Decision-making Middle And U.s. Foreign Policy Making

This dissertation tries to analyze the U. S. foreign policy toward China during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, from the angle of middle-level decision-makers. The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine the roles of middle-level decision-makers in shaping the U. S. China policy during the years of 1961-1968, as well as to decode the relationship between the middle-level decision-makers and the Kennedy and Johnson Administration's foreign policy toward China. A basic hypothesis of this dissertation is that the middle-level officials as an ingredient part of the decision-making system, influence the top-level decision-makers in decision choice, and thus play a significant role in the process of shaping the U. S. foreign policy toward China.The concept of"middle-level decision-makers"is originated from the conceptualization of the foreign policy-making process as a series of concentric circles suggested by Roger Hilsman The innermost circle in the policy-making process consists of the president, his immediate personal advisers, and such important political appointees as the secretaries of state and defense, etc. The most important decisions involving the fate of the nation are made, in principle, at this level. The second circle, which is the middle-level circle, contains the officials of various department and agencies of the executive branch. If we exclude from that circle the politically appointed agency heads, whom we have already placed in the innermost circle, we can think of the individuals within the second circle as the career bureaucrats and the political appointees in the government. Their primary task is to provide top-level decision-makers with the information necessary for making decisions, and decision choices, and then carry out the final decisions. The outermost circle is what Hilsman referred to as the"public one", consisting of Congress, domestic interest groups, public opinion, and the mass media. Collectively, the groups and individuals at this level are least involved in the foreign policy process.When analyzing the middle-level decision-makers and U. S. foreign policy toward China, it is necessary to take the individuals for example. The middle-level officials in the State Department and the staff members of National Security Council may be the focused individuals during Kennedy and Johnson years. This period is a connecting link between the preceding containment period of Eisenhower Administration and the following amelioration period of Nixon Administration, thus it provides a stage for analyzing the creative roles of the middle-level decision-makers. It is the 1960s that witnessed the middle-level decision-makers'roles in the U. S. Foreign policy toward China.To decode the middle-level decision-makers'roles, the dissertation takes several basic cases to make the research. Their perceptions of Sino-Soviet conflicts, Taiwan issue, and China's U. N. representation rights, gave decisive reference to the top-level decision-makers. By relaxing the trade and travel policy toward China, the middle-level decision-makers in Johnson Administration tried to alleviate the tense relations between U. S. and China from"containment"to"containment without isolation". Although by the end of Johnson Administration, U. S. policy toward China was not changed essentially, it provides the possibility for Nixon Administration to ameliorate U. S. China policy.Analyzing the middle-level decision-makers'role in the making of U. S. policy toward China, will make sense to probe into the foreign policy decision-making process of Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, as well as the outline and schema of U. S. decision-making mechanism, so as to clarify and illustrate the rule of American foreign policy making.