Dissertation in Politics - US Foreign Policy Decision Making in Iraq

POL3046: Dissertation in Politics
US Foreign Policy Decision Making in Iraq Page 1
Title: Allison’s conceptual models of Foreign Policy Analysis
and the Invasion of Iraq.
Name: Vijay Thapa Luhan
Student Number: 071701822
Advisor: Dr. James Bilsland
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the
degree of Bachelor of Arts in Politics.
School: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology
Date of Submission: May 2011
Dissertation in Politics

By Using Allison's conceptual models of Foreign Policy
Analysis, how can these models of Decision Making be used
to explain the United States’ decision to invade Iraq in
2003?

Abstract
This dissertation applies Graham Allison’s ‘Conceptual Models of Foreign Policy Analysis’
to the decision making process that preceded the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Allison’s 1971 work,
Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis revolutionised the study of
governmental decision making on American Foreign Policy. The invasion of Iraq was a
historic landmark in U.S. foreign policy. My study into governmental decision making in the
United States applies different analytic models to uncover the different components that
contributed to such an event. The assumptions and predictions of Allison’s models help to
answer the questions of ‘how’ was a decision made, rather than just to explain the ‘why’
questions. My dissertation attempts to explain that the ‘how’s and why’s’ of decision making
can best be explained using Allison’s conceptual models.

Table of Contents
Page
Abstract: 3
List of Abbreviations: 6
Introduction: 7
Chapter 1: The importance of Foreign Policy Analysis 9
and the case of Iraq
What is Foreign Policy Analysis and how does it relate to U.S 10
Foreign policy in Iraq?
What is the empirical puzzle you seek to explain? 11
Who are the main authors whose ideas you are drawing upon 14
and how do they help you explain your research question?
Chapter 2: The Rational Actor Model 16
What is the Rational Actor Model? 17
How can the Rational Actor Model be applied to the decision 19
to invade Iraq?
What are the criticisms of the model when applied to Iraq? 28
Chapter 3: The Governmental Politics Model 31
What is the Governmental Politics model? 32

Who were the key actors in the political bargaining process? 34
How well does the Governmental Politics Model explain the 37
decision to invade Iraq?
Does the model undermine the role of the President? 46
What are the criticisms of the model when applied to Iraq? 48
Conclusion 51
Bibliography 54

List of Abbreviations
9/11 – September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
DoD – United State’s Department of Defense.
Neo-cons – Neo-conservatives.
NSC – National Security Council.
PNAC – Project for the New American Century
Resolution 1441 – United Nations Security Council Resolution offering Iraq under Saddam
Hussein ‘a final opportunity to comply with its disarmament obligations under previous
resolutions of the council’.
UN – United Nations.
UNSC – United Nations Security Council.
U.S. – United States.
WMD – Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Introduction
The aim of this individual study is to address the gap in the general understanding of why the
Bush administration decided to invade Iraq in March 2003. The problem that I seek to solve
is whether it is possible to explain ‘why’ the administration attacked Iraq by addressing ‘how’
the administration decided that attacking Iraq was in the best interests of the United States.
This is important as it may serve a function of helping ordinary observers of foreign policy
understand why the United States was willing to risk the support of its allies in the
international community by aggressively pursuing its own foreign policy objectives. My
dissertation aims to address this problem by avoiding the simple regurgitation on the general
disapproval of the war, and instead seek to ask questions on ‘who’ and ‘what’ were the key
actors and interests that influenced the decision to depart from American’s previous foreign
policy option of containment to a hard-line strategy of pre-emption.
An overview on the topic of my dissertation will be the main research questions I will attempt
to answer. My major area of focus is on the use of the academic discipline of ‘Foreign Policy
Analysis’ on the processes of foreign policy decision-making. The study of foreign policy
analysis is an important and interesting branch of political science as it provides unique
opportunities to examine the dynamics that influence foreign policy-making decisions. I shall
be referring to Graham Allison’s ‘conceptual models of foreign policy analysis’, which are
utilised to use specific methods of decision making made by the Bush administration to
formulate policy. Specifically by selectively using the assumptions and predictions of two of
his models of foreign policy analysis and referring to the wider literature on U.S. foreign
policy, I hope to address the interests and preferences of the President along with his various
policy advisors, and explain how and why they can be explained using Allison’s models. The

evaluation of each chapter will provide me with the conclusion as to whether one, both or
neither of the models can accurately explain the decision making process.
While the concept of foreign policy analysis has existed for decades to explain government
behaviour since during the Cold War, my research has showed that there has been little
effective use of Allison’s models to explain decision-making processes in the Bush
administration. Thus, my dissertation will challenge the general assumption that there was not
a rational justification for the invasion of Iraq, but also whether Bush, as President, acted
alone on his decision.
My methodology for conducting my research and writing this dissertation will be primarily
be comparative. I will be attempting to find direct comparisons between U.S foreign policy
decisions on Iraq and Allison’s conceptual models of foreign policy analysis. By referring to
foreign policy analysis as the basis of my examination, my approach will also be inductive as
I identify patterns between the two different collections of literature. My empirical
observation of the literature will help me produce an educated guess in my conclusion as to
which policy model can be used to associate decision-making on Iraq.
The first chapter of this dissertation provides an overview of foreign policy analysis and how
it can be incorporated on the study of Iraq. It will provide a better explanation of the
empirical puzzle that I seek to explain and a brief overview of the literature that I have
chosen.

Chapter 1:
The importance of Foreign Policy Analysis on the case of Iraq

What is Foreign Policy Analysis and how does it relate to U.S Foreign
Policy in Iraq?
As discussed in the introduction to this dissertation, much of the media and non-academic
discourse are focused on ‘why’ a certain decision was made. The academic discipline of
Foreign policy analysis attempts to answer ‘how’ a decision was made. This is what the
department on Foreign Policy Analysis studies and its role is to study the processes and
outcomes of certain foreign policy decisions, before analysing the implementation of foreign
policy.
To assess the actions of the Bush administration in 2003 to invade Iraq, analysts need to look
at the sequence of events that took place before 2003 and ask not just ‘why’ they were made
after the invasion, but ‘how’ they were made before the invasion. Foreign policy analysis
provides a framework to allow them to systematically pursue and answer these questions.1 By
referring to the specific models that foreign policy analysis uses, this places the individual
decision maker at the heart of the foreign policy decision-making process.2 Problems are
inherent in foreign policy making, and so foreign policy analysis allows the decision maker –
to some extent – to foresee the problems and consequences that may arise out of conducting
foreign policy, but more importantly, the possible outcomes that the decision maker is
pursuing.
The importance of ‘how’ decisions are made rather than ‘why’ is summarised effectively by
Marijke Breuning, as she explains that ‘why decisions are made’ is an easier field to
comment on and criticise as they have the benefit of hindsight. Breuning, however, argues
that to simply comment on decisions does not solve the puzzle of how and why the
1 Brian White, ‘Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Analysis’, in Michael Clarke and Brian White, Foreign
Policy Analysis (Lancashire: G.W. & A. Hesketh, 1981): 3-13
2 Valerie Hudson,‘Foreign Policy Analysis: ActorSpecific Theory and the Ground of International Relations’
Foreign Policy Analysis 1 (2005): 1-30.

government made those decisions.3 There are two models I shall be looking at that assess
how actors in the Bush administration were unified or divided in their interests to invade Iraq.
These two models along with the literature I have researched will give me insight in the
decision making process and assess the priorities and motivations behind individuals who
were part of the policy making process leading up to the invasion.
Glenn Hastedt claims that there is no single policy decision-making process that exists.
Therefore, in order to understand and make sense of the complex process of making
decisions, one must refer to models that have been produced to help ‘explain, predict, and
evaluate how U.S foreign policy is made’. 4 Using these conceptual models of foreign policy
analysis will help me to answer my research question and to explain precisely how decision-
making was carried out preceding the invasion of Iraq.
What is the empirical puzzle that you seek to explain?
Valerie Hudson believes that foreign policy analysis is ‘…characterised by an actor-specific
focus, based upon the argument that all that occurs between nations and across nations is
grounded in human decision makers acting singly or in groups’.5 The empirical puzzle that I
am aiming to analyse is how did President Bush come to a decision that invading Iraq would
be in the United States’ best interest? Was the decision one that he made on his own? Or was
it a decision he made a product of the internal negotiations that took place between his closest
policy advisors? These two issues will be the centrepiece of this dissertation and are
represented by the two models I have chosen to look at as part of my research. The two
models consist of major assumptions about the foreign policy decision, the decision maker,
3 Marijke Breuning, Foreign Policy Analysis: A Comparative Introduction (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007): 3.
4 Glenn Hastedt, Encyclopaedia ofAmerican Foreign Policy (New York: Facts on File Inc, 2004): XII.
5 Hudson, Foreign Policy Analysis, 2.

