标题：Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. foreign policy making: The machinery of crisis. By Asaf Siniver. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008, 252 pp. ISBN 978-0-521-89762-4
出版社：IIUM Press, International Islamic University Malaysia
摘要：In Nixon, Kissinger, and U.S. foreign policy making: The machinery of crisis, Asaf Siniver provides an excellent analysis of the structures and processes of the Nixon administration’s foreign policy making especially within the Washington Special Actions Group (WSAG) while dealing with the following four international crises: the incursion into Cambodia in Spring 1970;the Jordanian crisis in September 1970;the India-Pakistan War in December 1971;and the Arab-Israeli War in October 1973. Asaf Siniver’s book is based on four years of research and relies on the newly released collections of the de-classified National Security Council Institutional Files series at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Previously, the study on foreign policy making during the Nixon years was limited to depending on journalists. and participants. account, but this release made Asaf Siniver among the first to examine and construct a more comprehensive narrative of the making of the Nixon administration’s foreign policy during international crises. He did so by examining six components of the crisis decision-making process pertaining to distinct phases of .rational. decision-making process: How were the objectives surveyed? How were the alternative courses of action evaluated? How was the information searched? How was the new/contradictory information integrated into the process? How were the potential benefits/costs evaluated? How were the implementation and monitoring mechanisms developed? By using all these six components, even though each crisis was unique with variations in contexts of time, geography and content, some valuable causal inferences on the linkage between structure and process can be drawn (p. 7).
