[…] The 2002 debate over whether to invade Iraq offers a perfect illustration of how outside organizations converge to support an interventionist president’s foreign policy. Think tanks lined up behind the president’s proposed invasion . This contemporary example of extra-governmental support for military intervention can trace its roots back to the politics of the Vietnam War. The archival record I have assembled reveals the intentional cultivation of allied organizations by the White House, and a deliberate effort to politicize think-tank influence over foreign policy. The brief narrative that follows shows how President Lyndon B. Johnson decided whether to collaborate with outside organizations, and how Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford initiated the conservative transformation of the think-tank ecosystem with a partnership that Nixon struck with the American Enterprise Institute to keep the Vietnam War going in 1970, which Ford continued. Läs artikel