and the decision-making system that I hope to use to effectively analyse the empirical puzzle
that I seek to explain.
I shall start by reviewing the key author whose models I shall be using and whose work has
provided a significant contribution to my study.
Graham Tillet Allison Jr. is a political scientist and professor at the John F. Kennedy School
of Government. His analyses of government decision making during crises has contributed to
a better understanding of how government decision making is formulated towards a country’s
foreign policy. In 1971, he published the book, ‘Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban
Missile Crisis’. The purpose of the book was to examine the events of the Cuban Missile
Crisis that took place in October 1962, and allow these models to be used as case studies for
future analyses of governmental decision-making on foreign policy or any other branch of
policy negotiations. Initially, Allison admitted that it was not possible to identify a single
dominant paradigm that could explain government decision making. Instead, each model
assesses the actions of both the United States and Soviet Union and explains how and why
both countries were pursuing an arms race with the build-up of their nuclear capabilities. The
models give a conceptual understanding of the crisis whilst also evaluating the effectiveness
of each model with its strengths and weaknesses. The strengths and weaknesses of each
model along with a few of the criticisms they drew from other authors and analysts were
included in a later revision of the book that was published in 1999.6
The first model I will analyse is the ‘Rational Actor Model’. The model assumes that
decisions are made as a result of evaluation of an actor’s goals and objectives, the available
policy options, and the consequences of making such a decision. Decisions are made
according to the maximum level of expected utility, where there is the highest possibility of
6 Graham T Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (United States:Addison-Wesley
Education Publishers, 1999): vii

positive outcomes and the lowest possibility of negative consequences.7 My dissertation will
assess why President Bush viewed Iraq as an urgent security threat to the United States, and
why certain characteristics of Iraq’s history suggested that action was needed immediately
after September 11, 2001.
The second model I will use is the ‘Governmental Politics Model’, and arose out of a critique
of the rational actor model. This model is often called the ‘Bureaucratic Politics Model’, and
explains that decisions on foreign policy are not made by one individual or leader, but
instead, according to Allison, they are made as a result of bureaucratic bargaining that takes
place between numerous members of a policy making group who have different strategic
goals and objectives in mind.8 This model separates itself from the rational actor model
because the rational actor model does not take into account the possibility that decisions are
made after complex bargaining among different advisors and individuals.9 This distinction
allows the governmental politics model to provide a broader approach to foreign policy
analysis when trying to understand the complexities of decision making that elude rational
actor analysis.10
The governmental politics model is a very useful model in looking at the circumstances that
surrounded the invasion of Iraq, as it looks at the role of individuals within the
administration’s government agencies. In this chapter, I will look at the major role that the
neoconservatives played in convincing President Bush on the immediate importance of Iraq
as a security threat to the United States. However, this model also suffers from its
weaknesses, especially in relation to the superior role that the President plays in foreign
7 Allison, Essence of Decision, 24.
9 Breuning, Foreign Policy Analysis, 96.
10 Martin Smith, ‘U.S bureaucratic Politics and the Decision to Invade Iraq’ Contemporary Politics 14 (2008):
91-105.

policy decision-making and will be included in my evaluation of the model at the end of the
chapter.
‘Essence of Decision’ also includes a third model labelled the ‘Organisational Behaviour
Model’. This model refers to the formal organisations as the setting for where foreign policy
decisions are made.11 The decisions that are made are often linked to the organisational
structure or procedure of decision makers. Although this model is still an important aspect of
foreign policy analysis, it is difficult to utilise as part of my research question simply because
there is a shortage of data that could be used to provide evidentiary support for any argument
that could be used to link the model to the case of Iraq. However, this provides me with the
opportunity to look more closely at the two other models that Allison published, rather than
more briefly had I been able to use the third model.
Throughout this chapter, I have provided a general account of the empirical puzzle that I aim
to solve by subjecting the decision to invade Iraq under Allison’s two conceptual models of
foreign policy. The next two chapters will look into these models more closely and assess
whether they adequately apply to the invasion of Iraq.
Who are the main authors whose ideas you are drawing upon and how do
they help you explain your research question?
Although I will be using Allison’s conceptual models of foreign policy analysis as the basis
of my comparison, I have drawn upon numerous sources to help build my argument and
frame a wide-ranging approach to this study. I have separated the use of foreign policy
analysis authors from those who have provided my chapters with the knowledge and
information on the processes the Bush administration went through to produce policy on Iraq.

In order to understand the concept of foreign policy analysis, I drew upon the ideas of
Marijke Breuning, Valerie Hudson, Brian White and Michael Clarke. These authors provided
me with the knowledge of how Allison’s models are linked to the wider literature on foreign
policy analysis. These are how the ‘how’ and ‘why’ questions on foreign policy are linked
and how one can be used efficiently to explain the other. I introduced my dissertation by
explaining that the basis of my study is to explain ‘why’ President Bush decided to invade
Iraq in March 2003. These four authors all cite Allison’s models and how it can be used to
explain such an event.
The central focus of my dissertation is related to how Allison’s conceptual models can be
incorporated into U.S foreign policy in Iraq. Martin Smith’s ‘US Bureaucratic Politics and
the Decision to Invade Iraq’ helped me to find links between Allison’s governmental politics
model and the different actors who assemble the government bureaucracy on foreign policy.
Together with Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, the three authors provide a narrative of the
ascendency of the neoconservatives in foreign policy decision-making. I cited Bob
Woodward’s two major volumes on the Bush administration’s policymaking process. ‘Bush
at War’ focuses on the bureaucratic struggle that took place between Colin Powell and
Donald Rumsfeld whilst maintaining their departmental interests on foreign policy. On the
other hand I cited his later work, ‘Plan of Attack’ to focus on the personal relationship
between Condoleezza Rice and George Bush.
The collection of authors I have cited and acknowledged in this dissertation help to
incorporate Allison’s conceptual models on U.S. foreign policy as well as integrate it with the
wider literature on foreign policy analysis.

Chapter 2:
The Rational Actor Model

What is the Rational Actor Model?
The rational actor model is the first model that Allison uses to analyse foreign policy
decision-making. According to White, ‘…decision making analysts have tended to reinforce
‘rational actor’ assumptions by assuming a rational decision-making process’.12 The rational
actor model attempts to answer the question of why a decision maker chooses one policy
option rather than another.
Firstly, the decision maker is assumed to be a ‘unified, national actor’. This conceives the
nation or government to be rational, unitary decision makers, who have one set of
preferences, choices and estimates of the consequences of policy alternatives.13 Secondly, the
decision maker is assumed to rank preferences of policy options with a clear objective or set
of objectives in mind. These preferences are ranked according to the degree of satisfaction
and utility attained from achieving these goals and objectives, after having identified the
alternative policy options and their possible consequences.14 The decision maker will look at
these alternative policy options and their consequences, and will select the policy that gives
the decision maker the ‘maximum utility’.15 A decision made according to maximum utility is
one that gives the decision maker the highest positive outcome or ‘payoff’. Allison refers to
this rational choice as a ‘value maximising’ decision whose consequences rank highest in
terms of the decision maker’s goals and objectives.16
There are two major points to note about the rational actor model that can bring confusion
and criticism. These two points are very important when using the model to analyse the
decision to invade Iraq. Firstly, it is important to note that the key decision makers are not
12 White, Foreign Policy Analysis, 7
15 Alex Mintz and Karl R. DeRouen, Understanding Foreign Policy Decision Making (USA: Cambridge
University Press,2010): 57.

always assumed to be acting rationally. Instead, the decision makers try to make the best
possible decision according to specific restraints that the decision making process allows
them to do so.17 Secondly, the decision that is made may not always be right. There can
sometimes be confusion that the term ‘rational’ can be linked to ‘right’, however, that does
not necessarily mean that the decision makers did not behave irrationally. The rational actor
model does not look for what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ about foreign policy decisions. It instead
looks at whether the decision can be deemed as ‘rational’ according to the information that
foreign policy decision makers provide.
My study into the invasion of Iraq will look into why the United States chose to change their
policy agenda of ‘containment’ against the Soviet Union to ‘pre-emption’ in Iraq.
Containment dominated the foreign policy agenda of the United States after the Second
World War and during the Cold War to ‘contain’ the spread of communism emerging from
the Soviet Union. This policy was later fused with the intimidating strategy of ‘deterrence’,
which promised to punish another state if they chose to attack the United States with the use
of nuclear weapons. Deterrence was seen to prevent the other nation from attacking as the
consequences of that attack could be met with a retaliatory strike of equal or greater
magnitude. This became what was known at the time as ‘Mutually Assured Deterrence’.18
However, after President Bush was elected in 2000, the US government wanted to change its
national security policy to face the challenges of the new international system. The U.S.
moved towards ‘pre-emption’, which looked to prevent immediate threats to the United
States before they could develop.19 This significant change in foreign policy was outlined in
the National Security Strategy in September 2002 where the Bush administration focused on
17 White, Foreign Policy Analysis, 21.
18 Brian C. Schmidt, ‘The Primacy of National Security’ in Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (eds)
Foreign Policy – Theories, Actors, Cases (USA: Oxford University Press, 2008): 155-169.
19 Beth A. Fischer, ‘Military Power and US Foreign Policy’ in Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne
(eds) Foreign Policy – Theories, Actors, Cases (USA: Oxford University Press, 2008): 129-144.

