Oskar Morgenstern, Decision Theory and the Department (1960)

Oskar Morgenstern’s journal article argues that effective foreign policy requires institutional support for specialized training, basic research, and the systematic development of decision theory. Addressing the operation of the United States State Department, he moves from its responsibility for policy formation through deficiencies in diplomatic preparation to the potential contribution of game theory and organizational reform. His central concern is not whether individual officials possess intelligence or education, but whether the Department equips them to formulate alternatives, anticipate conflicts, and negotiate with adequate strategic preparation.

Morgenstern first challenges the claim that the State Department merely executes policies determined by the President. Presidential authority does not eliminate the influence exercised by those who select information, construct alternatives, and implement decisions:

The State Department, by laying facts before the President, by making and presenting alternative plans to him and in gathering, collecting, sifting, and analyzing the facts, clearly must exercise some influence on the foreign policy of the United States.

This account locates policymaking within administrative practices rather than exclusively in formal authority. The Department’s responsibility follows from its influence over what the President knows, which choices reach him, and how those choices become action. Improving its intellectual resources is therefore a substantive requirement of foreign policy, not simply an internal personnel matter.

The article next distinguishes the presence of talented employees from the existence of adequate institutional preparation. Morgenstern criticizes the Department’s limited support for basic research and its lack of extensive advanced training comparable to that provided by the military. Foreign-language competence supplies a revealing example. The reported figure that sixty percent of Foreign Service officers know at least one foreign language also means that forty percent do not; moreover, the aggregate conceals whether officers know the languages relevant to their assignments. His objection concerns both deficient preparation and the misleading reassurance offered by statistics detached from operational needs.

The appointment of Ambassador Eaton as chief negotiator at the Geneva disarmament discussions sharpens this argument. Morgenstern questions the suitability of a negotiator whom he describes as lacking experience in both diplomacy and weaponry, while explicitly declining to impugn Eaton’s intelligence or general education. He also acknowledges that he does not know whether the Department selected him. The case nevertheless illustrates a broader problem of assigning responsibility without the relevant expertise:

It is less a matter of the individuals concerned than of the prevailing system; and it is a change in the system which is required—a very difficult thing to achieve.

Reform, in this account, requires initiative from leadership. Personal distinction cannot compensate reliably for an organization that leaves preparation and appointments to haphazard arrangements.

The article’s central methodological section rejects the dismissal of scientific approaches on the ground that international relations resist neat calculation. Morgenstern does not claim that game theory already supplies ready-made diplomatic answers. Instead, he argues that a theory’s practical adequacy cannot be settled before serious efforts at application, particularly because application and theoretical development often proceed together. Diplomats already seek to influence and anticipate human behavior; the relevant question is whether more refined methods can improve that existing activity.

The applications are never trivial and may not always succeed, but they deserve to be studied with the utmost sincerity.

This qualification matters to the argument. Morgenstern’s confidence in strategic analysis is accompanied by an acknowledgment of difficulty and possible failure. He presents logical and mathematical formulation as a way to make previously resistant problems of bargaining and conflict tractable, not as a guarantee of immediate solutions. An early benefit might be a changed manner of thinking, even before concrete results emerge.

His research proposal accordingly goes beyond borrowing techniques already developed elsewhere:

The proper approach is to develop methods of particular interest in the field of foreign policy and then to use them.

The Department should support sustained basic research directed toward its own problems. Military applications of game theory demonstrate promise, but political applications require their own systematic effort, considerable time, and demanding intellectual work.

Morgenstern tests the practical meaning of this proposal through questions about Soviet submarines in the Mediterranean and open oceans. At what point should the United States respond, by what means, and with what pressure on countries supplying bases? What limits should govern submarines following carrier fleets? These questions do not establish particular answers; they expose the need for advance plans connecting possible developments to alternative responses.

Our foreign policy has to provide the framework for decisions to deal with any possible or conceivable military action.

The distinction between political frameworks and military execution completes the argument begun with presidential authority: decisions depend on prior arrangements that structure what action becomes possible. Morgenstern closes by resisting the unfair scapegoating of the Department while calling for systematic organizational self-examination. The article’s enduring relevance lies in its conception of analytical capacity as an institutional achievement. Better foreign policy requires not simply gifted diplomats, but sustained research, relevant expertise, and organizations capable of preparing choices before events force them.