Crisis Decision Making: 1990-1991 Gulf War

The Monten and Bennett article titled, Models of Crisis Decision Making and the 1990-1991 Gulf War, presents three models of analysis—Presidential Dominance, Bureaucratic Politics, and Organizational Cultural Approaches. We will discuss Bureaucratic Politics and Organizational Cultural Approaches, their definitions as they logically apply to Janine Davidson’s article, Civil-Military Friction and Presidential Decision Making: Explaining the Broken Dialogue, and revel their utility and relevant applicability to this article. In understanding the congruence between the two models in the Monten and Bennett article and the argument and evidence presented in the Davidson article, we will begin with the definitions of the models. Bureaucratic …show more content…
In the First Order (Civil-Military) Friction, the Huntington model appears as evidence to describe the professional soldier and is validated by the negative example of President Johnson’s hyper-scrutiny of bombing targets in Vietnam and the positive example of George H.W. Bush’s handling of the first Gulf War. Here we see the antithesis of one another in resolving problems in crisis and gain an understanding of the president’s responsibility to see broader strategic objectives. The point illustrated best is the example of Winston Churchill demanding the military advance beyond the point where the generals declared the enemy defeated. In this order, she introduces a proposal from Elliot Cohen, who feels there should be a respectful but unequal dialogue between the military and civilian leadership (friction). This order clearly falls in the Bureaucratic model because regardless of the success or failure in her examples in the first order they are all the product of compromise, conflict, confusion of officials with diverse interests and unequal influence. The Second Order (institutional friction), Davidson applies this to presidential decision making presenting a vision of men and women in a room, each with a different desired course of action, bargaining and debating for the outcome…determined by the interest of their group. The salient example of this order is the Sudan crisis and the repeated request for options from the president. Here we see one organization (military) rebuffing the president and offering no viable solution based on their organizational goals. Undoubtedly, this fits in the Organizational Cultural model and the military’s understanding of their organization about what it does and how it does it…not how the bureaucrats see it. The Third Order (cultural