George C. Edwards’s Prisoners of their Premises: How Unexamined Assumptions Lead to War and Other Policy Debacles tackles a central question in the study of foreign policy making: how do we explain decisions that have observably catastrophic outcomes? Edwards’s argument is that a vital step in the making process–problem identification–provides significant purchase on this question….
Tag: 2003 Iraq War
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 15-6 on Leffler, Confronting Saddam Hussein
Not many historians associated with SHAFR would venture a study of President George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq based largely on interviews with the engineers of that ultimately disastrous enterprise. Fewer still and, really, only one such foreign relations historian could emerge from this challenge with an untarnished reputation. While not totally convincing the H-Diplo…