| The dissertation is an empirical study of the State Department's planning for international security affairs during World War II. The study, which uses the literature on cognitive psychology, organization theory and bureaucratic politics, is designed to show how decision-makers (planners) deal with problems of value complexity under great uncertainty.; The thesis consists of a review of the literature on foreign policy planning, followed by an overview of the postwar planning process in the Roosevelt Administration during World War II. Particular attention is then devoted to two long case studies: one, a study of the planning for the treatment of Germany; and two, a study of the creation of an international security organization.; The case studies examine the planning process in two primary phases: (1) the conceptual phase, centered in the State Department's Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy and its successor agencies, during which the Department reached a consensus on the goals, interests, and strategies to be pursued in these areas; (2) the policy phase, which involved the interaction between the State planners and the President, other departments, and foreign governments. In the first phase, attention is given to the beliefs of the planners, as well as the "mission" of the organization as they saw it. In the second phase, the focus shifts to an analysis of Presidential power, organizational routine and bureaucratic politics.; The study concludes by offering a divergent interpretation of the role of the State Department in the origins of the Cold War, as well as in suggesting that the postwar planners' behavior more closely resembles what one would expect from a "cybernetic" theory of decision-making rather than from a rational/analytic model. The commitment of the planners to great power cooperation under the UN made them firm supporters of cooperation with the Soviet Union, and it also blinded them to evidence of US-Soviet conflict. |
