Помощничек
Главная | Обратная связь


Археология
Архитектура
Астрономия
Аудит
Биология
Ботаника
Бухгалтерский учёт
Войное дело
Генетика
География
Геология
Дизайн
Искусство
История
Кино
Кулинария
Культура
Литература
Математика
Медицина
Металлургия
Мифология
Музыка
Психология
Религия
Спорт
Строительство
Техника
Транспорт
Туризм
Усадьба
Физика
Фотография
Химия
Экология
Электричество
Электроника
Энергетика

IMAGES, ATTITUDES, VALUES, BELIEFS, AND PERSONAL NEEDS AS COMPONENTS OF A DEFINITION OF THE SITUATION



Despite frequent rhetoric to the effect that they have "no choice" but to take certain action, policy makers are confronted with situations abroad and demands by other states that permit many alternative responses, including acquiescence, inaction, threats, or commission of various acts of punishment. When prime ministers say they have been "compelled" to do something, they mean only that they have rejected other alternatives. There is always an element of choice in policy making. In situations perceived as containing only slight threat, will different people in different historical and cultural circumstances behave the same way? Probably not, since so many factors other than immediate stimulus may be considered relevant.

Images

Any delineation of objectives, choice among courses of action, or response to a situation in the environment may be explained partly in terms of policy makers' perceptions of reality. People act and react according to their images of the environment. In policy making, the state of the environment does not matter so much as what government officials believe that state to be. By image, we

320 Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

mean individuals' perceptions of an object, fact, or condition; their evaluation of that object, fact, or condition in terms of its goodness or badness, friendliness or hostility, or value; and the meaning ascribed to, or deduced from, that object, fact, or condition. Consider a trained fishing expert and the city-bred novice with no previous experience. The expert can deduce valid conclusions about fishing conditions from a variety of facts, conditions, or "clues," such as water temperature, depth, or color, weather, and time of day. The novice, in spite of seeing the water, feeling its temperature, and knowing it is late afternoon, is unable to draw any paticular conclusions from these indicators because by themselves they have no meaning in terms of past experience. Because they see and interpret the same conditions or facts in different ways (in the case of the novice, hardly interpreted at all), the two will react and behave differently. Experts will go where the fish are and work their tackles in such a way as to catch them. Barring beginner's luck, novices will struggle up and down a stream, flail the water with an assortment of useless lures, scare the fish, and catch nothing. Similarly in foreign policy, different policy makers can read different meanings into a situation; and because they characterize a situation differently and deduce different conclusions from it, they will behave differently. In particu­lar, complex situations involving many interests, historical, economic, or social factors, and value positions are likely to be perceived differently.

Even the most well-informed experts in a policy-making agency cannot know all the relevant factors in a situation; their images of reality will always be different from reality. The discrepancy between image and reality is partly a result of physical impediments to the flow of information owing to lack of time, faulty communications, censorship, or lack of competent advisors or intelli­gence sources. It is also a problem of the distortion of reality caused by attitudes, values, beliefs, or faulty expectations. Individuals are bombarded constantly by messages about the environment; but they select and interpret only a fraction of what they "see," because only a part of it may be relevant to a particular situation. Sometimes people also "see" only information that conforms to their values, beliefs, or expectations. There are both physical and psychological factors that can distort the information upon which policy makers' images of reality are based.

If policy makers rely on faulty information, misinterpret cues, twist the meaning of messages to fit their own preferences, or disregard information that contradicts their values and preferences, their psychological environment— upon which they will act—is quite different from the physical environment—in which their policies have to be executed. The distinction between psychological environment or definition of the situation and physical environment or "reality" must be kept in mind in all analyses of foreign policy. One can readily see the distinction in the case of the attack on Pearl Harbor. In early December 1941, President Roosevelt and American diplomats were attempting to arrange high-level negotiations with the Japanese government to resolve some issues separat­ing the two countries. At this time, American officials had predicted an impending

321Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

military attack by the Japanese, but they expected it to occur somewhere in Southeast Asia. They could not imagine a direct attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbor and so took no precautionary measures; they had facts about impending Japanese military actions but could not deduce or predict the correct "meaning" from those facts. The American definition of the situation was thus at odds with reality, and actions designed to cope with the expected Japanese moves were ineffective.

