اقدام به جنگ : تحليل الگوي تصميم سازي خارجي آمريكا براي حمله به عراق

COMING TO WAR; AN ANALYSIS OF THE AMERICAʹS FOREIGNDECISION-BUILDING FOR INVADING IRAQ

Although, the responsibility for cortical and axis decisions in Americaʹs foreign policy lies with the President himself, it is noteworthy that all such decisions are founded on an analytic expert base in the Stateʹs decision-making structure. The article tries to present a fairly comprehensive picture of the actors and the extent of their contribution they are making to the decision-making process in America. For this purpose, first it presents a compound model based on systems general model for understanding and analyzing the Americaʹs foreign policy, which lists five layers-input, analysis box, data, environment, and feedback- and the way they are correlated with each other. Then, it defines the applicabilities of each of these five layers on the domain of Americaʹs foreign policy and explains their positions on the Iraqi question. It follows that a major part of the actors contributing to the Stateʹs foreign behavior, from Bush himself, and his advisors, the Ministry of Defense, to internal public opinion, have, in some way, supported the invasion of Iraq plan. ln the meantime, the international environment as the most important factor is worthy of note, which was in itself ignored by the Stateʹs statesmen during the American invasion of Iraq.