Diversionary Foreign Policy - Effects

Effects

Intended

Generally, the pursuit of a diversionary foreign policy may offer the leader in power four benefits, all of which increase their ability to remain in power:

  1. A successful diversionary foreign policy could increase support for the domestic regime. This in turn increases that government's time to address their internal trouble.
  2. Artificial tension created from the international conflict may justify a leaders' suppression of dissent.
  3. The war abroad could cause the population to simply be distracted from the issues that induced the original dissatisfaction with the government.
  4. The external threat may unify the country through the Rally Round the Flag Syndrome effect by creating a new out-group other than the government for the population to direct its dissatisfaction.

Negative

However, all of these benefits depend on success in the diversionary war that the government facing domestic strife incites. Failure in these international actions would backfire against the leader's initial intent. As a result, the leader would likely face more domestic strife, possibly hastening his or her loss of power Nevertheless, this possible negative effect is addressed in the Diversionary War Theory. The theory itself states that rational leaders facing a near inevitable removal from office become more likely to gamble on a risky diversionary war. If the existing dissatisfaction is prompting their removal from office, a diversionary foreign policy only leaves room for gain

Read more about this topic:  Diversionary Foreign Policy

Famous quotes containing the word effects:

    “The best road to correct reasoning is by physical science; the way to trace effects to causes is through physical science; the only corrective, therefore, of superstition is physical science.”
    —Frances Wright (1795–1852)

    “One of the effects of a safe and civilised life is an immense oversensitiveness which makes all the primary emotions somewhat disgusting. Generosity is as painful as meanness, gratitude as hateful as ingratitude.”
    —George Orwell (1903–1950)

    “Each of us, even the lowliest and most insignificant among us, was uprooted from his innermost existence by the almost constant volcanic upheavals visited upon our European soil and, as one of countless human beings, I can’t claim any special place for myself except that, as an Austrian, a Jew, writer, humanist and pacifist, I have always been precisely in those places where the effects of the thrusts were most violent.”
    —Stefan Zweig (18811942)