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Domestic contention on critical foreign-policy issues: the case of the United States

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

John A. Vasquez
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Political Science at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, in New Brunswick.
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Abstract

Variations in domestic contention on foreign policy, particularly variations of a cyclical nature within the United States, have been often identified but not explained. Changes in international interactions on global issues affect domestic contention. Such external events as the rise of new global issues, the emergence of crises, moves toward accommodation and resolution, war, and foreign-policy failure are related to the diverse forms that domestic contention can take. U.S. domestic contention, both in the recent past and in the short-term future, illustrates particularly well how hard-liners and accommodationists battle over the lessons of history.

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Articles
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1985

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References

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29. Of course, the process is rarely sequential and teleological; some stages are skipped, and others are repeated. Since these processes are elaborated in Vasquez and Mansbach, “The Issue Cycle,” I can concentrate here on the effects on domestic contention. For those who would rather speak of forms of behavior instead of stages, then the propositions that follow could be expressed as “in the presence of crisis behavior, ritualization,” etc.

30. RobertJervis, , Perceptionand Misperceptionin International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), chap. 6Google Scholar; see also May, “Lessonsof the Past. This proposition, like the ones that follow, is derived by deducing what can be expected to flow logically out of the situation described in the issue cycle and combining those insights with what is known from an empirical examination of behavior. Thus the emergence of an issue that is going to dominate the foreign-policy agenda means certain things can be logically expected. On the basis of this approach the following claims were made about the availability of new stakes, a change in the substantive focus of discussion, a great increase in participation and interest, and the formation of new images and alignments. Although these claims flow from what is logically entailed in the emergence of a new issue, that does not make them tautological, since domestic politics may not fulfill logical expectations. Indeed, the analysis predicts that it is only in critical issues that these effects will occur; in issues of more moderate salience, such as trade policy or law of the sea, they will not.

To these derivations were added others based on empirical generalizations or a reading of history, or both. On this basis the following claims were made about the emergence of new critical issues after major wars, high expectations that the future will be different, high uncertainty, the emergence of “great leaders,” and the creation of new belief systems from lessons derived from the previous war. A close reading of the remaining propositions should make it clear which claims are based on the logic of the issue cycle stage and which are empirically contingent.

31. Deutsch, and Merritt, (“Effects of Events on Images,” pp. 135–37, 183Google Scholar) argue and provide some evidence that changes in images are most likely to occur when spectacular events are followed by reinforcing cumulative events and leadership stances. More systematic evidence, especially on the role of leadership, is provided by Abravanel, Martin and Hughes, Barry, “Public Attitudes and Foreign Policy Behavior in Western Democracies,” in Chittick, W., ed., The Analysis of Foreign Policy Outputs (Columbus: Merrill, 1975), pp. 4673Google Scholar.

32. A question could be raised here about whether leaders are more prone to perceive threats in an extrovert phase and thereby cause crises. While some individuals are more prone to see threats (see proposition 8, below), it would be erroneous to think that crises are primarily a function of the extrovert phase. The introvert-extrovert cycle has more to do with how leaders and policy influencers will respond to external events. For example, in the interwar period isolationists were aware of what was going on in Europe and developed a policy, which included the neutrality laws, as a way of dealing (in an introvert manner) with the problem. This is not to say that leaders cannot create crises either consciously or unconsciously by their actions, as Lyndon Johnson did in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, simply that there are limits to the way the external world can be shaped by individual predispositions.

33. Theodore J. Lowi, “Making Democracy Safe for the World: National Politics and Foreign Policy,” in Rosenau, , Domestic Sources of Foreign Policy, pp. 320–23Google Scholar. On the symbolic and transcendent qualities of issues see Mansbach, Richard W. and Vasquez, John A., In Search of Theory: A New Paradigm for Global Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1981), pp. 5767Google Scholar.

34. For one example of a scholar recommending, unabashedly, the deception of the public see Bailey, Thomas A., The Man in the Street (New York: Macmillan, 1948)Google Scholar, cited in Dahl, Robert, Congress and Foreign Policy (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1950), p. 271Google Scholar.

