Cleavages Among Foreign Policy Elites1. Since public opinion on foreign policy is mushy and permissive, the opinion of political elites is very important.
i. The political elite consists of those people with administrative positions in the foreign policy field and the members and staffs of the key congressional committees concerned with foreign affairs and various private organizations that help shape elite opinion, as well as the influential columnists and editorial writers of the national press.
2. The beliefs of such elites can be called worldviews, comprehensive mental pictures of the major issues facing the United States today.
i. One of the most influential worldviews was written by George F. Kennan and basically led to the massive arms race against the Soviet Union in the Cold War.
ii. A predominant worldview is important because it prevails over other views.
3. There have been three general worldviews since the 1920s: isolationism, which referred to the U.S.’s ignorance of world affairs as a result of its unhappy experiences during World War I; antiappeasement (also called containment) which was the result of World War II, after Adolf Hitler nearly took over Europe after being repeatedly appeased, and basically killed isolationism (especially the Pearl Harbor bombing); and disengagement, which resulted from the bad Vietnam experience and the new younger political elite that was rising up and desired a less active involvement in world affairs.
i. Vietnam continues to color discussions of foreign policy, and every active step into international hostilities “could turn into another Vietnam,” critics say.
