Power over Rationality

To most Americans, the Gulf War symbolizes the culmination of a highly sophisticated decision-making process within the Bush administration. In this highly readable and challenging book, Hybel demonstrates the shortcomings of such a view by using cognitive models to examine how the administration defined problems, identified goals, assessed alternatives, and selected options during the seven months preceding the start of the war.

This book will prove to be a critical contribution to the understanding of the Bush administration's thinking process during the Gulf crisis and of the value of cognitive models in explaining foreign policy making.

Alex Roberto Hybel is Robert J. Lynch Associate Professor of Government at Connecticut College. He is the author of How Leaders Reason: U.S. Intervention in the Caribbean Basin and Latin America, and The Logic of Surprise in International Conflict.