Political scientist whose analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis reshaped the study of foreign-policy decision-making
We now know things that Kennedy didn't know. The Soviet Union had deployed 100 tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba, and the local Soviet commander could have launched them without additional codes or commands from Moscow.
American political scientist whose 1971 book Essence of Decision revolutionized the study of foreign-policy decision-making by introducing three analytical models: rational actor, organizational process, and bureaucratic politics. As founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School (1977–1989), he built it into a world-class public-policy institution, and as Assistant Secretary of Defense under President Clinton, he led nuclear disarmament negotiations with former Soviet states, earning the Defense Department's highest civilian honor. His assessment that Kennedy believed the odds of nuclear war during the crisis were 'between 1 in 3 and even' became the empirical starting point for all subsequent scholarship on how close the world came to catastrophe.
Career Timeline
- 1968Assistant Professor, Harvard
- 1971Published Essence of Decision
- 1972Full Professor, Harvard
- 1977–1989Dean, Harvard Kennedy School
- 1993–1994U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense
- 1995–2017Director, Belfer Center
- 2017Published Destined for War