The Insiders’ Game

Book excerpt: "One of the most important virtues of a democracy is that its leaders are accountable to the public, which presumably makes democracies more cautious about using military force and, ultimately, more peaceful. Yet how, then, are some leaders able to continue or even escalate wars in the face of strong or rising popular opposition, as Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon did in the later stages of the Vietnam War, and Barack Obama did in Afghanistan? In this book, Saunders argues that constraints on democratic leaders' decisions about war come not from the public but from elites, making war an "insiders' game." Saunders sees elites as a disparate group that can shape not only the decision about whether to enter a war but also how wars unfold. The insiders' game can sometimes result in elites effectively colluding with leaders in escalating a war with dim prospects; it can also occasionally lead to de-escalation or the end of a conflict. Saunders focuses first on the importance of elite influence (rather than public accountability) and on how the preferences of elites differ from those of the public. She homes in on three main groups of elites that shape almost every war-related decision democratic leaders make: legislators, military leaders, and high-level bureaucrats and advisers. She then goes on to look at how these dynamics have played out historically, looking at the cases of Lebanon, Afghanistan, Korea, and Vietnam, showing that leaders' political bargaining with elites is key to understanding the use of force in American foreign policy"--