the use of ‘Weapons of Mass Destruction’ (WMD) as the ‘greatest threat’ to the United
States.20 This chapter will look at why this significant change occurred. Was the policy
change from ‘containment’ to ‘pre-emption’ a rational decision that looked at all possible
alternative policy options? Thus, was the decision to invade Iraq as part of a ‘War on Terror’
a rational decision? By using Allison’s rational actor model, I hope to understand and answer
these questions.
How can the Rational Actor Model be applied to the decision to invade
Iraq?
The first important point is to highlight who, according to Allison’s model, can be identified
as the actor. It is difficult to pinpoint one such unitary actor as the prime decision maker as
the structure of the U.S government is made of multiple components that formulate and
decide on foreign policy. The actor could simply be designated as the Bush administration, or
the State Department, or just President Bush. By selecting the U.S government as the actor
would be incorrect as this is too abstract, as the government consists of many different actors
and the most important of which shall be discussed in Chapter three. Similarly, it is difficult
to choose the State Department as the unitary actor because despite its role as the primary
institution for the development of foreign policy, the State Department had many critics when
it came to developing policy against Iraq. Therefore, I am left to say that the rational actor is
the President. As President and ‘Commander-in-Chief’, George W. Bush is in the unique
position of making the final decision according to the advice and strategy of his advisors.
Having identified the rational actor, it is now possible to look at policy options and outcomes.
Before applying Allison’s rational actor model, it is important to understand the context of
the reasons for the invasion. The importance of this is related to why Iraq was perceived as an
20 ‘National Security Strategy – September 2002’, The White House Archives (http://georgewbush-
whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf,7th April 2011).

immediate problem for the United States. The reasons for the invasion contribute to the
rational actor model as possible policy options and consequences and so it is important to
know what they were.
The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, did not in themselves place Iraq on
the government’s foreign policy agenda. Rather, the attacks brought the question of Iraq back
to the policy table once again and continued where it had left off since the Gulf War in the
early 1990’s and the bombing of Iraq in December 1998. However, after the attacks on 9/11,
there was a greater sense of urgency about what to do with Iraq.21 Before 9/11, there had been
a succession of attacks on US infrastructure and personnel in Yemen, Mogadishu, Riyadh,
and in East Africa. These attacks clearly demonstrated that the current policy of containment
was insufficient in tackling global terrorism.22 However, what was a greater threat was that
the attacks - designated as terrorist attacks - on 9/11 were the first to take place in the United
States by a foreign terrorist group.23 These attacks stressed the importance of looking at the
greater significance that the attacks represented. American global supremacy was under
attack and a tough response was required. After the invasion of Afghanistan, the war in Iraq,
which began on 19th March 2003, represented the second phase of the Bush administration’s
‘War on terror’. The reasons for invasion, however, were different to that of Afghanistan.
Firstly, Bush and his closest advisors believed that Saddam Hussein was seeking to develop
WMD, going against previous UNSC resolutions that forbid him from developing WMD.
Secondly, the Bush administration firmly believed that Iraq had been harbouring terrorists
and could be linked to the attacks on September 11, 2001. The plausibility of this accusation
is irrelevant, because whatever the case, it was a major factor that contributed to the
administration’s rationale for invading Iraq.
21 Smith, U.S bureaucratic Politics,99.
22 Dominic McGoldrick, From 9/11 to the Iraq War 2003 (Oregon: Hart Publishing, 2004): 10.
23 Noam Chomsky, 9/11 (Canada: Open Media, 2001): 35.

Citing these two main reasons for the decision to invade Iraq, I can now begin to apply the
assumptions of Allison’s rational actor model to my study on foreign policy decision-making
in Iraq.
President George W. Bush, along with his key policy advisors defined their strategic
objectives, considered the possible alternatives, weighed together the possible risks and
benefits of invading Iraq, and then selected the option that maximised the possible benefits
whilst minimising the consequences.24 From looking at these classical assumptions of the
rational actor model, it is plausible to agree that these assumptions fit the decision-making
procedure that took place before the invasion of Iraq. However, it is only possible to confirm
these assumptions by assessing what the different policy options, along with the expected
benefits and consequences were that faced the Bush administration. I have identified two
major policy options that can be drawn from U.S. Foreign Policy. The first option is
continued ‘containment’, which had been used towards Iraq following the end of the first
Gulf War. The second option is military force through ‘pre-emption’, and has been identified
as one of the key justifications under the Bush administration for launching an attack on
Iraq.25
By identifying the policy options, it is now possible to look for the possible outcomes and
consequences of each policy and assess whether these can be seen as contributing factors to
the decision to invade Iraq.
The first policy option that I shall assess is the policy of continued containment against Iraq.
The use of containment in Iraq had been deployed ever since the beginning of the first Gulf
War in 1990, and was a phased strategy of pressuring Saddam Hussein. The ‘Iraq sanctions’
24 Michael J. Mazarr, ‘The Iraq War and Agenda Setting’, Foreign Policy Analysis 3 (2007): 1-23.
25 Stefan Halper and Jonathan Clarke, America Alone: The Neo-Conservatives and the Global Order (USA:
Cambridge University Press, 2004): 139.

were imposed by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) on 6th August, 1990, four
days after Iraq invaded Kuwait, and were in the form of economic sanctions and trade
embargos aimed at Iraq’s military to withdraw their forces from Kuwait. At the end of the
Gulf War, the UNSC extended these sanctions further by banning all financial resources
except for medicines and aid used for ‘humanitarian reasons’.26 Other policies of containment
included requirements for disarmament, continued, uninterrupted weapons inspections, no-fly
zones, and maritime interdiction operations to disrupt the banned trade of resources to Iraq.27
The issue of uninterrupted weapons inspections was the major cause for concern in the lead
up to the invasion of Iraq. Before the December 1998 bombings of Iraq, Scott Ritter, the chief
weapons inspector for the UN had alerted the international community because of the
continued obstruction of his personnel from known weapons sites. His opinion was that
without full access to these sites, Iraq could swiftly restart its weapons programme and put it
in material breach of existing UNSC resolutions.28 According to Allison’s rational actor
model, this would represent a severe threat to the United States if it continued with its policy
of containment in a post 9/11 world.
However, one can only identify the severity of the costs by placing them against the benefits
of continued strict containment towards Iraq. Scott Ritter continued with his testimony on
Iraq that containment had already seen Iraq destroy up to 95% of its WMD capability and this
evidence had been made visible to the UN. He claims:
26 ‘Resolution 661 adopted by the Security Council at its 2933rd meeting on 6th August 1990’ United Nations
(http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0661.htm, 23rd April, 2011).
27 ‘War In Iraq versus Containment’ American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
(http://www.aei.org/docLib/20060221_davisPaper060215.pdf, 23rd April 2011).
28 Steven Wright, The United States and Persian Gulf Security:Foundations of the War on Terror (Berkshire:
Ithaca Press, 2007): 141.

“...we have to remember that this missing 5 to 10% doesn’t necessarily constitute a threat. It
doesn’t constitute a weapons programme. It constitutes bits and pieces of a weapons
programme which, in its totality, doesn’t amount to much, but which it is still prohibited.”29
Therefore, if it is possible to use a claim by the chief weapons inspector in Iraq as reliable, it
is likely that the policy of containment as an option may have been enough to see Iraq as less
of a security threat to the United States. If it was true that the remaining 10% of unaccounted
WMD was not enough to pose as a catalyst to restart Iraq’s weapons programme, than the use
of containment as an alternative policy option to full-scale pre-emption could be seen as
viable. Furthermore, prior to the invasion, the United Kingdom and other allies pursuing
similar policies to thwart Iraq’s weapons programmes followed the United States policy of
containment. Such a response was beneficial to international cooperation against Iraq by the
legitimate use of sanctions according to UNSC resolutions that were supported by the
international community. This benefit of containment as a policy option presses the case
further to support continued containment against Iraq.
However, to see if this is the case, I must look at the related consequences the administration
identified of pursuing a continued policy of containment towards Iraq.
The Bush administration feared that remaining biological and chemical weapon stocks could
risk the chance of continued WMD development if they were not accounted for and
destroyed. According to Vice President Cheney, if there was a 1% chance of a grave threat
materialising from Al Qaeda developing a nuclear weapon with help from Pakistani
scientists, the United States should treat the threat as a certainty and act immediately to
29 Scott Ritter, ‘Iraq has been Fundamentally Disarmed’, Third World Network
(http://www.twnside.org.sg/title/twr147e.htm, 23rd April 2011).

eliminate it.30 After 9/11, the administration could not afford to take any risks with the
probability that al-Qaeda could build a nuclear weapon. National Security Advisor,
Condoleezza Rice, encapsulated this fear when she spoke of the fear of “smoking guns
turning into mushroom clouds”. 31 This could be represented as a significant ‘cost’ to the
United States if a threat were to materialise with the continued development of WMD, and
according to Allison’s rational actor model, is not likely to be viewed favourably by the Bush
administration.
Having looked at the various costs and benefits that come with choosing continued
containment as the method of U.S foreign policy towards Iraq, I will now look at the costs
and benefits of using pre-emptive military force.
The major goal behind using pre-emptive military force to strike Iraq was the removal of
Saddam Hussein from power. This had been a long-standing goal for many of the policy
advisors in the Bush administration, and is a characteristic I shall explain in detail in chapter
three. Although there were many other policy objectives as part of the invasion, removal of
Saddam was the primary objective. Firstly, according to the administration, the notion of pre-
emption could be used against Saddam’s regime, as it had refused to comply with UNSC
resolutions aimed at preventing the use of WMD’s.32 Secondly, Saddam’s history of
aggression towards other countries spoke for itself and in dealing with him, one the major
costs of not dealing with him could be negated and turned into a benefit. The evidence
supported the likelihood of aggression if he were able to continue to develop WMD. He had
already attacked both Iran and Kuwait in order to seize control of their vast oil reserves. By
30 Yuen Foong Khong, ‘Neoconservatismand the Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy’ in Steve
Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (eds) Foreign Policy – Theories, Actors, Cases (New York: Oxford
University Press,2008): 251-267.
31 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2004): 109.
32 Abraham D. Sofaer, ‘On the Necessity of Pre-Emption’, European Journal of International Law 14 (2003):
209-226.

