Presidential Risk

This book aims at gauging whether the nature of US foreign policy decision-making has changed after the Cold War as radically as a large body of literature seems to suggest, and develops a new framework to interpret presidential decision-making in foreign policy. It locates the study of risk in US foreign policy in a wider intellectual landscape that draws on contemporary debates in historiography, international relations and Presidential studies. Based on developments in the health and environment literature, the book identifies the President as the ultimate risk-manager, demonstrating how a President is called to perform a delicate balancing act between risks on the domestic/political side and risks on the strategic/international side. Every decision represents a ‘risk vs. risk trade-off,’ in which the management of one ‘target risk’ leads to the development ‘countervailing risks.’ The book applies this framework to the study three major crises in US foreign policy: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Each case-study results from substantial archival research and over twenty interviews with policymakers and academics, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Senator Bob Dole. This book is ideal for postgraduate researchers and academics in US foreign policy, foreign policy decision-making and the US Presidency as well as Departments and Institutes dealing with the study of risk in the social sciences. The case studies will also be of great use to undergraduate students.

Bringing together research on the situational determinants of risk propensity and on individual personality predispositions, Boettcher draws on findings from political science, psychology, economics, business, and sociology to develop a Risk Explanation Framework (REF) to study the 'person in the situation'. Using structured, focused comparison, he examines six foreign policy cases from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to explore how aspirations, fears, time pressures, and other factors influence risk taking. This is thus an important contribution to the study of international relations, foreign policy decision making, prospect theory and risk behavior, personality theory, and information processing.

Schroeder investigates the nuts and bolts of presidential debates as they play out on live television, shedding light on the dramatic aspects that make these political contests "must-see TV."

This book aims at gauging whether the nature of US foreign policy decision-making has changed after the Cold War as radically as a large body of literature seems to suggest, and develops a new framework to interpret presidential decision-making in foreign policy. It locates the study of risk in US foreign policy in a wider intellectual landscape that draws on contemporary debates in historiography, international relations and Presidential studies. Based on developments in the health and environment literature, the book identifies the President as the ultimate risk-manager, demonstrating how a President is called to perform a delicate balancing act between risks on the domestic/political side and risks on the strategic/international side. Every decision represents a ‘risk vs. risk trade-off,’ in which the management of one ‘target risk’ leads to the development ‘countervailing risks.’ The book applies this framework to the study three major crises in US foreign policy: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the seizure of the US Embassy in Tehran in 1979, and the massacre at Srebrenica in 1995. Each case-study results from substantial archival research and over twenty interviews with policymakers and academics, including former President Jimmy Carter and former Senator Bob Dole. This book is ideal for postgraduate researchers and academics in US foreign policy, foreign policy decision-making and the US Presidency as well as Departments and Institutes dealing with the study of risk in the social sciences. The case studies will also be of great use to undergraduate students.

Bringing together research on the situational determinants of risk propensity and on individual personality predispositions, Boettcher draws on findings from political science, psychology, economics, business, and sociology to develop a Risk Explanation Framework (REF) to study the 'person in the situation'. Using structured, focused comparison, he examines six foreign policy cases from the Truman and Eisenhower administrations to explore how aspirations, fears, time pressures, and other factors influence risk taking. This is thus an important contribution to the study of international relations, foreign policy decision making, prospect theory and risk behavior, personality theory, and information processing.

New York Times Bestseller What are the consequences if the people given control over our government have no idea how it works? "The election happened," remembers Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, then deputy secretary of the Department of Energy. "And then there was radio silence." Across all departments, similar stories were playing out: Trump appointees were few and far between; those that did show up were shockingly uninformed about the functions of their new workplace. Some even threw away the briefing books that had been prepared for them. Michael Lewis’s brilliant narrative takes us into the engine rooms of a government under attack by its own leaders. In Agriculture the funding of vital programs like food stamps and school lunches is being slashed. The Commerce Department may not have enough staff to conduct the 2020 Census properly. Over at Energy, where international nuclear risk is managed, it’s not clear there will be enough inspectors to track and locate black market uranium before terrorists do. Willful ignorance plays a role in these looming disasters. If your ambition is to maximize short-term gains without regard to the long-term cost, you are better off not knowing those costs. If you want to preserve your personal immunity to the hard problems, it’s better never to really understand those problems. There is upside to ignorance, and downside to knowledge. Knowledge makes life messier. It makes it a bit more difficult for a person who wishes to shrink the world to a worldview. If there are dangerous fools in this book, there are also heroes, unsung, of course. They are the linchpins of the system—those public servants whose knowledge, dedication, and proactivity keep the machinery running. Michael Lewis finds them, and he asks them what keeps them up at night.

This is a revised edition of Presidential power, 1980, which was originally published by Wiley in 1960. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Dead presidents play a supernatural game of Risk, the board game of world domination, and their moves are reflected in the real world. A president makes a move, an invasion takes place on Earth. Follow the exploits of real life hero Pauli Campo as he navigates the presidents’ influence, rising from meager upbringings to lead his country against a maniacal dictator to prevent the death of millions.