The President, the State and the Cold War

James Bilsland

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317594895
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

US foreign policy during the Cold War has been analysed from a number of perspectives, generating large bodies of literature attempting to explain its origins, its development and its conclusion. However, there are still many questions left only partially explained. In large part this is because these accounts restrict themselves to a single level of analysis, either the international system, or the structure of the state and society. The first level of analysis, focusing on the role of individuals, has largely been excluded.

This book argues that structural theories, and any approach that limits itself to one level of analysis, are inadequate to explain the development of US foreign policy. Instead, it is necessary to incorporate the first level of analysis in order to bring human agency back and provide a more detailed explanation of US foreign policy. Bilsland proposes an analytical framework which incorporates presidential agency into a multi-level analysis of US foreign policy during the Cold War, constructing a multi-level case study comparison of the foreign policies of Presidents Truman and Reagan. He argues that the worldview of the president is central to agenda setting in US foreign policy making and that the management style of the president influences both decision-making and the implementation of US foreign policy. Evidence to support this is drawn from detailed empirical analysis of Truman's foreign policy of containment in Korea and Reagan's foreign policy of rollback in Nicaragua.

This work will be of interest to students and scholars of US Foreign Policy, US History and International Relations

1 Introduction

DOI: 10.4324/9781315745343-1

Is international politics shaped by social forces beyond the control of individuals, or do powerful individuals have a role to play in the making of history? This question lies at the heart of international politics, and social science more broadly. Unfortunately, the attention of most scholars in international relations (IR) is directed towards the study of social and structural forces. These approaches prioritise the role of structure, arguing that it is the most important explanatory factor. This raises an important question: how fully can one explain history without addressing the role of individuals? That is, how complete a picture of international relations can one have without incorporating the actions of Roosevelt, Churchill, Stalin, Lenin, Hitler, Napoleon, Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great? Replace these figures with others and there is no guarantee that history would have unfolded in the same manner. Historians are comfortable with acknowledging this, social scientists appear less so.

Of course, not all individuals possess the same power or have the same opportunities. The particular context facing each actor will influence the degree of opportunity or constraint they encounter. Times of crisis, domestically and internationally, provide opportunity. This is why the above list of names contains so many wartime and revolutionary leaders. But the context does not determine the action. Different individuals will not be motivated in the same way. They will perceive these opportunities and constraints differently. Churchill saw Hitler as a great threat when his colleagues did not. Individuals will rank priorities differently, as Roosevelt did by prioritising the war in Europe over the war in Asia when the US population were demanding revenge against Japan. Some will take risks, such as Hitler's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Others will not. Therefore, it is necessary to acknowledge that individual leaders possess agency in international relations. They have the ability to make decisions that will direct the resources of their state towards an end beyond their borders. To understand and explain international relations, it is essential to incorporate human agency into our research. This monograph offers an agency-based approach to the study of international relations by analysing the role of one individual leader during a specific historical context: the President of the United States of America (US) during the Cold War.

Research questions

By the end of the Second World War in 1945, the dominant continental European powers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries had been devastated by six years of conflict. The United Kingdom (UK), although not the scene of any land battle, had suffered extensive bomb damage and exhausted almost all of its financial resources in the defeat of Germany. The European states were no longer capable of exerting the same level of influence beyond their borders. This left a power vacuum in international politics, one which would quickly be filled by two emerging great powers, the US and the Soviet Union. Their relationship would define international politics for the next 45 years, a period which would become known as the Cold War. The erstwhile allies developed a mutual distrust of each other, which quickly escalated into an international rivalry that, with the development of nuclear weapons, threatened the existence of the human race. This was a seminal period in the historical development of US foreign policy. The US established itself as a global leader in the construction of international institutions, committed itself for the first time to membership of collective security arrangements, and deployed its vast economic resources on a global scale never before seen. The result was four and a half decades of military, political, economic and ideological confrontation with the Soviet Union, which erupted in several proxy wars and the creation of a nuclear arsenal capable of assuring the mutual destruction of the US, the Soviet Union and the rest of the world.

The Cold War has been analysed from a number of perspectives, generating large bodies of literature attempting to explain its origins, development and conclusion. Within the discipline of IR, these debates have tended to be led by scholars focusing on events at the system level. Realist scholars have offered explanations emphasising the role of the anarchic system and presenting much of the Cold War as the inevitable outcome of the bipolar distribution of power.¹ Other scholars have emphasised the role of social and economic forces, arguing that the Cold War can be explained in terms of competing ideologies (democracy versus communism) and modes of economic organisation (free market capitalism versus central planning).² These competing approaches have been applied not only to the development of the Cold War as a whole, but also to the development of specific US foreign policies during the period, each emphasising the factors deemed most relevant by their theoretical assumptions. This debate has helped to explain many aspects of US foreign policy during the Cold War. However, there are still many questions left which have been, at best, only partially explained.

In large part, this is because these explanations restrict themselves to a single level of analysis, either the international system, or the structure of the state and society. The first level of analysis, focusing on the role of individuals, has largely been excluded from IR. It is often left to historians to incorporate the role of individual decision-makers into their analyses.³ The problem for international relations students, however, is that their explanations run the risk of determinism. They come close to arguing that the course of history is shaped by these external forces and there is little if no room for alternate courses to be steered. They have, intentionally or otherwise, removed human agency and choice from the equation.

