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Provided Assignment Description:

Please select a foreign policy decision related to the overarching case of the Able Archer NATO command post exercise of 1983. Your discussion should include the following elements:

• An historical description of the events surrounding the exercise and how the decision you focus on fits into the narrative.
• A literature review covering relevant peer-reviewed research. This literature review will focus on explanatory literature; literature from scholarly sources that provide multiple explanations of the decision of interest from different theoretical perspectives, reflecting the variety of explanations available from reputable academic sources. You will need to review literature specific to the decision as well as that referencing the particular decision-making models that may or may not relate specifically to the case study.
• A discussion of the appropriate theoretical framework or model for describing and explaining foreign policy decisions along with a defense of your methods and selected model.
• A causal hypothesis explaining the decision, identifying relevant independent and dependent variables.
• A thorough analysis of the decision-making process that led to the decision
• A conclusion that summarizes your findings, evaluates the success or failure of your hypothesis and a discussion of what future research is suggested by your findings.

In other words, please select a decision that was part of the Able Archer incident, explain how that decision came to be, and evaluate your explanation in the context of future research.

Research Question:

Aside from general alteration in United States foreign policy as a result of Able Archer, how did the incident affect former president Ronald Reagan’s decision to alter his approach to nuclear weapons, the possibility of nuclear war and interactions with the Soviet Union? How would changes in Raegan’s approach alter future communication and dealings with the Soviet Union during the Raegan administration, Cold War and future/current deterrence policies?

Each of these elements must be supported by evidence. Your evidence must conform to the expectations of academic writing. That means you may use peer-reviewed scholarly sources, primary sources, or contemporaneous journalic accounts from reputable news outlets. Popular or non-scholarly sources may be appropriate for some evidence and are available in print, broadcast, or on line but, in order to qualify as legitimate evidence, must be subject to professional editing and adhere to minimal standards of journalic integrity. That means the distinction between reporting and editorializing must be clearly drawn and that they are produced within an organization that provides for fact-checking separate from the process of reporting. Thus, most blogs and crowd-sourced accumulators are not legitimate popular sources. You may not use personal blogs or opinion writing, or un-reviewed web postings as evidence of anything other than the unverified opinion of the author. Under no circumstances may you use tertiary sources such as encyclopedias, Ask.com, Wikipedia, or any similar source. One of the skills you will develop and demonstrate in this project is the ability to distinguish between acceptable academic sources and unacceptable sources. If you have any questions about a source, do not hesitate to ask.

You must select a topic derived from the events surrounding the Able Archer exercises or some decision before, during, or after the exercise. Your choice is to deal with a decision made by the United States (or its leaders, bureaucratic entities, or representatives). The Yetiv book assigned for this course models this approach. You should consult it if you are unclear about the distinction between explanation and description or about the difference between explaining the policy process versus describing policy outcomes.