There you have a case of international dispute crisis that almost led to war and the kinds of actions that occurred during this conflict. Allison, does this interesting thing which is very emblematic of the kind of ambition this course has. In terms of applying multiple theories to the same phenomena and cutting to very different perspectives of it. And in so doing, he comes to a deeper understanding of what happened that could inform policy experts and people involved in such crises. So, Allison presents three models in particular that he thought were the prevailing models that analysts would use at the time. The first was the Rational Actor model which, as we said in a prior lecture, dealt with the Logic of Consequence. The second model concerned Organizational Process which really is a characterization of the Logic of Appropriateness, that Jim March. And then a final model was called Bureaucratic Politics and here we see kind of a natural system, a dynamic coalition kind of view. Something that we'll actually approach in more detail next week. When we use the Rational Actor Model we assume every action has a purpose or goal behind it. And we reconstruct action accordingly, thinking people are intentional. Looking at the table, we see the basic organizing concepts for the Rational Actor Model. Let me deconstruct what that means for the Cuban Missile Crisis. First, if we look at the actor, we know that the Unified National Actor is the United States in this case from Allison's perspective. The problem which motivates action is that Soviet move into Cuba with missiles and bombers requires a response. Now, we then look at as action as a rational choice, we have to break it down further according to Allison. So here, we look at the goals and objectives and the clear objective hear is security. The options and their consequences basically, concern the courses of action available, the ones they consider, and the results that could arise from them. So let's think about what those were in that case. First, one option is do nothing and there's a cost here. The Soviets outflank the early warning system, they reverses the United States' advantage of power at that point. America loses credibility in Europe, and so on. Second, we have another option, which is we can make a diplomatic response and the cost here is that the UN veto is probable because the Soviets hold a seat. Time matters and the missiles are already deployed, so we can't really wait. A third option is that we approach Castro. And the cost here is that the Soviets are in control of the missiles in Cuba, so Castro's influence is somewhat moot, it seems. The fourth option is to invade. And the cost here, are that the Soviets could parallel with an invasion in Berlin or retaliatory strike is possible with nuclear weapons. A fifth option is an airstrike and here their cost is the probability of knocking out all the nuclear weapons. It's 90 percent since they're spread out all over the island. Moreover, retaliation is highly likely and a massive strike would be needed to make that succeed, so, there is big risk there. The sixth option is a blockade. The cause of the blockade is that they could retaliate with the blockade of Berlin. The benefits are that you get extra time, you can get to think and consider that a nuclear holocaust is possible here. And last, enable engagement in the Caribbean actually favors the United States in this circumstance. So, what was the actual choice? If we did a decision tree of all these things and we looked at value maximization, it would reveal that the blockade is the solution. But why? Well, consider the decision trees earlier. If Armageddon occurred, the costs to that are so high that even if it is highly improbable, it's likely that the actors will not select that as their choice. So from a rational actor model, we can see somewhat how to interpret the series of events and the eventual decision or choice through this kind of heuristic. Now let's consider the organizational process model. In the diagram next to me here, you see a schematic of what that looks like and it's greatly based upon Allison's work in 1971, page 256 or something. So how does organizational process apply? There are multiple organizations involved here and each has their own identity and standard operating procedures by which they handle different parts of this problem that the United States is confronting. So the actors are really a constellation of loosely allied organizations, not a unitary actor. In addition, the problem isn't confronted as one thing, it's confronted as something that parsed up or cut up and parceled out to various organizations. So, here we see instead of a logic of consequence and the clear schema of rational actor model that mirrored that. We now see a logic of appropriateness and there's matching, so let's think here for a moment. If we're limited problem solvers too, the organizations have developed the capacity to do something better and by experience. So to some degree that's why rely on organizations, we queue them to do the things that they have always done. And are good at and by doing that we get something accomplish better according to this kind of theory. So let's go down the list here, what are the missions and composites that this model perceives? It's going to see that each organization's kind of quasi-independent and it's going to conduct affairs according to its own missions and interests. So this is what leads to organizational parochialism. That the organizations aren't just out for some goal that we all share but also their own interests. Action here is an organizational output and it arises when organizations act out their pre-established routines. So as I go through this list here of objectives, programs, etc., let me round them off. The organizational objective, you should think of them as a constraint that define acceptable performance. So each group is going to have their own missions, objectives, and meeting them defines whether they did it right or not. The existence of conflicting goals across these organizations or even in accomplishing the tasks leaves them to give things sequential attention, right? The organizations too rely on standard operating procedures, which means they have these built in routines that they tend to train on and they follow repeatedly. And they get good at it. Their programs are clusters of these standard operating procedures, so