When we turn to specific US foreign policies during the Cold War, we find that policy-makers were often faced with various options as to the direction they could possibly take. In particular, the presidencies of Harry Truman at the outset of the Cold War and Ronald Reagan at its conclusion raise interesting questions that cannot be explained by structural theories alone. For example, why did the decision to send economic aid to Greece and Turkey evolve into the Truman Doctrine and the policy to contain the Soviet Union? Why did the US intervene in Korea in 1950? Why did the Reagan Doctrine try to incorporate a policy of rollback into the containment strategy? Why did the US increasingly intervene in Nicaragua from 1981? None of these policies were predetermined or inevitable. Choices existed. The president, as chief executive, would be responsible for making the final decision and have the constitutional authority to instruct the US bureaucracy to implement the policy. The role of the president is therefore crucial to any explanation of US foreign policy during the Cold War. How the president views the world, how they process and filter information, how they organise the executive, how they work with their staff, how they make decisions, how they interact with Congress, all depend on who is president, and these factors contribute to the construction of presidential agency and influence the direction of US foreign policy. The dominant structural approaches to IR are not able to incorporate individuals into their analyses. As a result, they cannot engage with these issues of agency, choice and decision-making, and can only offer a partial explanation for US foreign policy during the Cold War.

This book argues that structural theories, and any approach that limits itself to one level of analysis, are inadequate to explain the development of US foreign policy. Instead, it is necessary to incorporate the first level of analysis to bring human agency back into international relations and provide a more detailed explanation of US foreign policy. This study proposes an analytical framework that incorporates presidential agency into a multi-level analysis of US foreign policy during the Cold War. It applies this framework to a case study comparison of the foreign policies of Presidents Truman and Reagan.

To locate the role of presidential agency in US foreign policy, it is necessary to identify how the president as an individual influences US foreign policy. This monograph argues that who is president matters. In particular, the US president influences US foreign policy through their worldview and management style. It therefore asks two case-specific research questions. First, what role did Truman's worldview and management style play in the formation of the Truman Doctrine and the decision to intervene in Korea? Second, what role did Reagan's worldview and management style play in the formulation of the Reagan Doctrine and the decision to intervene in Nicaragua? It will be argued that the worldview of each president helped to shape the foreign policy agenda, particularly the ranking of security threats, and contributed to the formulation of the Truman and Reagan Doctrines. Also, the president's management style, how they structured their executive and operated within this, influenced the decision-making process and implementation of policy, contributing to the evolution of US foreign policy in Korea under Truman and Nicaragua under Reagan. In doing so, it offers an agency-based approach to IR which stands in contrast with pre-existing structural theories.

This approach draws on and contributes to the growing body of literature that rejects the primacy of structure in IR. This sub-discipline known as foreign policy analysis (FPA) attempts to ‘ground’ IR in agent-specific theory, arguing ‘all that occurs between nations and across nations is grounded in human decision makers acting singly or in groups’.⁴ This book is an attempt to locate the role of presidential agency in US foreign policy during the Cold War administrations of Truman and Reagan. Drawing on foreign policy analysis, international relations theory, presidential studies and the historiography of US foreign policy during the Cold War, this book constructs a multi-level case study comparison of the foreign policies of Presidents Truman and Reagan. It argues that the worldview of the president is central to agenda setting in US foreign policy-making, and that the management style of the president influences both decision-making and the implementation of US foreign policy. Evidence to support this is drawn from detailed empirical analysis of Truman's foreign policy of containment in South East Asia and Reagan's foreign policy of rollback in Nicaragua.

The case studies support the argument by demonstrating the central role of Truman's and Reagan's worldviews in formulating the Truman and Reagan Doctrines. Truman's worldview contributed to the framing of Korea as a security threat, while Reagan's worldview was one of the most important factors in the ranking of Nicaragua as a first order security threat. This stands in marked contrast with structural theorists of IR, who argued that such interventions in ‘non-strategic’ areas were not first order foreign policy priorities for the US.⁵ Clearly, Presidents Truman and Reagan disagreed. Reagan believed he saw a security threat in Nicaragua, even if Congress (and structural theorists) did not. Reagan was prepared to invest the resources of the US foreign policy bureaucracy and take a personal risk in attempting to overthrow the Sandinista government of Nicaragua. As a result, structural theories cannot explain why these decisions were made. The role of presidential agency must be incorporated to augment the structural approaches.

The case studies also support the argument that presidential management style is central to the foreign policy-making process of the US. Truman's choice of a formal management style and reliance on a group of advisors with similar views of communism and the Soviet Union led to the decision to authorise US troops to cross into North Korea, which resulted in Chinese forces entering the conflict. Likewise, Reagan's decision to cut several of his highest ranking foreign policy officials out of the decision-making process over Nicaragua policy, led to the Iran–Contra scandal and the collapse of his Nicaragua policy. Presidential agency was central to both of these outcomes.

It must be stated that this study does not adopt a ‘great man of history’ approach. It does not argue that US foreign policy during the Cold War can be explained solely in terms of presidential agency. This would be an example of gross reductionism and would fail to take context into account. Instead, this work adopts an agency-based explanation of US foreign policy, emphasising presidential agency, but also locating it within a multi-level analytical framework that engages with both state-level and system-level factors. The cases support the argument that explanations of US foreign policy cannot be located solely at the level of agency or structure. In doing so, it will contribute to the growing literature incorporating agency-level factors into explanations of US foreign policy.⁶

Literature review

This book adopts a multi-level framework by analysing the president's interaction with the executive, the Congress and t...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table Of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• 2 The president, the presidency and US foreign policy
• 3 Truman’s worldview and the origins of containment in Greece and Turkey
• 4 Truman’s management style and the Korean War
• 5 Reagan’s worldview and management style
• 6 Reagan and Nicaragua
• 7 Comparison of Truman and Reagan
• 8 Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index