Elite Images and Post–Cold War Foreign Policy Decision- Making: The United States in Haiti

The end of the Cold War and the emerging ‘‘New World Order,’’ challenges the United States to redefine its interests, roles, and subsequent foreign policy. The complexity and urgency of post-Cold War issues, ranging from ethnic and nationalist conflicts to nuclear proliferation, immigration, and ecological problems, however, make it difficult to predict how the United States will respond to change. Studies of American Cold War foreign policy argued that America’s global, foreign policy of containment was a product of well-defined enemy, ally, and dependent images (Cottam, 1992; Farnham, 1990; Jervis, 1976; Shimko, 1991). One of the major challenges to reshaping U.S. foreign policy is the question of the revision of America’s worldview.