In the meantime, Washington’s rallying cry now seems to be: “Wait for the spring offensive!” In translation that means: wait for the Iraqi army to get enough newly American-trained and -armed troops into action to make a move on Mosul. The Kurds still keep “ winning” against the militants of IS in the city of Kobani on the Turkish border without having “won.” Key issues of the previous American occupation of the country- corruption, representative government, oil revenue-sharing-remain largely unresolved. Meanwhile, Shia militias are using the conflict for the ethnic cleansing of Sunnis and Iran has become an ever-more significant player in Iraq’s affairs. American troops are tiptoeing closer to combat (assuming you don’t count defensive operations, getting mortared and flying ground attack helicopters as “combat”), even as they act like archaeologists of America’s warring past, exploring the ruins of abandoned US bases. It began in August as a humanitarian intervention, morphed into a campaign to protect Americans in-country, became a plan to defend the Kurds, followed by a full-on crusade to defeat the new Islamic State (IS, a k a ISIS, a k a ISIL), and then… well, something in Syria to be determined at a later date.Īt the moment, Iraq War 3.0 simply drones on, part bombing campaign, part mission to train the collapsed army the US military created for Iraq War 2.0, all amid a miasma of incoherent mainstream media coverage. In the simplest terms, foreign policy analysis is the study of the process, effects, causes or outputs of foreign policy decision-making in either a comparative or case-specific manner.The current American war in Iraq is a struggle in search of a goal.

The underlying, often implicit argument is that the source of international politics and change in international politics is human beings, acting individually or in groups.

Foreign policy analysis, as a field of study, is characterized by its actor-specific focus. By emphasizing accessibility of content for scholars of all perspectives and approaches in the editorial and review process, Foreign Policy Analysis serves as a source for efforts at theoretical and methodological integration and deepening the conceptual debates throughout this rich and complex academic research tradition. Reflecting the diverse, comparative and multidisciplinary nature of the field, Foreign Policy Analysis provides an open forum for research publication that enhances the communication of concepts and ideas across theoretical, methodological, geographical and disciplinary boundaries. The pertinent electoral institutions therefore present varying opportunities (or, conversely, constraints) for democratic officials to override their constituents' sentiments when they are so inclined. Conversely, we point out that multiparty competition in proportional representation systems can reduce electoral disproportionality without sacrificing responsiveness to public opinion. However, contrary to conventional attributions of a greater incentive motivating the parties and candidates in predominantly two-party systems with majority/plurality decision rules to respond to national public opinion, we suggest mitigating factors that tend to reduce such responsiveness. We argue that electoral institutions can heighten or lessen the impact of public opinion on democratic officials' concerns for their reelection prospects, thus pointing to an important dimension of variation that has been overlooked in the democratic peace literature. Several democracies, however, recently joined Operation Iraqi Freedom despite substantial and even overwhelming domestic opposition. Democratic officials, unlike their autocratic counterparts, are wary of going to war because they expect to pay an electoral penalty for fighting even successful wars. A central logic of the democratic peace theory claims that public opinion acts as a powerful restraint against war.

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