This example illustrates the problem of discrepancies between images and physical environment that arise from faulty or inadequate information and unwarranted expectations.3 But how do we account for differing interpretations and characterizations of reality when easily verifiable facts are available? Here, the problem of attitudes, values, beliefs, doctrines, and analogies becomes impor­tant, for they help determine the meanings ascribed to a set of facts about internal and external conditions. Although distinctions among the concepts of attitude, value, belief, and doctrines are not always clear, they can be defined as follows for the analysis of foreign-policy making.

Attitudes

Attitudes can be conceived as general evaluative propositions about some object, fact, or condition: more or less friendly, desirable, dangerous, or hostile. In any international relationship, policy makers operate—usually implicitly—within some framework of evaluative assumptions of hostility or friendship, trust or distrust, and fear or confidence toward other governments and peoples. These attitudes may have important effects on how policy makers react to the actions, signals, and demands of other states, perceive the intentions of other govern­ments, and define their own objectives toward others. If a Swiss military airplane crosses over the French frontier, we would not expect French officials to behave the same way as if a Soviet military aircraft unexpectedly flew over Paris. Attitudes of hostility and suspicion would probably become operative immediately upon identification of the Soviet aircraft, but not in the Swiss border violation. In the former case, there would probably be serious apprehension about the inten­tion of the Russian action. Similarly, if a high-level policy maker receives a conciliatory message from the government of a state he perceives to be hostile, his attitudes of distrust and hostility may lead him to interpret the message in a different manner than if he had received even a less conciliatory message from the leader of a nonhostile state. Threats that are only potential may be viewed as actual because hostile attitudes predispose policy makers to distort the evidence. Particularly where evidence of intention is ambiguous, policy mak­ers may fall back upon traditional attitudes of distrust and hostility. Intelligence agencies can learn a great deal about the capabilities of states, but policy makers

3 See the careful analysis of this problem by Harold and Margaret Sprout, "Environmental Factors in the Study of International Politics," Journal of Conflict Resolution, 1 (1957), 309-28. The most elaborate analysis, with numerous examples, is Robert Jerns, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976).

322Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

also have to gauge intentions—and these may be badly misinterpreted because of hostile, distrustful, or excessively trustful attitudes.

Values

Beliefs

Our values are the result of upbringing, political socialization in various group contexts, indoctrination, and personal experience. They serve as standards against which our own actions and those of others are judged and are thus the bases of many of our attitudes. Values point out the general direction toward which our actions should be directed (wealth, power, prestige, happiness, isola­tion), and for policy makers they also serve as reasons and justifications for goals, decisions, and actions. For example, in Western societies, the values of individual freedom, civil liberties, national self-determination, independence, and economic progress are frequently cited as reasons behind certain policy objectives or as the objectives toward which actions are directed. To the policy maker and the public in general, actions that support these values are good; those that do not are to be avoided or resisted if undertaken by other states. In many developing countries, the values of rapid economic development, na­tional unity, freedom from foreign control, and national prestige serve as the main criteria against which to judge one's own policies and those of other states. In socialist societies, the values of working-class solidarity, the struggle against "imperialism," and support for "national liberation movements" would be ob­served frequently in policy statements. Such values as these do not necessarily prescribe specific responses for particular situations, but they do establish atti­tudes toward the situation and provide both justifications for, and guides to, the policies designed to cope with them.

Beliefs can be defined as propositions that policy makers hold to be true, even if they cannot be verified. They are the foundation of national "myths" and ideologies, and efforts to question or examine them systematically are often met with hostility or even persecution. Some beliefs that are widespread in societies and expressed in the behavior of policy makers include those claiming that a particular nation, "way of life," or ethnic group is superior to any other, that a particular political system or economic order is superior to others, that human progress and moral improvement are inevitable, that communism is inevi­table, or that a particular country will always be a "threat." Some more specific Western beliefs (closely related to liberal values) claim that all conflicts can be resolved through negotiation, that the use or threat of force is unethical except for purposes of self-defense, that foreign aid will produce stability and democracy, and, as a corollary, that hunger and poverty create communism.4 In foreign-policy making, such beliefs are important, for they often be-

4 Stanley Hoffmann, "Restraints and Choices in American Foreign Policy," Daedalus (Fall 1962), p. 682.

23 Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

come the unexamined assumptions upon which numerous policy choices are made—for instance, Woodrow Wilson's belief that secret diplomacy, autocracy, and the balance of power caused war; the common Western belief that commu­nism represents basically a military threat; President Eisenhower's beliefs that all political leaders were essentially reasonable and that peace could be secured by frank discussion;5 and the Chinese Communist belief in the implacable hostil­ity of all "imperialists."

