Elite Images and Foreign Policy Choices: Krishna Menon's View of the World

FOREIGN POLICY may be viewed as a system of action. Like all social systems it comprises an environment, a group of actors, structures through which the units of behaviour respond to challenges and initiate decisions, and processes which sustain or alter the flow of demands and products of the system as a whole. It is possible-indeed it is necessary for rigorous analysis of foreign policy--to explore the content and interrelations of these key variables: environment, actors, structures, and processes, all placed within a framework of demands on policy or inputs, and products of policy or outputs. The complexity and yet comparability of foreign policy behaviour emerge from a brief exposition of the construct of a foreign policy system, universally valid in time and space. This will be elaborated and explored in depth elsewhere.' The essentials may be noted here in order to relate the empirical data of the writer's dialogue with Krishna Menon2 to a theoretical frame of reference. This will not only enrich the value of his recollections and reflections as a primary source but will also enable us, through an analysis of one facet of a foreign policy system, to illustrate the kind of research which is now essential and possible if the study of foreign policy is to progress beyond the bounds of historical survey and to induce rigorous comparative analysis and efforts at prediction worthy of a discipline. A foreign policy system may be likened to a flow into and out of a network of structures which perform certain functions and thereby produce acts or decisions or outputs. These, in turn, feed back into the system in a ceaseless flow of Demands on Policy (Inputs), Policy Process, and Products of Policy (Outputs). In all systems of foreign policy there are six basic