy high positions of leadership. The findings clearly indicate that the post-World War II consensus on U.S. foreign policy has been shattered; that the Vietnam experience was a critical sequence of events in this respect; and that differing, largely mutually exclusive belief systems have emerged among the nations leaders. The competing conceptions of international politics were found to be so coherent and integrated that they are unlikely to change soon or casually. Barring another traumatic event on the order of Pearl Harbor or Vietnam, the prospects for an early emergence of a new foreign policy consensus in the United States thus seem slim, and beyond the capacity of any political figure or group to fashion.

Consensus Lost. Consensus Regained?: Foreign Policy Beliefs of American Leaders, 1976–1980

To what extent there was a foreign policy consensus in the United States during the two decades following World War II continues to be debated. But most students of American foreign policy agree that the war in Vietnam fostered a situation reminiscent of the 1930s when there was little agreement on such basic issues as the nature of the international system, Americas national interests and the most likely threats to them, and the appropriate strategies to promote those interests. Many of the ‘axioms’ that guided policy through the initial decades of the postwar era were, after Vietnam, the subject of often intense debate. However, data on the persistence of cleavages, beyond the period immediately following the conquest of South Vietnam, are much scantier. The underlying issue in this paper is that of persistence versus change. Did the patterns of American leadership beliefs a year after the end of Vietnam persist through 1980?; and did the ideological, occupational, and other correlates of foreign policy beliefs change during these four years? Answers to these questions are sought in data from two nationwide surveys of American leaders in 1976 (N = 2,282) and 1980 (N = 2,502). The years 1976–1980 were marked by turbulence at home and abroad. Expectations that the end of the Vietnam and Watergate episodes would provide a period of healing proved to be overly optimistic. It was thus a period during which one might well have expected substantial changes in the content and structure of foreign policy beliefs. Indeed, claims of a convergence of beliefs were in ample supply as leaders in both political parties proclaimed the existence of a post-Vietnam foreign policy consensus. The data presented here, however, offer little evidence of change during the four years ending in 1980, much less of a new consensus.

The Three-Headed Eagle: The United States and System Change

It is by now a commonplace observation that the “age of consensus” on questions of foreign policy was a casualty of the American involvement in Vietnam. This article focuses on the resulting domestic cleavages relating to foreign policy issues, and on their likely impact on American efforts to undertake basic systemic changes. The “Three-Headed Eagle” serves as a metaphor for a nation marked by three quite distinctive clusters of beliefs—described here as Cold War Internationalism, Post-Cold War Internationalism, and Isolationism“about the nature of the global system, the sources of threats to a just and stable world order, the appropriate international role for the United States, and the goals, strategies, and tactics that should guide American external relations. Will these cleavages persist? Efforts of the Nixon-Ford and Carter administrations to reestablish a foreign policy consensus, through policies of detente and human rights, have exacerbated rather than healed divisions. Systematic evidence from public opinion and leadership studies also appears to confirm the existence of the cleavages discussed here. Moreover, because the divisions exist within as well as between generations, it is unlikely that the ascendency of a new generation of leadership will automatically create a new foreign policy consensus.

Liberals, Populists, Libertarians, and Conservatives: The Link between Domestic and International Affairs

This paper examines the relationship between the domestic and foreign policy beliefs of American opinion leaders, using data drawn from nationwide surveys in 1984, 1988 and 1992. Responses to fourteen items appearing in each of the surveys are used to identify four domestic policy types: liberals, populists, conservatives, and libertarians. An additional 14 items are used to classify respondents into four foreign policy types: hardliners, internationalists, isolationists and accommodationists. There is a high correlation between the domestic and foreign policy types. Further analyses examine the responses of the four domestic policy types to several international issues: future threats, US interests and roles, foreign policy goals, and approaches to peace. Background variables associated with the domestic and foreign policy beliefs indicate that the cross-cutting cleavages created by domestic and international issues during the two decades after World War II are giving way to overlapping divisions that have powerful partisan and ideological foundations.

