ABSTRACT
Graham Allison's Model I, embodying the "central tradition in the social sciences," is the domain of the armchair analyst. The student of governmental policy begins with observed outcomes and reasons backwards to discover explanations for those outcomes. So the actors in the international arena are both national and rational, and they make unitary decisions to maximize value, not unlike the utilitarian concept of individual human choice. Applying this Model to the Cuban Missile Crisis, Allison constructs rational responses that may answer the major questions raised by that set of events. From the perspective of Model I, the United States (US) must have made a rational decision about how to respond to the Natural Resources Defense Council's (NRDC) test ban verification project. The US quickly granted NRDC's export license application in order to obtain unique seismological data that would supplement US intelligence activities.
