Customer Reviews

Foreign Policy Failure in the White House

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In the current US political environment, whatever your feelings about the Bush Administration's foreign policies, you might want to take a time out and have a gander at this little book. Its authors look at what they regard as two foreign policy failures in recent years. The fall of the Shah of Iran, while Carter was President, and the Iran-Contra affair under Reagan.

They discuss cognitive and bureaucratic dysfunctions in the two administrations. A common occurrence was groupthink, and the lack of a strong devil's advocate willing and able to speak against it. The latter often included the natural tendency to interpret events optimistically.

With US troops battling insurgents in Iraq, the book is very timely. Plus, given the recent Hurricane Katrina fiasco, the analysis might even be pungently extended to US domestic matters.