Steven A. Yetiv faces a daunting task in this case study of the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War: applying and reconciling multiple approaches to foreign policy analysis in a single volume. He also hopes to clarify the historical record regarding President George H. W. Bush's performance in the diplomatic and military clash. While this ambitious study advances our understanding in both respects, it demonstrates how much further the field of foreign policy analysis must still progress to see clearly within the “black box” of state decision making.

The book self-consciously builds upon Graham Allison's Essence of Decision (1971), which led a counteroffensive in the scholarly literature against the prevailing neorealism of the early Cold War and its analytic offspring, the rational actor model (RAM) of foreign policy behavior. Like Allison, Yetiv is determined to reveal the limitations of the RAM and to integrate the impact of domestic pressures on policy choices. His study expands on Allison's study, which examined the Cuban Missile Crisis, by looking beyond bureaucratic behavior to possible electoral calculations and psychological factors (cognitive processing and “groupthink”).

Yetiv generally succeeds in identifying the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches as they apply to the Gulf War. He finds the RAM's emphasis on system-level cost–benefit analysis useful in explaining the U.S. government's initial evaluation of Iraq's threat to the Persian Gulf. Also in keeping with the rational model, he denotes the structural obstacles, inherent to the anarchic state system, that prevented the two sides from establishing mutual trust through strategic interactions.

The study finds these insights necessary, but not sufficient, in making sense of U.S. decisions leading up to the war: “Nonrational” forces also shaped the White House's increasingly strident posture during this period. Specifically, President Bush was swayed by domestic political factors, including his need to deflect attention from the budget deficit and enhance his image as a visionary leader at the dawn of the New World Order. Bush's strong presence within his inner circle of advisers discouraged consideration of alternative solutions, a pattern first explicated in Irving Janis's Groupthink (1982). In addition, the president's frequent depiction of Saddam Hussein as a present-day Adolph Hitler is described as a common form of perceptual “satisficing.” These and other findings are derived from a variety of sources, including interviews conducted between 1996 and 1999 with many of the cabinet-level U.S. officials engaged in the crisis. While gaining such access to key decision makers is impressive, however, neither the interview methods nor a classification of the responses is disclosed in the analysis, which consequently takes on an anecdotal quality. National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft, for example, tells Yetiv that Bush “felt strongly about reversing the invasion, and the real question then became how it would be done” (p. 133). Colin Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recalls being “surprised” (p. 144) by the lack of internal debate over Bush's statement that Iraq's occupation of Kuwait “would not stand.” While these are revealing comments, their presentation in the absence of a systematic research design does not yield persuasive tests of the various hypotheses concerning rational action, institutional biases, cognitive dysfunctions, or other behavioral patterns.

The presentation of other evidence could also be more rigorous. Yetiv relies too heavily, and uncritically, on memoirs and quotations from media reports and documentaries. The application of cognitive theory focuses too narrowly on analogical reasoning, and more primary sources would bolster the testing of the government- and domestic-politics models. The analysis is further clouded by unsubstantiated assertions. Noting that Congress historically follows the president's lead in matters of war and peace, for example, Yetiv suggests that the January 1991 war resolutions approved by both chambers were superfluous, as “a negative vote most probably would not have stopped the president from launching war” (p. 184). This may well be true, but what is the author's basis for this claim?

To his credit, Yetiv acknowledges that his reach extends broadly, and at times uneasily, across the many frontiers of foreign policy analysis, and he concedes that his findings often contradict his own expectations. Indeed, despite the study's overarching goal of cutting RAM down to size, the historical record is often consistent with rationalist expectations: a direct threat to regional security in a strategically vital area, a strong leader who forces consensus in his inner circle while suppressing bureaucratic rivalries, the dismissing of a skeptical public opinion and Congress, and a favorable outcome that resembles the cost–benefit calculations of decision makers. Even the vilification of Saddam, whether due to satisficing or deliberate social construction, may be considered rational action under the circumstances.

Still, Yetiv finds much of this record “nonrational,” and he is on the safest ground when examining the president's domestic political benefits to be gained from forceful action against Saddam and his refusal to consider alternative responses. This assertion raises another puzzle, however: nonrational behavior producing a “nonnegative” outcome (p. 198) in the form of Kuwait's liberation. The author attributes this to “mitigating” factors, such as unusually energetic leadership, ample resources and allies, and a challenge that was easily overcome. Thus, the book produces admittedly mixed results, “a complex continuum of behaviors, some rational and some not, some quasi-rational and some simply ambiguous or opaque” (p. 206).

While such anomalies are an inescapable part of political life, the roots of this paradox may be found in the case selection. It is widely accepted that the management of national security issues produces governmental behaviors that are more consistent with realist expectations than decision making in routine situations or on matters of “low politics.” This distinction was made decades ago by Stephen Krasner, whose book Defending the National Interest (1978) found a pattern of autonomous state action in U.S. national security policy. More recently, Amy Zegart's Designed to Fail (1999) provided a new twist by highlighting differential institutional dynamics in the creation of domestic and national security agencies, respectively.

Yetiv properly concludes that future research should place issue domain at the center of foreign policy analysis. And he justifiably states that his study of the Persian Gulf, despite its contingent findings and implications, can still be useful in generating “heuristic devices” for analysts and students (p. 215). Whether or not Explaining Foreign Policy ultimately takes its place beside Essence of Decision as a seminal work in this field, the book serves the same function in challenging analysts to question conventional models and accommodate complexity in the scholarly study of foreign policy.