This book combines three Foreign Policy Analysis (FPA) models to explain both how and why the US and UK decided to invade Iraq in 2003. These three FPA models each examine a different but closely related aspect of the individual level of decision-making. Firstly, Groupthink examines how pathologies of small-group decision-making affected the processes in the US and UK decision to invade Iraq. Secondly, the Leadership Style framework examines how the individual leader’s style of exercising their leadership affected the navigation of the decision-making process. Thirdly, analogical reasoning examines how decision-makers frame their actions both in their own decision-making, and in how they present their decision to the wider public.

By achieving these objectives, “The Road to War” contributes to the field of FPA, and to our understanding of how the decision to invade Iraq was taken. The comparative use of these FPA models within a single framework means that this book responds to the calls for multifactorial research within FPA, proposing and testing a framework that provides more complex answers through adopting a multifactorial framework.

These more nuanced, complex answers then reveal more about the role of the individuals involved in the decision to invade Iraq, and how their cognition affected the process that led to the decision to invade.

Chris Featherstone is Associate Lecturer in International Relations at the University of York