Foreign Policy Elites: Individuals Who Matter 193their war over the Falkland/Malvinas Islands in 1982, U.S. decision makers denied
the seriousness of the conflict. They did not think that its ally would go to war with
Argentina over barren islands thousands of miles from Britain’s shores. However, the
United States underestimated the strength of British public support for military action
and misjudged the precarious domestic position of the Argentinian generals, who
were trying to bolster their power by diverting attention to a popu lar external conflict.
Individuals also perceive and evaluate the world according to what they have
learned from past events. They look for details of a pres ent episode that look like those
of a past one, perhaps ignoring the impor tant differences. Such similar details are
often referred to as an evoked set. During the 1956 Suez crisis, for instance, British
prime minister Anthony Eden saw Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Nasser as
another Hitler. Eden recalled Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s failed effort to
appease Hitler with the Munich agreement in 1938 and thus believed that Nasser,
likewise, could not be appeased. Similar thinking led some American elites to describe
Iraq as another Vietnam or to see the Soviet defeat in Af ghan i stan as that country’s
Vietnam, despite critical differences.
Individual perceptions are often shaped in terms of mirror images: Whereas one
considers one’s own actions good, moral, and just, the enemy’s actions are automati-
cally found to be evil, immoral, and unjust. Mirror imaging often exacerbates con-
flicts, making it even more difficult to resolve a contentious issue.
The psychological mechanisms that we have discussed so far affect the functioning
of both individuals and small groups. But small groups themselves also have psycho-
logically based dynamics that undermine the rational model. Psychologist Irving Janis
called this dynamic groupthink. Groupthink, according to Janis, is “a mode of think-
ing that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in- group, when
members’ strivings for una nim i ty override their motivation to realistically appraise
alternative courses of action.”^13 The dynamics of the group, which include the illusion
of invulnerability and una nim i ty, excessive optimism, the belief in the group’s own
morality and the enemy’s evil, and the pressure placed on dissenters to change their
views, lead to groupthink.
During the Vietnam War, for example, a top group of U.S. decision makers, uni-
fied by bonds of friendship and loyalty, met in what they called the Tuesday lunch
group. In the aftermath of President Lyndon Johnson’s overwhelming electoral win in
1964, the group basked in self- confidence and optimism, rejecting pessimistic infor-
mation about North Vietnam’s military buildup. When information mounted about
increasing South Viet nam ese and American casualties and external stresses intensi-
fied, the group further closed ranks, its members taking solace in the security of the
group. Individuals who did not share the group’s thinking were both informally and
formally removed from the group because their prognosis that the war effort was going
badly was ignored.