Ideas,Interests,and Strategy: Bureaucratic Politics and the United States Navy

Abstract

Edward Rhodes has proposed that ideas are more important to the formulation of policy than interests are. This article challenges that proposal by examining the role of ideas and interests in the navy's strategic planning of the 1980s. It first examines the role of service unions in naval policy, finding that they were much more influential than Rhodes suggests and goes on to examine the validity of the notion of the superiority of ideas over interests in terms of realist and bureaucratic politics theory. Showing that ideas and interests are not strictly separable, it then examines these findings against the experience of the navy's Maritime Strategy, which further supports the mutual dependency of ideas and interests. This allows analysts to assess the "validity" of strategic concepts using criteria laid down by Roger Hilsman and Bernard Brodie. Successful strategy is that which pays attention to both service interests and national interests. Strategies that neglect either component will ultimately fail, either on the battlefield or bureaucratically.