Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public

By Jon Western

Book Overview

Selling Intervention and War examines the competition among foreign policy elites in the executive branch and Congress in winning the hearts and minds of the American public for military intervention. The book studies how the president and his supporters organize campaigns for public support for military action. According to Jon Western, the outcome depends upon information and propaganda advantages, media support or opposition, the degree of cohesion within the executive branch, and the duration of the crisis. Also important is whether the American public believes that military threat is credible and victory plausible. Not all such campaigns to win public support are successful; in some instances, foreign policy elites and the president and his advisors have to back off.

Western uses several modern conflicts, including the current one in Iraq, as case studies to illustrate the methods involved in selling intervention and war to the American public: the decision not to intervene in French Indochina in 1954, the choice to go into Lebanon in 1958, and the more recent military actions in Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq.

Selling Intervention and War is essential reading for scholars and students of U.S. foreign policy, international security, the military and foreign policy, and international conflict.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0801881099
• ISBN13: 9780801881091
• Release Date: June 2005
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 0.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.7" x 8.9"
• Grade Range: Postsecondary

Customer Reviews

The Hucksters of War

This excellent and highly readable summation of the political dynamics of war selling in America should be required reading for all Americans, especially all those seduced by Bush's lies and disinformation on Iraq (I was not one of them, but then, I live by the axiom that ALL politicians lie ALL the time.) Starting with the non-intervention of 1954 Vietnam and ending with the Iraq Con Job of 2003, the author tells a convincing tale of the interplay between a biased government, a sceptical electorate and a critical/accomodative media. The key ingredient in an administration getting its aggressive, warmongering ways is the control of information; the less data available to journalists, the more data the president can spin any way he likes. The public, always willing to give their elected leader the benefit of the doubt, will then begin to bend inexorably to the winds of war, never stopping to think critically about the frequently inconsistent stream of news they receive. Throw in some biasing event like 9-11 and the spin cycle job of manipulating threat imagery becomes infinitely simpler. This book admirably compiles succint examples of events that resulted in intervention and those that didn't. Sadly, a president I have had some modicum of admiration for, Eisenhower, comes off badly as a cynical and willing tool of the very military-industrial complex he decided to warn about when he left office. Perhaps as the end approached he sat back and contemplated how history books like "Selling War and Intervention" would make him look.