Lanterna Rally

Author: Scot Macdonald

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-07-30

Total Pages: 263

ISBN-13: 0313001723

Does history provide lessons for foreign policy makers today? Macdonald combines cognitive psychology theories about analogical reasoning, international relations theories about military intervention, and original archival research to analyze the role of historical information in foreign policy decision making. He looks at the role of historical analogies in Anglo-American decision making during foreign policy crises involving the possible use of force in regional contingencies during a crucial period in the 1950s when the West faced an emerging Soviet threat. This study analyzes the influence of situational and individual variables in a comparison of more than ten leaders from two nations facing four different crises. Rolling the Iron Dice describes the often significant effect of historical analogies on perceptions of the adversary and of allies, time constraints, policy options and risks, as well as the justification of policy in four crises: the 1950 Korean invasion; the 1951-53 Iranian oil nationalization incident; the 1956 Suez crisis; and the 1958 crisis in Lebanon and Jordan. Contrary to both the slippery slope and the escalation models of military intervention, Macdonald argues that leaders decide extremely early in a crisis, often on the basis of an historical analogy, but also based on perceptions of the rationality of an adversary, whether to use military force. Their decision does not change unless the adversary capitulates to every demand.

Author: Hal M. Friedman

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2000-11-30

Total Pages: 254

ISBN-13: 0313001715

Many historians of U.S. foreign relations think of the post-World War II period as a time when the United States, as an anti-colonial power, advocated collective security through the United Nations and denounced territorial aggrandizement. Yet between 1945 and 1947, the United States violated its wartime rhetoric and instead sought an imperial solution to its postwar security problems in East Asia by acquiring unilateral control of the western Pacific Islands and dominating influence throughout the entire Pacific Basin. This detailed study examines American foreign policy from the beginning of the Truman Administration to the implementation of Containment in the summer and fall of 1947. As a case study of the Truman Administration's Early Cold War efforts, it explores pre-Containment policy in light of U.S. security concerns vis-a-vis the Pearl Harbor Syndrome. The American pursuit of a secure Pacific Basin was inconsistent at the time with its foreign policy toward other areas of the world. Thus, the consolidation of power in this region was an exception to the avowed goal of a multilateral response to the policies of the Soviet Union. This example of national or strategic security went much further than simple military control; it included the cultural assimilation of the indigenous population and the unilateral exclusion of all other powers. Analyzing traditional archival records in a new light, Friedman also investigates the persisting American notions of a Westward moving frontier that stretches beyond North American territorial bounds.