Western, Jon 1963–

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Western, Jon 1963–

(Jon W. Western)

PERSONAL:

Born 1963. Education: Macalester College, B.A., 1984; University of Michigan, M.P.P., 1998; Columbia University, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Mount Holyoke College, 50 College St., South Hadley, MA 01075. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Educator and writer. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Washington, DC, country analyst for Bosnia, Croatia, and Poland, 1990-93; School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, NY, Andrew Wellington Cordier Teaching Fellow, 1996-98; United States Institute of Peace, Washington, DC, Jennings Randolph Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellow, 1998-99, project coordinator of Dayton Upgrade Project, 2000; human rights consultant, 1998-99; George Washington University, Washington, DC, adjunct assistant professor, 2000; Five College assistant professor of international relations, Mount Holyoke Colleges and the Five Colleges, Inc., South Hadley, MA, 2000-06, associate professor of international relations, 2006—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Special Achievement Award, Congressional Research Service, 1990; Meritorious Honor Award for Outstanding Polish Analysis, U.S. Department of State, 1992; Superior Honor Award for Outstanding Analysis on the Conflict in the Former Yugoslavia, U.S. Department of State, 1992 and 1993; Columbia University President's fellow, 1993-2000; Andrew Wellington Cordier Teaching fellow, 1996-98; Peace Scholar Dissertation Fellowship, United States Institute of Peace, 1998-99. Also recipient of faculty grants and research prizes.

WRITINGS:

Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2005.

Contributor to books, including American Foreign Policy in a Globalized World, edited by David P. Forsythe, Patrice C. McMahon, and Andrew Wedeman, Routledge, 2006; and Gambling on Humanitarian Intervention: Moral Hazard, Rebellion and Civil War, edited by Alan Kuperman and Timothy Crawford, Routledge, 2007. Contributor to periodicals, including International Security, Security Studies, Ethnopolitics, Harvard International Review, and Global Dialogue.

SIDELIGHTS:

Jon Western is a scholar whose teaching and research interests focus on U.S. foreign policy, military intervention, human rights and humanitarian affairs, and the Balkans. Western teaches courses such as "American Foreign Policy," "American Hegemony and Global Politics in the 21st Century," "The United States and the Promotion of Democracy and Human Rights," and "Propaganda and War."

In his book Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, Western examines how foreign policy elites compete in the executive branch and the U.S. Congress in their efforts to convince the American public to support military intervention. Looking at organized campaigns for public support of military action, the author analyzes how outcome depends largely on information and propaganda advantages, media support or opposition, the cohesiveness of the executive branch, and the duration of the crisis.

"This book is a study of the politics behind American decisions on the use of force," the author writes in the preface to the book. "We frequently hear claims that politics stops at the water's edge—or at least that it is supposed to—especially in matters concerning the use of force. This book argues that such claims are a myth." The author went on to write in the preface: "Although all American leaders pledge that U.S. troops will only be used in defense of American ‘national interests’ and in ways consistent with ‘American values,’ the empirical record shows wide variation in the use and meanings of these terms."

In his book, the author also shows how not all campaigns win public support. The author uses modern conflicts as case studies, including recent military actions in Grenada, Somalia, Bosnia, and Iraq. Paul Brace, writing in the Political Science Quarterly, referred to Selling Intervention and War as "timely and well-written," adding later in the same review: "This book is carefully organized and thoughtfully written, and its ideas should be accessible to a wide readership."

Writing in the book's preface, the author commented on the belief that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in the United States fundamentally altered how the United States should and would conduct foreign policy. The author goes on to note that he performed much of the research for his book before the attacks, giving him an "interesting vantage point" to review the Bush administration's efforts in selling war. "I concluded that much about the campaign for war on Iraq was not new," the author writes. "The hardline views on Iraq and intense efforts to sell the war on Iraq long predate the events of September 11, 2001. To be sure … the Bush administration used some extraordinary measures to gain public and political support, but in many respects that campaign is only the latest chapter in a long historical pattern of selling war."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Western, Jon, Selling Intervention and War: The Presidency, the Media, and the American Public, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 2005.