removing him from power, the U.S could enjoy the uninterrupted flow of oil to the western
hemisphere, as well as not have to repeat the events that brought about the first Gulf War.
Thirdly, despite UNSC resolutions forcing Iraq to destroy its WMD capability, as discussed
earlier, there were still remaining stockpiles that, according to Bush, could be used to restart
Iraq’s weapon programme. If this were to happen, the consequences could be devastating to
the United States. Attacking Iraq pre-emptively would seem rational as once more, Saddam’s
history of using WMD worked against him. In what become known as the ‘Anfal Campaign’,
his regime used chemical weapons to systematically eliminate the Kurdish population of
northern Iraq during 1986 to 1989, during the latter stages of the Iran-Iraq war. The United
Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide labelled
the killings as genocide, as the organised indiscriminate killings of the Kurdish population
killed at least 180,000 people.33 The rationale of pre-emption against Iraq was simply put that
if Saddam Hussein could kill hundreds of thousands of his own people, what would stop him
from doing the same against the United States? This possible outcome of non-action against
Iraq would represent a serious cost of not choosing pre-emptive force as a policy option.
The negative outcomes of choosing pre-emption against Iraq are similar to that of any war.
Firstly, there would be a very high monetary cost to fight a war on the scale of Iraq. The
United States Congressional Budget Office estimated that that the war could cost anywhere
between $48 billion and £93 billion, depending on the length of the campaign.34 Not included
in these costs are the extra costs for humanitarian assistance and post-war reconstruction,
which could cost up to $40 billion. 35 However, the most significant cost is the interest in
33 Dave Johns, ‘The Crimes of Saddam: The Anfal Campaign’ Frontline PBS
(http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/iraq501/events_anfal.html, 24th April 2011).
34 ‘Assessing the Cost of Military Action Against Iraq: Using Desert Shield/Desert Storm as a Basis for
Estimates: An Analysis by the House Budget Committee’, House Budget Committee
(http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/DHBC.pdf, 24th April 2011).
35 House Budget Committee, Assessing the Cost of Military Action Against Iraq.

borrowing to finance these additional costs over time. This could significantly hamper
support for the war as the money to finance the payments on interest could be used for other
public services. Secondly, there could potentially be high military casualties. The number of
casualties depends on how long the Iraqi army can withstand an American attack. Former
Senator Gary Hart explained:
‘If the Iraqi army collapses at the first blow, casualties may be as few as a couple of hundred,
maybe 500 at the most. But if they dig in and defend the major cities, if they fight house to
house, if they take off their uniforms and merge with the civilian population, casualties can
easily reach 50,000 or even 100,000 Americans and 250,000 or more Iraqis’.36
When attempting to explain the policy that was chosen before the invasion, in relation to the
rational actor model, the number of casualties would have to be a significant factor. However,
in a post 9/11 world, the U.S government had to ask what option was worse; over a 100,000
military casualties fighting in war, or the same figure of innocent American civilian casualties
from the use of WMD.
Using this momentum of selecting the most viable policy option, it is now possible to explain
why the Bush administration chose to pre-emptively attack Iraq rather continue a policy of
containment.
From addressing the positive and negative outcomes of policy options and from the research I
have undertaken in this study, my perception of the U.S justification to pre-emptively attack
Iraq was because of a necessity to act after September 11, 2001. Speaking to Bob Woodward
in 2003, President Bush claimed:
‘“September 11th obviously changed my thinking a lot about my responsibility as president.
Because September 11th made the security of the American people the priority…a sacred
36 Leslie Evans, ‘President Bush Silent on Potential Costs of War with Iraq’, UCLA International Institute
(http://www.international.ucla.edu/article.asp?parentid=2229, 24th April 2011).

duty for the president. It is the most necessary duty for the president, because if the president
doesn’t take on that duty, who else is going to?”37
After 9/11, removing Saddam Hussein became a necessity in order to effectively continue in
destroying remaining WMD stockpiles. Bush was certain that the future of U.S. security
would not be certain with the possibility of WMD’s and the likelihood of further terrorist
attacks against the United States and required immediate attention. This argument reiterates
the statement I made at the beginning of this chapter, which is that the September 11 attacks,
did not put Iraq on the agenda as a new problem, but instead, that it put Iraq back on the
agenda after the first Gulf war. This can be seen in the meetings and discussions that took
place within 24 hours of the attacks, where Vice President Rumsfeld mentioned attacking
Iraq.38 Rumsfeld was later quoted as saying that America acted because they saw “existing
evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder in a new light, through the prism of our
experience on September 11th”.39 Although I will look at the reliability of this ‘evidence’ in
my evaluation of the model, this did not change the issue that Bush and his administration
were well aware of the threat posed to the United States from terrorists if they were able to
build a nuclear weapon.
To conclude, I have attempted to find many linkages between the Bush administration’s
decision to invade Iraq and Allison’ rational actor model. I have identified who the ‘actor’ is,
as well as the two main policy options of containment and pre-emptive war. By looking at the
possible outcomes as well as the weighing of their respective costs and benefits, I have tried
to explain why Bush ultimately chose a policy of pre-emptive war. This section has tried to
identify the reasons ‘why’ Bush invaded by addressing the ‘how’ questions that are involved
37 Woodward, Plan of Attack,22.
38 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 149.
39 Steve Schifferes, ‘Rumsfeld Brushes aside WMD Fears’, BBC
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3054423.stm, 25th April 2011).

in decision making processes of foreign policy. However, the model does come under
criticism and will be evaluated in the next section.
What are the criticisms of the model when applied to Iraq?
Throughout chapter one, I have been able to find many comparisons in the decision making
process to invade Iraq and Allison’s rational actor model. This is possible because of the
simple and uncomplicated approach that the rational actor model uses to analyse decision-
making. The general method of analysis that sees a single, unitary decision maker select the
option that has the highest possible benefit at the lowest possible cost or risk can be seen
when applied to President Bush on Iraq.
However, the model can be criticised for its over-simplification when looked at in further
detail. The general criticisms of the model by foreign policy analysts allow further scrutiny
into whether the rational actor model is a reliable approach to use in foreign policy analysis.
The most common criticism that can be made is the reliability of information. Herbert
Simon’s notion of ‘bounded rationality’ is used by Allison to highlight the dangers of using
the rational actor model. He writes that in making a decision, the decision maker is in the
presence of ‘inescapable limitations of knowledge’ that hinder the ability to make an
absolute, rational decision.40 Along with this is the presence of immediate time constraints
that hinders the facility of making drawn out, calculated, rational decisions on foreign policy.
The attacks of 9/11 pressured Bush to see the United States as a clear and vulnerable threat
from foreign terrorist networks and thus with the information he had, he decided that pre-
emptively striking Iraq would protect the security interests of the United States. This is
important because my chosen study for this dissertation does not comment on whether the
threat of a possible attack from Iraq was plausible, but instead it focuses on whether the
40 Allison,Essence of Decision, 20.

decision to invade could be deemed as rational with the information it had at hand. The
information was clear to Bush; Firstly, Saddam Hussein had the capability of manufacturing
WMD’s, and had used them previously to attack an ethnic division of his country. Secondly,
with the advice of Rumsfeld, Bush was convinced that Saddam was involved in the 9/11
attacks and posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the US.41 These two
major points provided his justification for the invasion, and ultimately the decision to choose
pre-emption over containment. However, the reliability of this information was what
eventually drained the limited support the invasion previously had. This can be seen in the
inaccurate information Bush received that Saddam Hussein had sought to buy yellow cake
uranium from Niger.42 This information had two functions. Firstly, it served as new
information to the President as it had not yet been seen by government intelligence. Secondly,
it was indicative as it signalled that Saddam Hussein was willingly seeking to develop WMD
and thus falsely gave Bush the justification to invade Iraq. Using this major caveat in
information, it is thus not possible to plausibly justify the decision to invade Iraq using the
features of the rational actor model as the evidence is littered with scenarios of confirmation
bias and cherry picking. Inevitably, President Bush was accused of ‘seeing what he wanted to
see’ as was already convinced that Iraq was linked to the 9/11 attacks and wanted absolute
proof to corroborate his case.
The additional problem of time constraints also pushed the U.S. to not wait for a second
resolution to be produced by the UNSC following Resolution 1441 that gave Saddam a final
warning to comply with its disarmament obligations. Thus, using Simon’s idea of ‘bounded
rationality’, it can be suggested that the decision to invade Iraq was not a ‘rational’ decision,
41 Karl K.Schonenberg, Constructing 21st Century U.S Foreign Policy: Identity, Ideology, and America’s World
Role in a New Era (New York: PalgraveMacmillan,2009):158.
42 JaniceGross Stein, ‘Foreign Policy Decision Making:Rational,Psychological,and Neurological Models’ in
Steve Smith, Amelia Hadfield and Tim Dunne (Eds) Foreign Policy – Theories, Actors, Cases (New York: Oxford
University Press,2008):101-116.

but one that was based on the ‘satisficing of foreign policy objectives’.43 This suggests that
the decision making process that took place before the invasion of Iraq did not require Bush
to weigh all options. Instead, it chose the most optimal solution that sounded reasonable or,
according to Breuning, ‘good enough’.44 As I will discuss in chapter three, the administration
had significant interests in invading Iraq, and this can be linked in this evaluation. The policy
of pre-emption to foster regime change in Iraq allowed the decision makers in the
administration to be selective in the way they viewed intelligence and sequentially discard
any options that did not meet their criteria, and ultimately, they chose the option that was
adequate to satisfy their political interests.
This final point is the key reason as to why it is not possible to accurately use the rational
actor model to illustrate the decision making process of invading Iraq. The oversimplified
rational actor model allows me to continue to seek for my answer in the more extensive
‘governmental politics’ model that I shall discuss in chapter three.

