192 CHAPTER Six ■ The IndIvIdual
and avoid negotiating about the internal structure of South Vietnam. He used enough
force, combined with generous peace terms, so that North Vietnam was faced with an
attractive peace settlement versus unpalatable alternatives— stalemate or escalation.
These elite mind- set studies were pos si ble because these par tic u lar individuals left
behind extensive written rec ords from before, during, and after they held key policy-
making positions. Since few leaders leave such a rec ord, however, our ability to empir-
ically reconstruct elite beliefs, perceptions, or operational codes is limited, as is our
inability to state with certainty their influence on a specific decision. So often, both
po liti cal scientists and historians publish interpretative biographies, based on reex-
amination of the historical rec ord, as previously classified documents become available.
Historian John Lewis Gaddis’s authorized biography of George F. Kennan, architect of
the containment doctrine discussed in Chapter 2, shows his strategic thinking, which
had such an influence in American foreign policy, while Kennan and Costigliola, using
Kennan’s own detailed personal diaries, show his fragile, often despairing personality, a
dif er ent perspective of the man and the roots of his thinking.^11 Henry Kissinger, strate-
gist and policy maker during the Nixon presidency, is the subject of a new interpretative
biography by Niall Ferguson. Refuting much of the lit er a ture that sees Kissinger as the
quin tes sen tial realist, Ferguson, drawing on Kissinger’s own private papers and the
archives, finds him an idealist, not in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson or Immanuel
Kant, but one who recognizes that realism could be paralyzing and morally vacuous.
Princi ples of human freedom and choice matter more than pragmatism.^12
For many leaders, such as Vladimir Putin, authoritative biographies do not exist,
and some leaders may try to shape their personal image for po liti cal purposes. So,
based on our knowledge at this time, is Putin a realist? an idealist? or just a pragma-
tist? (See Behind the Headlines box on p. 194–95.)
Information- Processing Mechanisms
Our images and perceptions of the world are continually bombarded by new, sometimes
overwhelming, and often discordant information. Images and belief systems, however,
are not generally changed, and almost never are they radically altered. Thus, individual
elites use, usually unconsciously, several psychological mechanisms to pro cess the
information they encounter in the world. Table 6.1 on p. 196 summarizes these mech-
anisms.
First, individuals strive for cognitive consistency, ensuring that their beliefs fit
together into a coherent whole. For example, individuals like to believe that the enemy
of an enemy is a friend, and the enemy of a friend is an enemy. Because of the tendency
to be cognitively consistent, individuals select or amplify information that supports
existing beliefs and ignore or downplay contradictory information. For example,
because both Great Britain and Argentina were friends of the United States prior to