One of our nation's leading interpreters of national security policymaking shows how public opinion, operating in democratic political systems, shapes and constrains decisions about national security. Bruce Russett maintains that elected leaders, and their supporters and rivals, must realize that foreign policy and security policy are largely determined by domestic politics; the political leader who ignores domestic politics finds it difficult to get things done internationally, risks repudiation at the polls, and fails to exploit real or symbolic successes abroad that could reinforce his standing at home.
Russett also debunks several Washington myths: that the public is too confused and ignorant about security issues to deserve influence over national security policy; that the public is easily manipulated; that public opinion is hopelessly volatile, swinging irrationally between indifference and hysteria, hawk and dove. He shows how electoral politics encourages tough talk and tough action; how policymaking and public opinion interact; how the public balances extremes of warmongering and appeasement; and how democratic political systems are prepared to compromise their differences with other democratic countries, to avoid making hard enemies of them.
Timely, insightful, almost an advanced primer for understanding national policymaking in our most challenging and frightening sphere, this book will be of interest to policymakers, journalists, legislators, and concerned readers in general.
When Arkansas seceded from the Union in 1861, it was a thriving state. But the Civil War and Reconstruction left it reeling, impoverished, and so deeply divided that it never regained the level of prosperity it had previously enjoyed. Although most of the major battles of the war occurred elsewhere, Arkansas was critical to the Confederate war effort in the vast Trans-Mississippi region, and Arkansas soldiers served—some for the Union and more for the Confederacy—in every major theater of the war. And the war within the state was devastating. Union troops occupied various areas, citizens suffered greatly from the war’s economic disruption, and guerilla conflict and factional tensions left a bitter legacy. Reconstruction was in many ways a continuation of the war as the prewar elite fought to regain economic and political power.
In this, the fourth volume in the Histories of Arkansas series, Thomas DeBlack not only describes the major players and events in this dramatic and painful story, but also explores the experiences of ordinary people. Although the historical evidence is complex—and much of the secondary literature is extraordinarily partisan—DeBlack offers a balanced, vivid overview of the state’s most tumultuous period.
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