Chapter 3:
The Governmental Politics Model

What is the Governmental Politics model?
As discussed by Allison, the rational actor model assumes that government decisions are
rational, utility-maximising decisions that occur within specified restraints. However, Allison
also included an alternative model. This is known as the governmental (or bureaucratic)
politics model. Allison included this model in his work, Essence of Decision, in order to
‘provide a base for improved explanations and predictions’ on foreign policy decision-
making.45 The alternative model has tended to be less influential compared to the rational
actor model as foreign policy analysts have preferred to reduce the bureaucratic
complications of government to the much simpler explanation of decision-making by a single
actor.46 However, by looking at his justification of the alternative model of analysis, and
including the broader bureaucratic functions that operate and take place in foreign policy
decision-making, Allison therefore claims that his alternative model can explain foreign
policy decision making more effectively.
The single, fundamental element that can be used to describe the governmental politics model
is hierarchy. The governmental politics model focuses on the individual ‘leaders’ who are at
the top of their respective organisations. These leaders, according to the model, are ‘players’
in a competitive game of political bargaining, which sees negotiations on policy swing back
and forth before a final decision can be made. Allison refers to this swing as the ‘pulling and
hauling that is politics’.47 Welch asserts that the governmental politics model is used to allow
the scope of the model to be broader and more ambitious in its goals than the rational actor
model.48
46 Graham Allison and Morton Halperin, ‘Bureaucratic Politics: A paradigm and some Policy Implications’,
World Politics 24 (1972): 40-79.
48 David A. Welch, ‘The Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigms: Retrospect and Prospect’,
International Security 17 (1992): 112-146.

A second method of emphasising the case made by the governmental politics model is that no
individual is in a position to decide issues alone. The power to influence decisions is shared
between the players, and it is this power that led the players to disagree on issues that arise
from foreign policy decision-making. This is clearly evident in the case of Iraq, as the leading
members of President Bush’s administration, who sit atop of vastly different government
institutions, were seen to have diverging views on the use of diplomatic sanctions and the use
of military force. Hastedt identifies the United States Secretary of State, Colin Powell, as one
of the most important examples of this predicament. As the highest-ranking diplomat and
head of the State Department, Powell is free to advise the President as he sees fit. Although
the Secretary of State should traditionally remain devoted to the use of diplomacy rather than
military force, they are also allowed to advise the President to go to war if it is required.
Despite eventually supporting the decision to invade Iraq, Powell’s position on how the
United States should invade ran counter to the firm opinion of the neo-conservative section of
the administration, composed of the military Chiefs of Staff in the Department of Defense.49
Powell’s position as a ‘dove among hawks’50 in the administration saw him become a victim
to a situation of ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’.51 This aphorism of foreign
policy decision-making suggests that the policy stance adopted by an individual in
government, will be determined by their position in the government bureaucracy.52
Thus the political bargaining process that takes place within the governmental politics model
is constrained by the organisational context within which policymakers represent and thus
operate. This influence, however, does not necessarily have to impact the power of the
President of the United States to make the final decision. This is why the President can be
49 Fraser Cameron, US Foreign Policy after the Cold War: Global Hegemon or Reluctant Sheriff? (Oxon:
Routledge, 2005): 160.
50 Simon Jeffrey, ‘Powell: A Dove Among Hawks’ The Guardian
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/nov/15/usa.simonjeffery, 6th April 2011).
51 Smith, Martin, U.S bureaucratic Politics.92.
52 Smith, US Bureaucratic Politics, 92.

seen as a unique ‘player’ in the government politics ‘game’ and this shall be looked into later
in this chapter.
In the next section, I shall incorporate the use of the governmental politics model into my
case study of Iraq. During the policy making procedure that preceded the invasion of Iraq,
there were tensions both public and private within the administration on whether to invade
Iraq. This should provide an important contribution into understanding the bureaucratic input
on U.S foreign policy.
Who were the key actors in the political bargaining process?
According to Allison, the players who are involved in the political bargaining process that
takes place during policy making represent a specific department or agency who have their
own interests to protect, but these interests are also used to impose on policy-making.53 These
interests represent preferences that the players bring to the policy making table as options for
foreign policy. Therefore, the preferences that are related to these different organisations tend
to reflect a certain bias that favours one organisation and can come into conflict with the
recommendations of other groups. This can be linked back to the case of ‘where you stand
depends on where you sit’, that I touched upon in the previous section. In this chapter, I shall
mention the three main American state institutions that were responsible for coordinating
policy on Iraq, however, what is more important, are the main actors that sat atop of these
institutions, and how they as individuals affected policy making on Iraq.
The Department of State is the lead institution that is responsible for American foreign
policy. Its role is to advance the political goals and objectives that reflect the country’s
national interest. These goals and objectives are important factors that are adhered to for

conducting and implementing foreign policy.54 During the early administration, Colin Powell
was the United States Secretary of State. His tenure as Secretary of State ran from 21st
January, 2001 to 26th January, 2005. Although, Powell, a moderate Republican, eventually
supported the administration’s decision to forcibly overthrow Saddam Hussein, he had
always favoured to have the support of the international community rather than to go in
alone.55
The Department of Defense (DoD) is the main body that is responsible for protecting and
maintaining the U.S. national security. The head of the institution is the Secretary of Defense,
which before and during the invasion of Iraq was Donald Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld’s approach to
Iraq was different from that of the neo-conservatives, as his position was that the war in Iraq
was about demonstrating American power to the rest of the world. The war in Iraq was an
extension to America’s attack on those who threatened the United States dominancy. Khong
builds on this proposition as he claims that Rumsfeld’s eagerness for attacking Iraq was based
on deterrence and demonstration of American power, rather than morality, and thus his
position is different to the typical neo-conservative, who I shall discuss later in the chapter.56
However, his position in the administration is crucial as his position on Iraq coincided with
President Bush’s, which was the American capacity to use military force to remove Saddam
Hussein from power.57
The National Security Council (NSC) is the President’s principal forum for considering
foreign policy matters. The council advises and assists the President on national security and
foreign policy issues and is composed of senior national policy advisors and cabinet
54 ‘Duties of the Secretary of State’, U.S Department of State (http://www.state.gov/secretary/115194.htm, 6th
April 2011).
55 ‘Powell Seeks UN Support for Iraq Ultimatum’, The Guardian,
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/sep/13/iraq1?INTCMP=ILCNETTXT3487, 1st April 2011).
56 Khong, Neoconservatism and the Domestic sources of American Foreign Policy,260.
57 Martin Smith, U.S bureaucratic Politicsand the Decision to Invade Iraq, 101.

officials.58 In September 2002, the NSC published the United States’ ‘National Security
Strategy’, the first since 9/11. It codified some of the policies that George Bush emphasised
in his speech he gave to a Joint Session of Congress as part of his ‘Bush Doctrine’ to fight
terrorism via the use of military pre-emption.59 Condoleezza Rice served as the National
Security Advisor from January 21st, 2001 to January 26th, 2005. As a proponent for the
invasion of Iraq, she publically refused to accept that Iraq had disbanded and disarmed its
nuclear, chemical and biological weapons technology as part of the UN’s Security Council
resolution.60 According to Woodward, Rice realised the deep tensions and divisions between
Powell and Rumsfeld, and in doing so, she had a tremendous amount of personal influence on
President Bush and the foreign policy decision-making process.61
The final and most crucial aspect to the governmental politics model that I shall be analysing
is the role of the neo-conservatives. George Bush’s presidency from 2000 to 2008 has
predominantly been described by observers of foreign policy to be neo-conservative.62
Neoconservatism in the Bush Administration was not an institution like the DoD or State
Department, but was the dominant political ideology that was adhered to by certain members
who held positions of power within these institutions, particularly in the DoD and NSC.
Bush’s election and the immediate aftermath of 9/11 allowed a small group of radical
intellectuals that had been mostly marginalised in the 1990’s by former President Bill
Clinton, to formulate and produce American foreign policy in a post 9/11 world. The next
section to this dissertation will answer many of the questions on the neo-conservatives. Who
were they? What were their goals? What positions did they hold in the administration? How
58 ‘National Security Council’ The White House Archives (http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/,
6th April 2011).
59 Anup Shah, ‘The Bush Doctrine of Pre-emptive Strikes; A Global Pax Americana’ Global Issues
(http://www.globalissues.org/article/450/the-bush-doctrine-of-pre-emptive-strikes-a-global-pax-americana,
6th April 2011).
60 Condoleezza Rice, ‘Why we Know Iraq is Lying’, The New York Times
(http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9E01E5DF1E30F930A15752C0A9659C8B63, 6th April 2011).
61 Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack (New York: Simon and Schuster,2004): 20.
62 Wright, The United Statesand Persian Gulf Security, 31.

