Description
Book SynopsisPresidents and their advisors consistently seek to improve the management of foreign policy decision processes. This book analyses administrations from Kennedy to Nixon as they sought to strike a balance between the personal style of the president and the need for a strong interagency structure that could systematically evaluate policy options.
Trade Review“This work is an important scholarly contribution. Newmann carefully reconstructs, with meticulous attention to archival sources, case studies of decision making on China policy across the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon presidencies. Yet there is more: he explores how the evolving decision-making structures and processes of each of these presidents, and the presidential actors themselves, affected policy outcomes. His overall analysis of a dynamic, ‘evolutionary-balanced’ model for understanding presidential choice is intriguing and worthy of attention.”
—John P. Burke, John G. McCullough Professor of Political Science Emeritus, University of Vermont “In
Isolation and Engagement, William Newmann provides us with invaluable insight into the continual adaptation in the processes of presidential decision making, changes that are driven by the interaction of institutional political forces and idiosyncratic aspects of each president.”
—George C. Edwards III, University Distinguished Professor and Jordan Chair Emeritus, Texas AM University, and Distinguished Fellow, University of Oxford
Table of Contents
- List of Figures and Tables
- Acknowledgments
- Note on Chinese Transliteration and Sources
- Chapter One: Introduction
- Chapter Two: The Evolution-Balance Model
- Chapter Three: John F. Kennedy: “A Livelier Sense of Duty”
- Chapter Four: Kennedy and China
- Chapter Five: Lyndon B. Johnson: “Energy in the Executive”
- Chapter Six: Johnson and China
- Chapter Seven: Richard M. Nixon: “If Men Were Angels…”
- Chapter Eight: Nixon and China
- Chapter Nine: Conclusion
