Systematic Bias in U.S. Foreign Affairs Reporting

To defend the American foreign policy establishment in 1971 is like defending Louis XVI in 1792. To come to the defense of that establishment in the summer of 1971, post-Pentagon Papers, when its faults are hanging out for all the world to see, may even seem more stupid than foolhardy. Yet I propose to do something akin to that-not only because stomping on the establishment one more time is too easy by half, but because I think Professor; Appleton's diagnosis of the reporting problem within the foreign policy-making structure is faulty. And it follows that his proposal, built on that diagnosis, is, in my view, flawed. There is perhaps an unfair advantage in commenting, postPentagon Papers, on something written before their publication. Indeed, these Papers are such an important landmark for foreign policy scholars that we might contemplate an automotive-type recall of earlier scholarly papers for revision (Daniel Ellsberg, the Ralph Nader of foreign policy, has implicitly suggested such a recall in his obviously informed attack on the quagmire hypothesis; Ellsberg, 1971). But I do not base my comments

Foreign policy · Political science · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law · Psychology

• Why Bureaucrats Play Games

  Morton H Halperin•Foreign Policy•1971

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• Foreign Affairs Analysis

  E Raymond Platig•International Studies Quarterly•1969

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