Anchors against Change

by Shoon Kathleen Murray

The end of the Cold War also ended the organizing paradigm of American foreign policy since World War II: the containment of Communism. How the attitudes of opinion leaders toward American involvement abroad were affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union is critical in predicting the shape of future American foreign policy. Shoon Murray investigates how American leaders' foreign policy opinions changed once they revised their views about the Soviet Union and explores what this tells us about the sources and structure of their belief system. This book should appeal to social scientists interested in studying elite opinion as well as students of the foreign policy process and those interested in the formation of American foreign policy in the post-Cold War era.