Mobilizing public support for foreign policy strategies through the use of fear and propaganda.

摘要

This paper poses a question often overlooked within contemporary realist theory, what can a statesman do if the American people refuse to support a foreign policy strategy necessitated by the interests of national security? This is a particularly interesting question within a modern context as the role of public opinion in the shaping of foreign policy has increased dramatically over the past century. Moreover, due to the American people's tendency to reject foreign policy strategies pursued in the national interest and their unwillingness to sacrifice their own short-term, self-interested goals to the long-term interests of national security, the statesman will often face significant opposition when attempting to obtain public support for foreign policy strategies necessitated by the interests of national security. Therefore, this thesis contends that when the interests of national security are at stake, statesmen will often be compelled to resort to the use of propaganda in order to obtain public support for an initially prohibitive foreign policy strategy. As a further contention of this thesis, we also develop a propaganda model describing the three primary means of propaganda available to the statesman, arguing that the statesman will be unable to obtain sufficient support for their preferred foreign policy strategy should they fail to utilize all of these means of propaganda. Finally, in considering a number of cases throughout the modern period, this thesis seeks not merely to illustrate how the statesman ought to obtain public support for prohibitive foreign policy strategies; this thesis also identifies a distinct pattern through which one can recognize the consistent use of propaganda by successive American Administrations suggesting that the utilization of propaganda by American statesmen may be both necessary and predictable.