influential were they in formulating policy? These questions will be answered in the next
section, and the public infighting between the neo-cons and the other departments of the Bush
administration will represent a strong case for the governmental politics model put forward
by Allison. The analysis of Neoconservatism as an ideology rather than an institution should
help justify my selection of the role of the neoconservatives in foreign policy decision-
making.
This section has identified the ‘players’ in the political bargaining process and allows a link
to be drawn to the governmental politics model as it identifies the players in the game, the
seats they held, the policies they pursued, and the impact they had on foreign policy. The
governmental politics model plays an important role in explaining the role of delegation by
Bush on Foreign Policy. Unlike his father, Bush had little foreign policy expertise, so it was
his prerogative to delegate and ask for advice from his principal advisors who were skilled in
the deliberative process of foreign policy.63
How well does the Governmental Politics Model explain the decision to
invade Iraq?
I shall open this section by repeating what I discussed in Chapter two. The attacks that took
place on September 11, 2001, did not in themselves put Iraq on the US government’s foreign
policy agenda. To numerous members of the Bush administration, it was an embarrassment to
the United States that Saddam Hussein had remained in power after the first Gulf War, and
thus pushed President Bush to push for active regime change in Iraq. This again, was not a
new development, as during the Clinton administration, several members of the ‘Project for
63John P. Burke, ‘The Contemporary Presidency: Condoleezza Rice as NSC Advisor: A Case Study of the
Honest Broker Role’ Presidential StudiesQuarterly 35 (2005): 554-575.

New American Century’ (PNAC), a neo-conservative think-tank, had written an open letter to
President Clinton to enunciate a new strategy to protect U.S. interests and should aim to
remove Saddam Hussein from power by using diplomatic, political and military power to do
so.64 The attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001 had, according to PNAC,
proven that the use of containment in the form of sanctions against Iraq had eroded to the
point that it was insufficient to protect the United States from acts of terrorism by foreign
perpetrators. Several members of PNAC were appointed to key positions within the
administration including Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense), Richard Armitage
(Deputy Secretary of State), Donald Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense) and Dick Cheney (Vice
President).
Thus, it is possible to provide the first link between decision making on Iraq and the
governmental politics model. In ‘Essence of Decision’, Allison underlined how the
government or group response to a problem would depend on the way the problem is
framed.65 Kingdon builds on this issue by describing such policymakers as ‘policy
entrepreneurs’ who are able to ‘…persuade decision making groups to pay attention to their
proposals by controlling the agenda of the group that is responsible for making the decision
and framing the problem in terms that make it look especially attractive or urgent’.66 Using
this concept, September 11, 2001 provided these individuals with the momentum to actively
seek to remove Saddam Hussein as part of the response to 9/11.67
As discussed briefly above, PNAC identifies its ideological roots with neo-conservatism.
According to Khong, there are four main tenets to neo-conservative foreign policy thought.
64Lloyd C. Gardner (ed.), The Long Road to Baghdad:A History of U.S. Foreign Policy from the 1970’s to the
Present (New York: The New Press, 2008): 108.
66 John Kingdon, Agendas, Alternatives,and Public Policies (New York: Harper Collins College Publishers,
1995): 179-180.
67 Martin Smith, U.S bureaucratic Politicsand the Decision to Invade Iraq, 99.

Firstly, it emphasises the moral necessity of distinguishing between the forces of ‘good’ and
‘evil’ in the international arena. This works by distinguishing between liberal democratic
regimes and tyrannical regimes and thus that morality should be tied to diplomacy. Secondly,
it stresses the importance of the maintenance of U.S. military predominance in the post-Cold
War world. To the neoconservatives, the United States should be able to enjoy both strategic
and ideological predominance as part of a ‘benevolent US hegemony’, which ‘fair minded’
nations would appreciate and happily live under.68 Thirdly, the United States should show a
greater willingness to use force to maintain its dominance and pursue its foreign policy goals.
Finally, its advocates share a deep distrust and scepticism of international law and the
institutions that abide by them. This is because neoconservatives believe that they are too
weak and are unable to bring about peace and justice effectively. 69
Having firstly identified the link between the invasion of Iraq and Allison’s governmental
politics model, and secondly defined neo-conservatism, it is now possible to look for further
comparisons.
The second link that I shall discuss relates back to the main point put forward by Allison
when describing the governmental politics model. This is that government decisions are made
as a result of bureaucratic bargaining. According to Allison, government decisions are
formulated in part by the structure or apparatus of government that allows the political
leaders who sit atop of major political organisations to form a central circle of ‘players’ in the
foreign policy decision-making process. My interpretation of Allison’s claim here is that
these ‘organisations’ represent the different departments that come together to form the
legislative bodies of government administration. In the case of the United States, these
departments can be related to the Department of Defence, the Department of State, the
68 William Kristol and Robert Kagan, ‘Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy’ Foreign Affairs 75 (1996): 18-
32.
69 Khong, Neoconservatism and the Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy, 252.

National Security Council and other smaller organisations. It is then possible to place the
leaders, which Allison refers to, at the top of these organisations. Donald Rumsfeld, as the
secretary of Defense, is the head of the Department of Defense. Colin Powell, as the
Secretary of State, is the head of the Department of State, and Condeleeza Rice, as National
Security Advisor, is the senior official of the National Security Council. It is also important to
include Vice President, Richard ‘Dick’ Cheney in this list as his influence on the President
was undeniable during the lead up to the invasion of Iraq.
However, what is more important, is what Allison refers to as the ‘bureaucratic bargaining’ of
decision making, and it is this point that Allison makes, which I shall now analyse in depth in
the form of a study of the decision making narrative that took place between the individual
departments. Although this section could be seen as too much a story-telling narrative, it
highlights the key discussions that took place between different sides of the administration
and how the interests of key actors affected negotiations on foreign policy. This together
helps to explicitly justify the choice I have made to look at Allison’s model and how it can be
applied to the decision to invade Iraq.
According to Mitchell and Massoud, the hierarchal system of government decision-making
‘...creates an environment that can lead to inter- and intra-bureaucratic conflict.’70 This can be
linked to what Allison meant by ‘bureaucratic bargaining’. This is that the decision to invade
Iraq was a result of competition and bureaucratic infighting between the different heads of
government departments that existed in the Bush administration. However, much of the
rationale for infighting can be identified by assessing the long standing policy positions that
these lead advisors maintained on Iraq. There were a number of key actors who were pushing
for war, notably Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were also signatories of the letter PNAC sent to
70 David Mitchell and Tansa George Massoud,‘Anatomy of Failure: Bush’s Decision-making Process and the
Iraq War’ Foreign Policy Analysis 5 (2009): 265-286.

President Clinton. Both of these advisors had personal misgivings about Iraq as a security
threat to the United States. According to Zunes, Cheney’s commitment to regime change in
Iraq could be described as ‘a disquieting obsession’.71 There were also other prominent
neoconservatives who supported regime change in Iraq, and were later given key positions in
the Bush administration. The general consensus between these actors was to deter any
possibility of a threat to the pre-eminent position of the United States. The September 11th
attacks changed the neoconservative’s perception of terrorism and saw it become, according
to Wright, a readily identifiable threat which was capable of striking against them within the
United States.72 However, the neoconservatives and other advocates of Iraq faced vigorous
opposition from Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and slightly less so from Deputy Secretary
of State, Richard Armitage. Powell and Armitage were both regarded as moderates in the
Bush administration. Despite agreeing with Cheney, Rumsfeld and other neoconservatives in
the administration that the US should maintain its qualitative military supremacy, they
strayed away from neoconservative ideology on the use of multilateralism in maintaining that
supremacy.73 Whilst the neoconservative philosophy tended to favour unilateralism and
‘going in alone’ on international problems, Powell and Armitage saw value in the use of
multilateralism and working with the international community on problems of international
concern. Furthermore, both disagreed on the use of ideology on foreign policy. This position
put them in direct conflict with the neoconservatives, especially Condoleezza Rice and Paul
Wolfowitz.
The first such bureaucratic infighting that took place on Iraq occurred 24 hours after 9/11 and
catalysed the growing rift in policy making between the State Department and the DoD. The
infighting that took place was in regards to the American response to the attacks. Whilst
71 Stephen Zunes,‘The United States: Belligerent Hegemon’ in Rick Fawn and Raymond Hinnebusch The Iraq
War: Causes and Consequences (Colorado: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2006): 21-47.

much of the focus was on Al Qaeda, Rumsfeld mentioned the possibility of invading Iraq,
which was met with disapproval by Powell. Powell’s position on a response was focused
more on what kind of reaction the American public would approve of. According to Powell,
the public were concerned with Al Qaeda, not Iraq.74 This intensified further when Powell
responded to an implicit comment made by Wolfowitz on regime change. Wolfowitz
believed that an American response should be about ‘ending states who sponsor terrorism’.75
Powell, however, disagreed with Wolfowitz and was more concerned with ‘just ending
terrorism’, and that an attack on Iraq could irreparably harm the coalition that the US had
with its allies after 9/11.76 The internal dispute continued between the State and Defense
Department on the scope and breadth of the campaign. There were two different positions
held by Wolfowitz and Powell. Wolfowitz wanted to pursue a range of military targets, which
after the scale of the 9/11 attacks, could seem politically feasible to the American public. On
the other hand, Powell wanted to continue to utilize the proper diplomatic initiatives that
were available in the form of political and financial sanctions. However, Powell eventually
agreed on the use of military force in Iraq, but that the use of force should remain
limited.77This bureaucratic negotiation on policy decision-making can be linked back to
Allison’s governmental politics model. In Essence of Decision, Allison writes:
‘Because their preferences and beliefs are related to the different organisations they
represent, their analyses yield conflicting recommendations. Separate responsibilities laid on
the shoulders of distinct individuals encourage differences in what each sees and judges to be
important’.78
74 Halper and Clarke, America Alone. 149.
75 Bob Woodward, Bush at War (London: Simon & Schuster,2003): 52.
76 Woodward, Bush at War, 52.
77 Halper and Clarke, America Alone, 151.

