Afghanistan, Carter, and Foreign Policy Change: The Limits of Cognitive Models

This chapter examines the cognitive approach to analyzing decision-making to assess the problems that arise in using it to explain dramatic change in foreign policy. It provides this approach in a case study of the response of the Carter administration to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. The chapter analyzes its broader theoretical shortcomings and identify a research agenda to improve the capacity of cognitive models to explain change. Cognitive models suggest that when people are confronted with over-whelmingly discrepant information, their beliefs can change dramatically. The chapter deals with a brief demonstration of the limited utility of rational actor explanations. It assesses the capacity of cognitive models to account for the anomalies that are inexplicable within the framework of rational models. In drawing on cognitive models to explain a pattern of attribution, analysts have little theoretical guidance on which bias is relevant under what sets of cognitive, motivational, and situational conditions.