Bay Of Pigs Analysis

On April 18th, 1961, CIA paramilitary groups landed on a beach in the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. Initially, they overwhelmed the local militia, however, within a few days, they surrendered and were put into Cuban prisons. On April 21st, President John F. Kennedy acknowledged the failure of the mission and laid the blame on himself. However, I argue that by evaluating the Bay of Pigs Invasion through the lens of the cognitive approach, we will be better able to understand the failure of the mission and the reasoning behind the decision itself. The cognitive approach to studying the decision making process argues that instead of seeing states as rational and unbiased actors who can weigh the advantages and disadvantages to each decision using the information at hand, we should remember that states are made up of human beings, who are biased and therefore occasionally irrational. The decision makers in governments are swayed by their perceptions and misperception, which can lead them to making decisions that are not a result of the reality of the situation. The invasion of Iraq in 2003 is often attributed to the misperception of information and the circumstances of the decision making process. I believe that the same argument can be made for the …show more content…
He lays forth the cognitive approach model of analysis, which relies on the power of perceptions as well as the “psychological environments” of the decision makers’ beliefs and backgrounds (Rosati, 2000: 50). Their decisions will reflect these cognitive aspects as they analyze information, debate among themselves, and determine the possible outcomes. Rosati’s outline of the cognitive approach model assumes that the perceptions made by policymakers diverge from reality in a way that we can detect, which I will attempt to do in this