Political Science

Formulating foreign policy decisions are by far the most complex decisions that an executive head of a country has to take because the effects of any foreign policy decision have a short term and a long term component, which can result in a multitude of negative or positive outcomes. It therefore becomes extremely important that the decision making process is well balanced and logical. At the apex, any decision making body necessarily has to consist of a group of people where decisions are usually arrived at through consensus and due deliberation. However, a decision making process can get afflicted by groupthink which is defined as a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action. Such a definition obviously has immediate negative connotations though social scientists routinely complain that groupthink is a poorly specified and largely untested theory. This essay examines the effects of groupthink theory on foreign policy decision making process and argues that groupthink does not necessarily produce negative outcome by referring to two specific incidents namely The Bay of Pigs incident and the 1967 Arab-Israeli War.  

Groupthink has several distinct characteristics. A group may develop illusions of invulnerability that may catalyse unwarranted risk taking. A group over time automatically feels protective towards the decisions it evolves and this might trigger a need to rationalise warnings given by others to the groups decisions. Unquestioned belief in morality of the group may also become a focus point where rational dissent becomes stifled. A group may also resort to rationalising that those opposed to its wisdom are weak, evil, unpatriotic, biased or even stupid. Under such circumstances, every member of the group may subconsciously be under social pressure not to be disloyal to the group by voicing an opposing view and thus results in self censorship. In every group, there could be members who act as keepers of the faith who interject to preserve the groups majority view. In highly complex and difficult situations, groupthink has shown to be even more accentuated due to the high stakes involved as also the personalities of the leaders involved. Sometimes a leader who displays authoritarian traits may simply force everyone to instinctively toe the line. On the other hand, a leader who is too accommodative may allow one or more dominant subordinate a greater voice in the decision. This becomes truer when decisions requiring a nation to go to war or launch an offensive are at stake where seeming weak is not the best face to show. Groupthink also becomes heightened if most of the members of the group come from the same ethnic, religious, educational or ideological background. The more numerous the characteristics described above in a group, the greater are the chances of groupthink resulting in a disastrous decision. This truism is exemplified by the Bay of Pigs incident.

Groupthink manifested clearly in the Bay of Pigs incident, the abortive attempt spear headed by the CIA to overthrow Fidel Castro of Cuba through landing Cuban exiles in Southern Cuba with support from the U.S. government in April 1961. President Kennedy had assembled a formidable team of advisors, some the best and the brightest brains in the country and yet he took a highly questionable foreign policy decision which ended in abject failure. In fact Kennedy was later to introspect as to how could I have been so stupid as to let them go ahead. One of the variations to traditional groupthink theory is that the Kennedy team of advisors suffered from a new group syndrome. Kennedys team was fairly new and had not had the time to develop group cohesiveness leading to magnification of personal inadequacies and fears precluding an objective assessment of the problem at hand.  The decision to launch the operation was taken just three months after assuming presidency. Kennedy flush with electoral victory was mindful of the right wing community that wished the President to act tough on Communists especially those flourishing in Americas backyard. Kennedys own need in this regard percolated to his advisors. To maintain secrecy, the entire decision making processes were limited to a very small group keeping the governments Latin America experts out of the loop. Secretary of Defence Robert Mc Namara was too involved in Pentagon administrative matters to pay close attention to this primarily CIA driven plan. The core group that did deliberate on the plan was a homogenous group of almost same educational, religious and ethnic backgrounds and were mostly males. The group also displayed loyalty to the Presidents idea and rejected contrarians views to the plan as articulated by Senator Fullbright in one of the meetings (Hart, Stern,  Sundelius, p. 174). When the plan was put to an informal voice vote, Kennedy himself interjected any member who tried to put forth a more nuanced view of the operation. When that happened, most members of the group naturally voted for the motion so as to conform to the groups thinking and not be singled out as the traitor or the undesirable. Kennedy also gave the CIA greater voice in meetings that subconsciously reinforced the acceptability of the plan. The Joint Chiefs of Staff also did not voice any real opposition to the plan probably not wanting to counter the CIA and what increasingly seemed to be the Presidents idea.Thus the decision to embark on the plan got reinforced over time to a limit that not one dissenting voice was recorded from the entire group when the final decision was being made. This is one example where groupthink led to disastrous results.

On the other hand the Arab-Israeli war of 1967 shows how groupthink can produce positive results. The dilatory statements of Egyptian President Nasser and the equally alarming posturing of Arab states surrounding Israel prior to the 1967 Arab-Israeli War strengthened the belief of Israelis that the Arab states were bent on destroying Israel. The closure of Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping by Egypt and the massing of Arab forces on Israels borders forced a groupthink amongst the Israeli planners that Israel needed to carry out a pre-emptive strike to neutralise the Arab threat. Within the Israeli group, the forceful voice of Yitzhak Rabin, the Commander in Chief rallied the rest of the group into a high risk option of striking pre-emptively. The political members wanted the Israeli Defence Forces to wait for the outcome of a meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Eban and President Johnson of the United States. Rabin explains in his memoirs that the Israeli Armed forces view was that what is the point of waiting any longer Weve already forfeited the advantage of strategic surprise. If we continue to wait, we run the risk of losing even the advantage of tactical surprise. That would be the worst situation imaginable. What are we waiting for. The political members of the group were not easily swayed by this exhortation and a voice vote ended in a stalemate. Rabin persisted and finally won the argument leading to the Six Day war which was a stupendous success for the Israelis in the short term. This was a classical example of groupthink as other members of the Israeli cabinet who were sceptical of possible Egyptian attack nonetheless went through with the decision lest they were labelled as weak, unpatriotic or indecisive. Thus in this case groupthink produced positive results while in the Bay of Pigs case groupthink resulted in a disaster.

In conclusion, it can emphasised that foreign policy decision making process whether in America or Israel or elsewhere in the world necessarily has to be taken by the executive where there always will exist a group that takes the decision. Group dynamics posit that dangers posed by groupthink will remain wherein decisions may be taken without proper evaluation of all options. In the Bay of Pigs case, the group deciding was relatively new, lacked cohesion and was dominated by one member, the CIA with others deferring to the perceived approval of the President. This led the Kennedy administration to launch the operation with disastrous results. In the case of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, there was considerable opposition to launching the war by the political members who wished to exhaust all political options before deciding to go to war. In this case, groupthink was forced by a forceful personality, Yitzhak Rabin who had the support of the entire Israeli Armed Forces behind him. Groupthink here was more balanced because the Israeli Armed forces had completely analysed the adversarys strengths and weaknesses and had a well developed plan unlike the Bay of Pigs incident where the Joint Chiefs of Staff had played only a marginal role leaving operational planning in the hands of the CIA. Groupthink can therefore result in positive or negative outcomes depending upon how well the group is able to resolve its inner dynamics and arrive at a more considered decision before implementing the same.