National Security through a Cockeyed Lens
Regular price
€29.99
14 days return policy
Shipping & Delivery
A01=Steve A. Yetiv
Age Group_Uncategorized
Age Group_Uncategorized
Author_Steve A. Yetiv
automatic-update
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JMR
Category=JPS
cognitive biases
COP=United States
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
eq_bestseller
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
foreign policy
Language_English
national security
PA=Available
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
softlaunch
United States
Product details
- ISBN 9781421411255
- Weight: 249g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 26 Jan 2014
- Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
- Language: English
Secure
checkout
Fast Shipping
Easy returns
"How do mental errors or cognitive biases undermine good decision making?" This is the question Steve A. Yetiv takes up in his latest foreign policy study, National Security through a Cockeyed Lens. Yetiv draws on four decades of psychological, historical, and political science research on cognitive biases to illuminate some of the key pitfalls in our leaders' decision-making processes and some of the mental errors we make in perceiving ourselves and the world. Tracing five U.S. national security episodes - the 1979 Soviet invasion and occupation of Afghanistan; the Iran-Contra affair during the Reagan administration; the rise of al-Qaeda, leading to the 9/11 attacks; the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq; and the development of U.S. energy policy - Yetiv reveals how a dozen cognitive biases have been more influential in impacting U.S. national security than commonly believed or understood.
Identifying a primary bias in each episode-disconnect of perception versus reality, tunnel vision ("focus feature"), distorted perception ("cockeyed lens"), overconfidence, and short-term thinking - Yetiv explains how each bias drove the decision-making process and what the outcomes were for the various actors. His concluding chapter examines a range of debiasing techniques, exploring how they can improve decision making.
Steve A. Yetiv is a professor of political science at Old Dominion University and author of The Absence of Grand Strategy: The United States in the Persian Gulf, 1972-2005 and Explaining Foreign Policy: U.S. Decision-Making in the Gulf Wars, both published by Johns Hopkins.