Foreign Policy Decision-Makers Viewed Psychologically: Cognitive Processes Approaches

Foreign policy analysis has been dominated by approaches that conceptualize the acting unit as a “unitary rational actor,” but many of the more interesting studies of the past few years have pointed to several limitations and inadequacies of such models. Norms and interactions within the decision-making group may serve certain needs (emotional support, feelings of solidarity, and the like) of group members. However, group dynamics may also have some dysfunctional consequences for the quality of decisions by inhibiting search or cutting it off prematurely, ruling out the legitimacy of some options, curtailing independent analysis, and suppressing some forms of intra-group conflict that might serve to clarify goals, values and options. Organizational norms, routines, and standard operating procedures may shape and perhaps distort the structuring of problems, channeling of information, utilization of expertise, and implementation of executive decisions. The consequences of bureaucratic politics within the executive branch or within the government as a whole may significantly constrain the manner in which issues are defined, the range of options that may be considered, and the manner in which executive decisions are implemented by subordinates.

Cognitive Process Approaches to Decision-Making: Foreign Policy Actors Viewed Psychologically

Decision-making analysis in political science, especially its foreign policy component, has often been dominated by approaches that conceptualize the acting unit as a &dquo;unitary rational actor,&dquo; but many of the more interesting studies of the past few years have pointed to several limitations and inadequacies of such models. Norms and interactions within the decision-making group may serve certain needs (emotional support, feelings of solidarity, and the like) of group members. However, group dynamics may also have some dysfunctional consequences for the quality of decisions by inhibiting search or cutting it off prematurely, ruling out the legitimacy of some options, curtailing independent analysis, and suppressing some forms of intragroup conflict that might serve to clarify goals, values, and options. Organizational norms, routines, and standard operating procedures may shape and perhaps distort the structuring of problems, channeling of mformation, utilization of expertise, and implementation of executive decisions. The consequences of bureaucratic

The Study of International Politics Makes Strange Bedfellows: Theories of the Radical Right and the Radical Left

The political spectrum has often been viewed as a linear continuum on which the extremes of the right and left occupy the most antithetical positions. The alternative hypothesis is that there are some dimensions on which the extremes resemble each other. This essay examines the theories of international politics and foreign policy espoused by scholars of the radical right and left. Two dozen points of convergence are grouped under five headings: Understanding history and politics, the causes of war, the nature of the enemy, the conditions of peace , and ends and means in politics . Because the essay is focused on studies of international politics since the outbreak of World War II, considerable attention is devoted to the parallels between rightwing theories of the USSR and Soviet foreign policy, and left wing explanations of the United States and American foreign policy. The conclusion suggests that both theories are fundamentally flawed in two respects: (1) As employed by their proponents, the theories appear incapable of being falsified; and (2) studies employing them are marred by serious methodological flaws that violate the canons of systematic inquiry.

Civil-Military Relations: How Wide Is the Gap?

Kudos to International Security for addressing the importantssue of vil-military relations and to Ole R. Holsti for carefully marshaling data on that subject over a period of two dec ades.ith so muc h ferment in this aeld, the appearanc e of Holsti’s “A Widening Gap between the U.S. Military and Civilian Society? Some Evidence, 1976– 96” was most timely. 1 The question mark in the title was also well considered. Holsti attempted to prove that “partisan and ideological chasms dividing civilian and military leaders have widened substantially”; that there have been “some substantial differences between civilian and military leaders” on foreign and domestic policy issues; and that we urgently need to “bridge or at least narrow the chasm between” civilian and military leaders (p. 8). These “themes,” however, require, even in Holsti’s view, so much qualiac ation that one wonders whether any fac t or trend that he has disc overed has ever had or will ever have a signiacant impact on public policy, the acid test of any major problem in civil-military relations. Let me arst co nfess a predisposition to skeptic ism on the “gap” issue.uring a military career that spanned twenty-eight years, I spent nearly eight of them in the Pentagon where I observed high-level ci vil-military relations from the vantage points of the Army Staff (1985–89), the Oface of the Secretary of Defense (1989–91), and the Oface of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (1996–98). In October 1997, at the Inter-University Seminar on Armed Forces and Society conference in Baltimore, I encountered a group of academic experts who believed that the military had exceeded its professional boundaries on the formulation of national policy during General Colin Powell’s tenure as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Many of them also believed that there was a growing and dangerous gap between civilian and military perspectives or preferences on any number of issues. Although all of them were quick to add that they did not see an imminent danger of a revolt or mutiny by the armed forces, it was clear that many of them did see serious problems in the ofang.