This book analyzes the foreign policy decision-making processes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama during military intervention by way of contemporary foreign policy decision-making models (FPDMs).

This text analyzes the foreign policy decision-making processes of Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama during military intervention by way of contemporary foreign policy decision-making models (FPDMs).

The administrations of Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy faced critical international challenges - including, most notably, using nuclear weapons against Japan, intervening militarily in Korea, toppling an emerging regime in Guatemala, restraining the actions of US allies during the Suez Canal Crisis, overthrowing Castro's Cuban regime, and forcing the USSR to remove nuclear missiles from Cuban soil. In this meticulously documented book, Alex Roberto Hybel tests the extent to which today's most important foreign policy decision-making models can explain the actions of the principal figures responsible for addressing each crisis. The book carefully analyses each president's cognitive system, the advisory structure each leader set up, and the pervading mindsets of Washington's insiders from each period. By evaluating the quality of each president's foreign policy decision-making process, readers will become familiar with core foreign policy decisions, how they were formulated, and the types of cognitive impediments that in certain instances undermined the quality of the decision-making process.

The book has three objectives: to expose students to the ways different US presidents handled major foreign policy making problems; to test the explanatory value of alternative decision-making models; And to reintroduce students to a wide range of critical US foreign policy issues.

The authors present a vital and unsettling analysis of the foreign policy-making processes of the two Bush administrations prior to the attacks on Iraq. In a systematic and thorough comparison, they show how both presidents used historical analogies to evaluate information, relied on instinct to formulate decisions, and drew on moral language to justify their choices.

Alex Roberto Hybel explains the 200 year effort by the US to become a global power and create an international system capable of protecting and advancing its strategic and economic interests. He builds his explanation on the claim that history is framed by tensions generated by contradictory forces, that a state's ability to respond to pressures is determined by the attributes of its own domestic political and economic systems, and that leaders anchor their decisions to lessons derived from earlier events.

Made by the U.S.A., The International System is a historical account, embedded in a set of theoretical constructs, of the two hundred year drive by the United States to first, become a global power and, second, create an international security and economic system capable of protecting and promoting its strategic and economic interests.

The authors present a vital analysis of the foreign policy-making processes of the two Bush administrations prior to the attacks on Iraq. In a thorough comparison, they show how both presidents used historical analogies to evaluate information, relied on instinct to formulate decisions, and drew on moral language to justify their choices.