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36. This was a particular concern with Vietnam: see May, , “Lessons“ of the Past, pp. 99100Google Scholar.

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38. With the exception of Goldwater, every candidate from 1948 to 1980 who took a harder line on the Cold War than his opponent won the election. While this harder line may not be the only or even the main reason for victory, a comparable phenomenon seems to occur in the Soviet Union.

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40. For a theoretical description of hard-liners and soft-liners see Snyder, Glenn and Diesing, Paul, Conflict among Nations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1977), pp. 297310Google Scholar. I prefer the term accommodationist to soft-liner because it has a less pejorative connotation.

41. Goldmann, , “Change and Stability,” p. 253Google Scholar.

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43. For a discussion of the tendency to discount the costs of successful policies, see Jervis, , Perception and Misperception, p. 232Google Scholar.

44. See Bobrow, Davis and Cutler, Neal, “Time-Oriented Explanations of National Security Beliefs: Cohort, Life-Stage and Situation,” Peace Research Society (International) Papers 8 (1967), pp. 3157Google Scholar, for how external events affect different sections of the population. For the hypothesis that first and direct experiences have the most impact, see Mannheim, Karl, “The Problem of Generations,” in his Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1952), pp. 276–82, 297–301Google Scholar; Jervis, , Perception and Misperception, pp. 239–43, 249–57Google Scholar.

45. See Russett, Bruce, “The Americans' Retreat from World Power,” Political Science Quarterly 90 (1975), p. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Holsti, and Rosenau, , American Leadership, p. 33Google Scholar.

46. Russett's review of surveys down to 1975 establishes these points (“Americans' Retreat from World Power,” p. 6). The evidence that findings like these reflect a fundamental shift in the structure of foreign-policy opinion has been given added support by more recent research. Holsti and Rosenau, American Leadership, have found that the basic bipartisan Cold War consensus has broken down into a bimodal distribution between those who supported and those who opposed the Vietnam War (chap. 3, esp. pp. 102–6). A second interview of elites in 1980 showed that such major events as the Afghanistan invasion and the Iranian hostage affair did not affect this distribution, which adds support to the notion that Vietnam, like Pearl Harbor, may have generation-long effects (p. 214). Further evidence of a shift in opinion has been marshaled by Wittkopf, and Maggiotto, (“Elites and Masses,” p. 222Google Scholar) to show that opinion no longer follows just an isolationist-international continuum but is also divided along an accommodationist-hard-line dimension. They find the public split among accommodationists (23%), internationalists (26%), isolationists (24%), and hard-liners (27%), but the elite divided only between accommodationists (46%) and internationalists (47%).

47. For an analysis of learning, frustration, and protest see Vasquez, , “A Learning Theory,” pp. 304–5, 310–11Google Scholar.

48. In the foreign service many old Vietnam hands were sent to Africa, an assigment often given to officers with no experience. With the CIA there was in effect a purge of operations that built on Nixon's own effort to end the “gentlemen's club“ dominance of the agency; see Thomas, Stafford T., “On the Selection of Directors of Central Intelligence,” Southeastern Political Review 9 (1981), pp. 2234Google Scholar.

49. Indirect evidence that people with the “wrong“ beliefs have been “purged“ from the elite can be culled from Wittkopf, and Maggiotto's, finding (“Elites and Masses,” p. 322Google Scholar) that very few isolationists or hard-liners are found among the elite respondents to a 1974 survey, although these two categories account for 43% of nonelite respondents. It did not serve one's career in 1974 to espouse either position. It will be interesting to see if Reagan's presidency increases the number of respondents in the hard-liner category.

50. The literature is inadequate on whether the hard-line/soft-line distinction should refer to a personality trait or to beliefs and strategies. The problem with treating the distinction as a personality trait is that individual behavior varies. For example, Snyder, and Diesing, (Conflict among Nations, pp. 309–10Google Scholar) find some individuals to be hard-liners on one issue but soft-liners on another. This suggests that the hard-line/soft-line distinction is not a personality trait and is better kept as a classification of beliefs and strategies.