(Page 3 of 49) - U.S. Presidents and Foreign Policy Mistakes in the Exercise of Power: Conceptual and Empirical Perspectives authored by Walker, Stephen. and Malici, Akan.

Presidential mistakes regarding these challenges in particular and in the domain of

security policy more generally can be, and often are, more costly and deadly than in any
other policy area. International political history is full of disastrous decisions and
avoidable mistakes by leaders that have put not only troops in harm’s way but also the
safety and well-being of entire nations. When such mistakes occur, often times the best
result is unnecessary military spending, while the worst result is needless bloodshed
(White, 1984). Given the importance of mistakes in the area of foreign and security
policy, it is no surprise that both historians and political scientists have focused on them.
In reviewing this literature, we find that scholars have identified a variety of answers that
speak to the questions that we have raised. However, we also find that while they often
identify structure-oriented, permissive causes for mistakes, they fall short in identifying
agent-centered, efficient causes.

Our contention in this paper is that in the realm of security policy, the latter

causes can be identified by investigating Vladimir Lenin’s famous question “kto-kovo?”
regarding the exercise of power, translated literally as “who-whom” and understood here
as “who will be able to destroy, control, utilize whom?”(Leites 1953; cited in Walker
2003: 246). Our argument is that improper, inaccurate or misinformed answers to this
question specify and explain mistakes by agents such as leaders, groups, and coalitions.
We claim that correct answers can avoid foreign policy mistakes and reduce foreign
policy failures. While insights from past scholarship on foreign policy mistakes will help
guide our inquiry, we hope in the end to provide a more parsimonious, rigorous,
systematic and policy-relevant framework for foreign policy analysis and evaluation. Our
goal in this paper is thus not to engage in a detailed empirical analysis of historical or
contemporary foreign policy mistakes. Our central purpose is the more modest one of
explication – to facilitate scholarly discussion by focusing attention on important
concepts and relevant criteria for assessing the manifestations of foreign policy mistakes.

PAST SCHOLARSHIP ON CONCEPTUALIZING MISTAKES

Long ago, Francis Bacon held that “histories make wise men” and George Santayana
subsequently observed that, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to
repetition” (quoted. in Bennett, 1991, p. 1). In more contemporary times the insights of
these philosophers have served historians and political scientists in their efforts to
account for leaders’ foreign policy mistakes. Exemplary is Ernest May’s classic work,
Lessons of the Past. Examining historical episodes ranging from President Roosevelt’s
prosecution of the Second World War to President Johnson’s decision to bomb North
Vietnam, his analysis leads him to two main conclusions, namely that “framers of foreign
policy are often influenced by beliefs about what history teaches or portends” and that
“policy-makers ordinarily use history badly” (May, 1973).

A glance at 20

century American history illustrates the point about leaders’ use

of history. The Munich crisis in 1938 led to the “lessons of Munich,” which were invoked
subsequently by Harry Truman in 1947 in his decision to aid Greece and Turkey and then
again in intervening in Korea in 1950. The Munich analogy also influenced the decisions
of John Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, Lyndon Johnson in Vietnam in