Perceptions of China and White House Decision-Making, 1941-1963

This book assesses and evaluates the decision-making behaviour of United States presidents and their chief advisers from Roosevelt to Kennedy pertaining to China. Seeking to dispel the notion that each administration sought policy outcomes based on a rational decision-making model, Bartley highlights the contradictions in adopted presidential decision-making processes and the nature of domestic politics as playing prejudicial and debilitating roles.

The book demonstrates that elite decision-making processes interacted with assumptions made about Chinese behaviour, interests, and attitudes only superficially and in some cases not at all. Misinformation and misperception were the natural outcomes. Reinforced by the politics of McCarthyism at home, intellectual debate on China policy was suppressed, parochialism and nuance were shunned, and information was closed off. Ultimately, a divorce between the norm of behaviour and the search for rational policy was registered in each administration.

The net result was a lasting and destructive cognitive dissonance: to fit expectations of a China reality constructed, information was ignored, overlooked, and distorted.

Offering new insights into the China policies of consecutive administrations from 1941 to 1963, Perceptions of China and White House Decision-Making, 1941-1963 will be of great interest to scholars and students of American foreign policy, security studies, and international relations.