fighting for example, entails a series of these tasks that are coordinated. The organizations engage in uncertainty avoidance, so they kind of ignore details, have systematic tagged and conventionalized means of processing information. All of this leads to a kind of distorted information that they get. So what the CIA gets or what the Navy gets its information is distorted through their channels and their routines. They didn't performed kind of problem directed searches and this is lead by an organizational routines. And it kind of has a local neighborhood focus they focus on kind of what they're used to seeing and what is common to them. Seventh is kind of a coordination and control and it's a problem. They have to coordinate across different organizational enactments of distinct standard operating procedures and their clusters. So, how to get them to work together is always a challenge, that if the Navy does one thing in the Airforce to something else. Do they line up well or do they do them at the wrong time? And then last, what do executives do? They merely call into play different organizations and their standard operating procedures according to this model. So, I may have lost some of you here because that's quite a bit of jargon so let me give you an example. An example of this model occurring is that it took a long time for the report on sighted missiles to reach the President. The information was lost in tons of inaccurate information and the transfer took a long time because people follow standard operating procedure within their organizations. So for example, the first sighting of the missiles was on September 12 and then September 19th information suggests that the presence of the missiles they started to report it more. And in October 4th, they think the missiles are there and then there is a territory dispute between the Air Force and CIA as to which one will get to do the fly over. And then there's a mechanical delay that they have to ground the plane only to have an October 14th flight that finally confirms the presence of these missiles. And they inform the President, that's a full month that was lost there. Another example of organizational process model was when the ex com leaders are acting as organizational representatives. Each one is asked their opinion in those meetings and they respond as a representative of say the Navy or the Air Force and what not. And they state what someone, as a representative, would do so, of course, the Air Force people would say an air strike and the Navy says blockade. And there are problems with each proposal, of course and the Air Force can't guarantee success, only 90%, and Kennedy has an identity issue with Pearl Harbor. The Navy could do a blockade but they did it their way, 500 miles out, the way they had trained to do it instead of 180 miles off the coast has commander. And even after the President got angry about the fact that they were in the wrong place, that was difficult to change. So simply put, the Navy followed their standard operating procedures. So, quite a bit of the behavior in this kind of event or cycle of events was guided by organizations doing what they do. They follow their routines. The third model now is the Bureaucratic Politics Model. So how does it apply? The Bureaucratic Politics Model ask the following. Is the government composed of multiple actors with different problems and objectives? Is the choice and outcome of bargaining games that unfold over time? Was power and skill a factor that was involved? Were there compromises? What distinct or overlapping games were in play? And who were the leaders, followers, staffers and ad hoc players in all of these events? So, multiple players were there in these series of events and they, of course, had different perceptions, different priorities and they focused on distinct problems. For example, the Air Force and Army had very different views of the atomic bomb. The Air Force saw this something positive and the Army saw this something negative. Probably cause the Army has to go in after and the Air Force sees it as some kind of effective success that they had in the past, of course these are relative judgments. All these players contribute pieces to this puzzle and they're compiled over time into different arrangements and outcomes. So think of it as a loose coalition or agreements that come and go. Had different players been involved? The outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis probably would have been different had the timing of series of events that pushed consensus or the decision process, that might have also altered the outcome as well. A key feature of the Bureaucratic Politics Model are points of leverage, as well as the personalities and various interest coalitions that form to create this kind of politic. How people negotiate [INAUDIBLE] claims and floored or worked for them is how these temporary agreements arise and force a decision. So for example, let's take the actors and their stances to give you some sense of what these means concretely. So, Kennedy his weak spot was that he had sent in the military to the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and it was a fiasco, it was a disaster. So, he had parochial interest at stake which was he wanted to get reelected and he couldn't fail, and seem weak on Cuba again. The military on the other hand, wanted to reprise the Bay of Pigs and succeed. So, what arose there were in this series of events was two coalitions of sorts. One formed around the decision to go for a blockade and another that formed around an air strike. And one coalition was formed when the secretary voiced that a Holocaust was a potential result. And so, the President RFK, Robert Kennedy, his brother McNamara, Secretary of Defense and Sorensen are all for the blockade, so that's one group, right? In contrast, you have six chiefs of staff including McCone, Rush, Nitsky and Atchison and they all wanted an air strike. And this other coalition fell apart due to a lack of guarantee, the problem of retaliation. And Kennedy's concern, a parochial concern, to a great extent, of mirroring Pearl Harbor. So you have these kind of politics going on and the interests align in odd ways. So the bureaucratic's politics model assumes a variety of views and their alignments in the different camps, right? And these camps then duke it out, basically and that's what leads to the kind of result that we see.
