ABSTRACT

This chapter assesses the flexibility exhibited by selected decision-makers before and after a crisis that has been deemed a failure. It describes from other studies of foreign policy not so much in the questions that are asked about how the decision-makers react, but in the procedures used to answer them. The chapter provides brief but necessary information about the selected cases and the circumstances surrounding the decisions that were reached. In order to assess Henry Kissinger's general role as secretary of state in foreign policy, it is necessary to compare his behavior and attitudes with the behavior and attitudes of secretaries of state. The actions of the Soviet Union in Czechoslovakia, therefore, were allegedly defensive in nature, and the policies of the United States were expansionist. The coup in Czechoslovakia began when the Czechoslovak minister of the interior began to purge noncommunist police officers.