As I discussed earlier in this chapter, Allison notes that the ‘pulling and hauling’ of the
political bargaining process that takes place within the governmental politics model is
constrained by the organisational context within which policymakers represent and thus
operate. Both Powell and Wolfowitz were faced with departmental constraints that made each
of the two policy advisors stand firm on their beliefs on Iraq by putting forward
recommendations that came in direct conflict with one another. These departmental
constraints can be seen in the Defense Department, where Wolfowitz worked under Secretary
of Defense Rumsfeld, a strict supporter for the invasion of Iraq, and a fellow signatory of
PNAC’s letter to President Clinton.
On the other hand, Condoleezza Rice remained as the ‘honest broker’ between the two
departments and did not face the same organisational constraints that Powell and Wolfowitz
endured.79 Rice’s role was to scrutinize the strategic options of conducting war and,
according to Burke, provide ‘brokerage’ between Bush and Powell. Rice was held in high
regard by Bush, and was even given the role of notifying Powell that a decision had been
made to go to war with Iraq.80 The personal relationship Rice shared with Bush was not the
same for Powell and Bush. Woodward claims that Rice was the only close advisor who Bush
personally questioned on whether the U.S should go to war with Iraq.81 As National Security
Advisor, Rice was successful in her role by being able to influence and broker the
relationship between the State and Defence Department’s. However, what is more important
is that her success was attributed to the personal relationship she shared with Bush. This had
a profound impact on U.S. foreign policy in Iraq.
Furthermore, the bureaucratic infighting that took place later in the meetings on war in Iraq
continued over the issue of tactics on invasion. This was whether the US should favour
79 Burke, The Contemporary Presidency, 555.
80 Burke, The Contemporary Presidency, 561.
81 Woodward, Plan of Attack,151.

unilateralism or multilateralism. A multilateral effort would see the war in Iraq as legitimate
by the United Nations. The bureaucratic negotiations that took place would give victory to
Powell and the State Department as President Bush agreed that the US would use the UN
General Assembly Plenary session in the autumn of 2002 as the forum to make the case for
the removal of Saddam Hussein.82 The result of bureaucratic bargaining in Washington led to
the UNSC, in November 2002, to vote to implement the Security Council Resolution 1441
that offered Iraq under Saddam Hussein “...a final opportunity to comply with its
disarmament obligations” that has been set out in previous resolutions.83
Allison’s ‘basic unit of analysis’ of the governmental politics model is that “the decisions and
actions of governments...are not chosen as a solution to a problem but rather results from
compromise, conflict, and confusion of officials with diverse interests and unequal
influence...”.84 Much of this chapter has already explained the different interests of the actors
involved in the decision making process to invade Iraq, however, this next section will
analyse the unequal influence of the neoconservatives on the decision to invade Iraq, and the
increased marginalisation of Colin Powell and the Department of State.
On the use of military force in Iraq, Draper claims that Rumsfeld was able to appeal, in a way
that Powell was not able to, and used his relationship with Dick Cheney to win President
Bush’s approval to invade Iraq.85 Draper continues his assertion of Powell’s lesser influence
on the President by claiming that his favoured option of “careful, measured, diplomacy, on
subtlety and process rather than radical change” placed him as a ‘dove among hawks’ when it
82 John Davis, ‘Infighting in Washington:The Impact of Bureaucratic Politics on US Iraq Policy’, in John Davis
Presidential Policiesand the Road to the Second Iraq War: From Forty One to Forty Three (Hampshire:
Ashgate Publishing, 2006): 92-122.
83 “Resolution 1441 (2002) Adopted by the Security Council at its 4644th Meeting, on 8 November 2002”
United NationsSecurity Council (http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3dda0f634.html, 19th April 2011).
84 Allison, Essence of Decision, 294, 295.
85 Schonberg, Constructing 21st
Century U.S Foreign Policy, 193.

came to the policy making table.86 By this, he meant that Powell’s position for continued
diplomacy towards Iraq had already put him on an unequal footing with Bush and the
neoconservatives who surrounded him on the policy making table. Furthermore, as Secretary
of State, Powell was expected to involve the United Nations as part of the American tactical
strategy to gather diplomatic support for the effort against Iraq. This further stems the issue
that Powell was a victim of ‘where you stand depends on where you sit’. As Secretary of
State, it was expected that that someone who held this position would advocate for
international support. Smith explains that Powell’s position as Secretary of State put him in
an unfavourable situation as the State Department had a long standing organisational
disadvantage during times of national crisis.87 In addition to this point, where Powell sat in
the administration, especially amongst characters such as Cheney and Rice, affected his
process of gathering international support as they felt that involving the United Nations
would lead a ‘never-ending process of debate, compromise and delay’.88 However, these
compromises that were made in meetings between the different sides of the administration
would come to an agreement, as the neoconservatives understood that international
legitimacy would still need to be required.
Throughout this chapter, I have attempted to draw comparisons between Allison’s
governmental politics model and the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in March
2003. I have addressed the key issues without any major form of criticism as all of these
points are relevant and can be compared to points made by Allison. The next section will
look at criticisms of the model and what areas of analysis are left out when looking at foreign
policy decision-making.
86 Schonberg, Constructing 21st
Century U.S Foreign Policy, 193.
87 Smith, U.S bureaucratic Politicsand the Decision to Invade Iraq, 101.
88 Steven Wright, The United States and Persian Gulf Security, 173.

Does the model undermine the role of the President?
As seen from the account I have given about the decision making process that took place
preceding the invasion of Iraq, much of the detail has tended to focus on the different actors
who represented respective departments of government. Although this was accurate in the
case of Iraq, this example, as well as the wider use of the governmental politics model tends
to underestimate the power and role of the President. This underestimation, according to
White and Clarke, is in the form of mistakenly placing the President as ‘one player amongst
many’.89Although the model addresses the importance and relevance of the bureaucratic
procedures that take place in policy making, the model fails to recognise the President as a
unique player in the political bargaining ‘game’. The unique character of the President is his
responsibility to make the final decision or choice on policy, and is a feature that is constantly
overlooked by Allison.
This can be seen in President Bush. Allison’s model states that the different actors involved
in policymaking all have interests that are being imposed on foreign policy. However, what is
left out is what interests the President may also have in conducting a certain policy measure.
In this context, it was clear that Bush, unlike his predecessors, was interested in and receptive
to the idea of removing Saddam Hussein from power by using military force.90 His own
personal ambition of removing Saddam Hussein gave encouragement to his advisors –
especially the neoconservative partnership of Cheney and Rumsfeld – to impose their case.
His position gave a starting advantage to the neoconservatives and a strong disadvantage to
representatives of the State Department, notably Powell.
Secondly, the power of the President also rests on his ability to appoint and dismiss the
positions of those who are close to him. As I discussed earlier in the chapter, as President,
89 Clarke and White, An Introduction to Foreign Policy Analysis, 80.
90 Smith, U.S bureaucratic Politicsand the Decision to Invade Iraq, 100, 101.

Bush appointed 8 of the 18 (Founder’s William Kristol and Robert Kagan plus 16 other
signatories) to key positions in his administration. Although not all of these positions were
filled by neoconservatives, namely Rumsfeld and Cheney, they all shared the same position
on regime change in Iraq.91 However, fellow neoconservative’s, Elliot Abrams, John Bolton,
joined Wolfowitz and Lewis ‘Scooter’ Libby, in becoming key advisor’s to Bush. Therefore,
Bush can be seen as being directly responsible for the ascension of the neoconservative
ideology on foreign policy.
Looking further into Bush’s personal apprehension towards Iraq, the model also
underestimates the function of the ‘Bush Doctrine’ on U.S. Foreign Policy. This takes the
mistake of placing the President as ‘one amongst many’ further, and describes the various
attributes Bush imposed on U.S. Foreign Policy. The ‘Bush Doctrine’ shifted the
administration’s rhetoric towards war by rejecting containment as the traditional strategy of
defence and placed the use of pre-emption, as discussed in chapter two, at the heart of
American national defence policy.92 The threat of using pre-emption as a strategy of defence
could be seen particularly in the ‘National Security Strategy’ of 2002, where Bush warned
that the U.S. would ‘if necessary, act pre-emptively...to forestall or prevent hostile acts by our
adversaries’.93 The National Security Strategy also pinpointed Bush’s hostility towards
international multilateral institutions when it came to protecting U.S. national security:
‘While the United States will constantly strive to enlist the support of the international
community, we will not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense
91Khong , Neoconservatism and the Domestic Sources of American Foreign Policy, 258.
92 Gardner, Long Road to Baghdad, 141.
93 Patricia L. Dunmire, ‘9/11 Changed Everything: An Intertextual analysis of the Bush Doctrine’, Discourse
and Society 20 (2009): 195-222.

