This paper presents and applies empirically a computational model of the way in which bona fide high level foreign policy recommendations by U.S. policy makers are assembled. We begin by pointing out that policy making can be seen as the connection of certain strings of words to other strings. We then discuss how these connections constitute certain types of foreign policy making phenomena as such. To theorize about such connections, one first needs to specify essential features of these phenomena, and we do so for one phenomenon: bona fide recommendations. We next turn to a discussion of the theory that links together the categories by which these features are represented. That theory explains how certain strings of words are assembled into new proximate goals, missions, and tools. The theory can be modeled computationally using the programming language Scheme, and we next present that model. We conclude by presenting a run of the model, showing the close fit between actual and generated strings.

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Counterfactual reasoning is a component in much historical and political research. A proposal for exploring counterfactuals is elaborated, based on philosophical work on modal logic and possible worlds semantics. It is proposed that phenomena have essences which are unchanging in all possible worlds and that counterfactual analysis consists of making inferences about the contingent properties of these phenomena. Essential properties can be expressed as contingent relations bound, in different counterfactual situations, to different contingent properties. This methodology is applied to counterfactual explorations of a particular phenomenon: the “winnability” of high‐level United States foreign policy recommendations. In two cases, the question is asked of whether “harder line” U.S. policies regarding Vietnam would have been adopted. Using the methodology elaborated in the first half of the article, it is found that as early as 1961, recommendations for the overt use of U.S. ground combat troops could have been accepted.

Bruce Bueno de Mesquita's The War Trap (1981) is an ambitious attempt at putting forward a rational choice theory of war initiation. The book is subjected to a critical reading and found wanting on three criteria: concepts, measures, and empirical analysis.

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