| This study profiles and explains the strategic military policy opinions of informed Americans. It is based on surveys conducted in 1981 which collected information about a wide range of strategic policy preferences, assessments about the international security arena, assumptions about the nature and conduct of international relations, domestic policy preferences, professional training and experience, and issue competency. The research primarily focuses on alternative methods by which people structure their military policy preferences and supporting assumptions, but aggregates in appendices overall trends in strategic thinking. The analysis answers such questions as: Do informed people organize complex strategic policy choices into consistent patterns? What patterns emerge? Can we aggregate competing schools of thought? Are schools configured the way scholars who have examined military policy literature infer? Why do people accept the notions associated with one or another competing school of thought? Do well-informed individuals prefer different policies than the less well-informed? To what extent do professional training and experience play a role in shaping strategic world views?;Four hypotheses guide the investigation, bridging contributions from the disciplines of applied statistics, political science, and social psychology. The first posits the existence of strategic policy perspectives within individuals, abstract sets of cognitive rules for organizing thinking about the complex and uncertain international security arena. The second holds that some strategic policy perspectives are widely enough shared to be statistically and politically significantly, representing schools of strategic thought. The third hypothesis asserts that strategic military issue competency, whether measured by substantive knowledge levels, professional training, or policy-relevant experience, has nothing to do with membership in a particular school. Finally, the fourth hypothesis maintains that the cognitive rules structuring thinking about strategic policy issues derive from the same sources that organize thinking about domestic economic issues. The empirical evidence gathered supports all four hypotheses. |
