America’s Invisible Cold War Weapon
Often overlooked in analyses of U.S. foreign policy during the Cold War, religion acted as a powerful tool to direct U.S. leaders’ decisions and unite Americans in the war against the Soviets (Kirby, 2003; Grimshaw, 2011; Winsboro 2009; Gaddis 1997). Emerging out of studies of the cultural dimension of the Cold War, the “religious Cold War” has become a subject of focus for scholars in the past two decades. Dianne Kirby, a professor of history at the University of Ulster, is the primary voice in the literature surrounding religion and the Cold War. Kirby argues that ideology, specifically the religious component, is key to comprehending “perceptions of and responses to the Soviet Union,” beyond the traditional …show more content…
Religion and its relationship with politics was not “considered worthy of comment until the Bush presidency,” indicating the lack of literature surrounding religion and policy-making (Marsden, 2011). Professor of American history Andrew Preston seeks to fill this gap in scholarship with Sword of the Spirit, Shield of Faith, a book investigating religion in American diplomacy and war from the first American colonies through Ronald Reagan’s administration. Preston’s “Fourth Crusade” focuses on religion during the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, providing one of the most detailed insights into the religion-foreign policy relationship during the Cold War (2012). In addition to the aforementioned figures, Kirby also highlights Johnson, Kennedy, Reagan, and Nixon’s attitudes toward using religion as a tool in their presidential foreign policy making …show more content…
Moral psychology, a field of study regarding the ethical components of human behavior, provides a framework to analyze foreign policy decision-making directly and the psychology behind utilizing religion to unite, justify, and motivate. While correlations between religion and the Cold War are just beginning to emerge, integration of moral psychology into political science is even sparser. Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist whose prominent work includes the establishment of the social intuitionist model and the moral foundations theory, links moral psychology and politics in The Righteous Mind. This book outlines the relationship between intuitions and reasoning through the social intuitionist model, morality with the moral foundations theory, and the effects of moral diversity on group relations. Haidt calls upon Scottish philosopher David Hume’s theory that passions overrule reason in decision making to develop the social institutionalist model and argues the deficiencies in rational-based decision models of Plato, Bentham, and Kant (Haidt, 2012). Other non-rational based models for individual decision analysis exist, such as empirically-based Prospect Theory, which focuses on the individual’s environment, domain, context, and gain and losses (McDermott, 2004). However,