ABSTRACT
The US behaves not only like a great power, with a full complement of planning staffs, departments, strategists, and doctrine, but also as a power new to the world with a changing and volatile domestic politics that often impinges on foreign policy, even where not intended. Foreign policy is the resultant of a multi-causal process determined by the interaction of systemic and institutional forces, operating within the context of a perceived “national role” in the particular international environment. In the 1965 Indo-Pakistan war the US maintained a low profile and worked chiefly through the medium of the United Nations. Clearly, the basic intent was to prevent the further conflagration of the crisis. If one adopts the decision-making approach in foreign policy studies, this necessarily entails paying relatively more attention to a decisional setting. Free of any pressure from such interest groups the administration could pursue its own policies towards South Asia, albeit under severe congressional restraint.