Like most people, policy makers do not like to be told that their beliefs are wrong, or that the images upon which their actions are based are not conso­nant with reality. Social scientists have repeatedly observed human beings' resis­tance to "uncomfortable" facts, the stability of our images in the face of rapidly changing events in the environment, and our ability to distort or ignore facts and deny important aspects of reality.6 When there is some inconsistency between policy makers' attitudes and beliefs on the one hand and incoming information on the other, they can react in one of three ways: (1) ignore the inconsistency by withdrawing from the problem (that is, pretend the problem doesn't exist or isn't important); (2) reject the incoming information and somehow rationalize its lack of worth, thereby maintaining their initial attitudes and values; or (3) yield to the information by a change in values and attitudes. Of course, where the costs of changing attitudes are not very great, or where there are strong social supports or rewards for changing them, the third course may be easy to bring about. But in a highly institutionalized setting such as that in which policy makers work, there may be strong social pressures against changing attitudes and beliefs. Foreign ministers have to contend not only with information that challenges their pet beliefs and attitudes, but also with bureaucratic role and political restraints. They cannot easily change their views of the world if the important people they meet constantly reinforce their initial attitudes and beliefs, and if they find that by adhering to them they achieve more status and political efficacy. One can imagine, for instance, the difficulties faced by career deputy ministers in the Soviet or American defense establishments if they received information indicating that the opposite cold-war nation did not, in fact, consti­tute some sort of military menace. Even though they might undergo periods of uncertainty about their own attitudes and beliefs, the chances are only slight that they would easily adopt a "new line" and try to influence their colleagues to accept it.7

The story of diplomats in the field whose warnings and advice were

5 Paul C. Davis, "The New Diplomacy: The 1955 Geneva Summit Meeting," inForeign Policy m the Sixties, eds. Roger Hilsman and Robert C. Good (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins Press, 1965), pp. 166-67.

6 For a summary of these findings, see Karl W. Deutsch and Richard L. Merritt, "Effects of Events on National and International Images," inInternational Behavior: A Social-Psychological Analysis, ed. Herbert C. Kelman (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1965), pp. 132-87.

7 For a summary of the problem of cognitive dissonance and inconsistency as it applies to international relations, see Milton J. Rosenberg, "Attitude Change and Foreign Policy in the Cold War Era," inDomestic Sources of Foreign Policy, ed. JamesN. Rosenau(New York: Free Press, 1967), pp. 111-59.

324Explanations of Foreign-Policy Outputs

shunted aside or ignored by a foreign minister because they contradicted the minister's pet beliefs is a recurring complaint in diplomatic memoirs. To take two examples, a study of President Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, illustrated how he interpreted facts about, and incoming messages from, the Soviet Union to make them fit his own beliefs about that country, which always emphasized its aggressiveness and great hostility toward the West. In some instances, Dulles interpreted information—often ingeniously—in such a way as to reinforce a previously held belief.8 Even more clear-cut was Hitler's sensitivity to all information that suggested the imminent defeat of Germany's armed forces. German intelligence sources provided Hitler with accurate statis­tics of American industrial and military production; but in the last two years of the war, the fiihrer became increasingly annoyed at these figures because they suggested pessimistic conclusions. Finally, Hitler ordered that no more statistics be quoted to him and forbade his officials to believe them or even to discuss them among themselves. Other officials who suggested that the morale of German citizenry was lagging by late 1944 were dismissed from their positions.9

Policy makers who do change their views on important foreign-policy programs or who critically examine the assumptions upon which a policy is based, face all the pressures for conformity and loyalty commonly found in small groups or bureaucratic organizations. Sometimes they are welcomed as devil's advocates, but more frequently they are regarded as trouble makers and face considerable personal hostility and sometimes demotion or loss of office. The "Tuesday lunch group" composed of President Johnson and the highest foreign-policy and military officials in his administration regularly made impor­tant decisions on the conduct of the war in Vietnam. Those officials who raised critical objections to American military involvement in Vietnam, who provided information that put the American military operations in an unfavorable light, or who asked for fundamental debates on the entire Vietnam policy were subject to sarcastic jibes from the president, appeals for loyalty and unanimity from the others, and eventual rejection from the group. Some were shifted to other government positions; others resigned.

 




Поиск по сайту:

©2015-2020 studopedya.ru Все права принадлежат авторам размещенных материалов.