Knowledge-mapping American Cold War ideological and situational information: The epistemical content of United States foreign policy statements in NSC-68, Iran 1953, and the Dominican Republic 1965

The Political Science community's failure to predict, or even consider a relatively peaceful end of the Cold War has resurrected interest in ideological influence on American Foreign Policy. This raises questions about 'epistemical communities' and their effect on the creation, maintenance, and downfall of political consensus. This dissertation finds research on 'epistemical communities' is best suited for application in historical case studies because of lack of access to the bureaucratic process, political actors, and government held information in present day circumstances. However, analysts do have access to the 'epistemical content' of government released information at their immediate disposal. This data may be qualitatively analyzed for both explicit content and implicit meaning.;The theory and methodology are tested in three Cold War case studies over the period 1950 to 1965. Primary and secondary sources over are used to construct a historical context for each case study, followed by a methodological rendering of official textual material. In an evaluation section feedback questions are generated about the combination of ideological and situational material to question the extent of 'expert' transparency and completeness. In the conclusion is an assessment of this research framework's applicability to contemporary analysis of the American foreign policy decisionmaking process.;This dissertation employs a theoretical dichotomy between ideological and situational information with an artificial intelligence methodology, called 'knowledge mapping,' used in expert system construction. The methodology is based on a decision tree-like rendering of presidential administration material into a hierarchy of independent and dependent textual nodes similar to semantical grammar networks. Like those who construct expert systems, political scientists are concerned with fully modeling experts' analytical reasoning (transparency) and the logical steps in their problem solving regimen (completeness). Employment of a feedback mechanism assists in this process. Unlike expert systems participants, political operatives are not considered accessible collaborators, but non-cooperative subjects seeking to build a critical audience mass of supporters on single issue decisions by manipulating target group ideological predispositions. The utilization of government secrecy and executive privilege assist a presidential administration in implementing its favored policy while limiting the range of debate over alternative foreign policy options.