by acting pre-emptively against … terrorists, to prevent them from doing harm against our
people and our country.”94
The rhetoric used in the statement suggests that although Bush was an advocate for the use of
multilateral institutions on other international concerns, he did not think they were suitable in
protecting U.S security interests. This belief mirrored the opinion of advisor’s that were key
to policy-making on Iraq.
What are the criticisms of the model when applied to Iraq?
As I have mentioned throughout this chapter, it is not possible to downplay the role of
bureaucracy in foreign policy. Despite the tendency to underestimate the role of the President
in decision making, there are many comparisons that can be made by foreign policy analysts
on the link between the decision to invade Iraq and Allison’s governmental politics model.
However, there are a few criticisms that can identified, and like the rational actor model,
these are criticisms that reflect the wider use of the governmental politics model, not just on
Iraq, but on other examples of foreign policy decision making.
The first criticism I shall make is to challenge Allison’s aphorism on ‘where you stand
depends on where you sit’. Although this may be accurate when evaluating Powell’s position
as Secretary of State and Rumsfeld’s position as Secretary of Defence, it is not applicable to
Rice’s position as National Security Advisor. The close personal relationship that Rice shared
with Bush, along with her role as the ‘honest broker’ between the two departments was not
defined by her position in the government bureaucracy, but instead, by her personal
association with Bush. This can be interpreted as claiming that where you stand, does not
94 Mark Gerard Mantho,‘The Bush Doctrine: Origins, Evolution, Alternative’ Commonwealth Institute
(http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/0404mantho.pdf, 26th April 2011).

necessarily depend on where you sit. The wider criticism of the aphorism by critics such as
Krasner argue that Allison’s motto exaggerates the importance of this one factor over other
equally important concerns such as personality and ideology.95
The second criticism of the model I have identified whilst writing this chapter is the tendency
to revert to a story-telling narrative on the bureaucratic conflict that took place between
Bush’s advisors. Allison himself admits that in order to be an effective model of empirical
foreign policy analysis, the model requires vast sources of documents and information that, as
a side effect, can render the model as overwhelming to the analyst.96 Much of the chapter
focused on the numerous discussions between the higher level ‘leaders’ of the U.S.
government’s departments and thus, it is difficult to efficiently illustrate how the different
leaders interests and policy positions affected foreign policy without regressing into a tedious
narrative. This also limits the use of statistical analysis that would be used when using a
rational actor model of decision-making.
The final criticism can be linked back to the above section on the underestimation of the
President’s role in the formulation of policy. Although I have discussed the undeniable role
bureaucracy plays in foreign policy formulation, Allison makes a categorical mistake by not
including the powerful position of the President in his analysis. By placing him as ‘one
amongst many’, one cannot argue the powers that are given to the President to appoint and
dismiss policy position’s according to Bush’s personal opposition to Iraq, as one of the major
influences to policy formulation. Although Allison focuses on the ‘policy entrepreneurs’ who
make policy, he overlooks the President’s part in placing these ‘policy entrepreneurs’ in his
powerful positions and in doing so, overlooks Bush’s role in employing the numerous
neoconservative members to his administration. However, as the previous section
95 S. Krasner, ‘Are Bureaucracies Important?’ Foreign Policy 7 (1972): 159-179.
96 Graham Allison, ‘Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis’ The American Political Science Review
63 (1969): 689-718.

acknowledged, in my opinion, it would be difficult to incorporate this criticism as a critical
factor in disassociating the model with the case of Iraq.

Conclusion
The purpose of this dissertation is to explain the Bush administration’s decision to invade
Iraq using a selected field of foreign policy analysis to help me do so. In the introduction I
made the point that there had been little effective use Allison’s policy models on the decision
to invade Iraq. I have attempted to address this concern in this dissertation by applying his
models to my analysis of U.S. foreign policy on Iraq.
The different chapters I have written on assesses firstly, whether the decision by made my
Bush, as a unitary actor, to invade Iraq was rational according to the information that was
available, and secondly whether the decision was a product of bureaucratic bargaining made
by multiple influences on policy in his administration.
In my chapters, I found many similarities that can be associated between Allison’s model and
the U.S. government’s decision to invade Iraq. I was able to conclude the second chapter to
my dissertation by suggesting that attacking Iraq pre-emptively was a result of what Herbert
Simon refers to as the ‘satisficing’ of foreign policy objectives. This discards whether the
decision to invade Iraq was rational as the choice was made using false and unreliable
information and can more accurately be explained using Simon’s notion of ‘bounded
rationality’ (refer to page 20).
In the third chapter, I was also able to find numerous comparisons to Allison’s governmental
politics model by assessing the undeniable role of the State and Defense Department on
foreign policy decision making. The ‘bureaucratic bargaining’, which Allison refers to as the
‘pulling and hauling that is politics’, could be seen when examining the bureaucratic conflict
that took place firstly between Colin Powell and Paul Wolfowitz, and secondly between
Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld. This bureaucratic conflict was a result of each of the
policy advisors acting in the role of ‘players’ who sat atop their different departments in

government. Although I concluded the model with a criticism of Allison’s negligence on the
unique role of the President, I attempted to offset this mistake by Allison, by illustrating that
this criticism was a recurring problem of the policy model, and because of the incontestable
role of bureaucrats in the Bush administration, it did not have as much influence on
discarding the model as inaccurate to explain the decision to invade Iraq.
Additionally I made criticisms that focused on the over-simplification of the rational actor
model compared to the narrative nature of the governmental politics model. The
parsimonious approach of the rational actor model that I discovered helps to explain why
Allison chose to have the rational actor model as the first model of analysis before producing
the alternative governmental politics model. However, I also questioned the abstract and
general nature of the rational actor model compared to the historically contextual
governmental politics model as an approach of analysing the decision to invade Iraq. This is
because despite having to tediously recount the discussions that took place in the government
bureaucracy, it allowed me to separate the interests and preferences of different individuals in
the administration rather than assuming that these were reflected by one, unitary position as
assumed by the rational actor model. After conducting research on the decision making
process that preceded the invasion, I found it difficult to agree with Allison’s assumption of
the rational actor model that assumes that there is one set of interests, preferences and
estimates that reflects the entire U.S government, and identifies the President as the ‘rational
actor’.
This dissertation has provided one contribution to a fairly broad case study by using two
reasonably straight-forward models of analysis. However, if I were able to retake this
assignment, I would have hoped to have been able to integrate Allison’s third model on the
‘organizational behaviour’ paradigm. In chapter one, I addressed the issue of not being to

incorporate the model due to the lack of available data and information. This could affect the
neutrality of my dissertation as an additional model could have helped widen the scope of my
study, rather than focus on just two models.
Discovering differences between the interests and perceptions of policy advisors in the U.S.
government is important as it has the propensity to challenge the public perception that the
decision to invade Iraq was one that was supported by the entirety of the administration. As a
consequence, my dissertation on U.S foreign policy in Iraq has provided me with a better
understanding of the bureaucratic and diverging processes that take place in foreign policy
decision-making rather than the abstract observation I had preceding this study. By using
Allison’s models, I have made an attempt to explain the relevance of foreign policy analysis
on decision-making and U.S. foreign policy. In completing this dissertation, I can confidently
state that there is an unquestionable significance in the academic discipline of foreign policy
analysis on the influences and factors that affect foreign policy decision making. However,
there is still an opportunity to explain this link further by the wider use of Allison’s models in
the academic literature of U.S. foreign policy in Iraq.
Word Count (excluding abstract, references and bibliography: 13,939 (including 5%
department limit)

Bibliography
Front cover picture
Bush: http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01239/george-bush_1239113c.jpg
Meeting: http://www.hdtvideo.de/img/Bush-Wolfowitz.jpg
Air strike: http://warpost.blogsome.com/wp-admin/images/aaaa.75.jpg
Essence of Decision: http://vig-fp.prenhall.com/bigcovers/0321013492.jpg
Primary Sources
‘Assessing the Cost of Military Action Against Iraq: Using Desert Shield/Desert Storm as a
Basis for Estimates: An Analysis by the House Budget Committee’, House Budget
Committee (retrieved online from http://usiraq.procon.org/sourcefiles/DHBC.pdf, 24th
April 2011).
‘Duties of the Secretary of State’, U.S Department of State (retrieved online from
http://www.state.gov/secretary/115194.htm, 6th April 2011).
‘National Security Council’ The White House Archives (retrieved online from
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/, 6th April 2011).
‘National Security Strategy – September 2002’, The White House Archives (retrieved online
from http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/nsc/nss/2002/nss.pdf, 7th April
2011).
‘Resolution 661 adopted by the Security Council at its 2933rd meeting on 6th August 1990’
United Nations (http://www.fas.org/news/un/iraq/sres/sres0661.htm, 23rd April,
2011).
Resolution 1441 (2002) Adopted by the Security Council at its 4644th Meeting, on 8
November 2002” United Nations Security Council
(http://www.unhcr.org/refworld/docid/3dda0f634.html, 19th April 2011).

Dissertation in Politics - US Foreign Policy Decision Making in Iraq

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