To analyse the war in Afghanistan from different theories is nothing new to the studies of international relations. However, one aspect that yet has been studied regarding the Afghan war is the withdrawal of troops and civilian personnel and why it occurred in August 2021 and not earlier or later. This lack of knowledge creates a research gap which needs to be filled to explain why President Biden went through with the withdrawal, even though the president knew that the Taliban would seize power in Afghanistan. This thesis will therefore explain the Biden administration's decision to continue the military and civilian withdrawal from Afghanistan even though the threat of Taliban takeover was imminent. The method chosen for this thesis is a qualitative content analysis which will be used to analyse the material with the help of leadership trait analysis and the bureaucratic politics model theories. The material which was used war press statements, speeches, and committee hearings. As the analysis shows, the decision to withdraw was a compromise between actors which was possible due to Joe Bidens openness to information. In summary, this thesis offers one explanation to why the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan.

Policy makers have long recognized the importance of considering past experience, history, and the use of Analogical reasoning when making policy decisions. When elite political actors face foreign policy crises, they often use their past experience, refer to history, and use Analogical reasoning to help them frame their decisions. In the case of the ill-fated invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, the use of Analogical reasoning revolving around past covert successes may have created an environment for faulty foreign policy decision-making. Former members of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) filled the ranks of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and held key positions within the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations. OSS success with guerrilla warfare, sabotage, and intelligence gathering during World War II, coupled with early CIA covert successes (specifically in Guatemala), may have led President Kennedy to make the wrong policy decisions with regard to dealing with Fidel Castro and Cuba. This research explores the use of Analogical reasoning during the decision-making process by way of process-tracing. Process-tracing attempts to identify the intervening processes between an independent variable (or variables) and the outcome of the dependent variable. We look at six critical junctures and compare how Groupthink, the Bureaucratic Politics Model, and Analogical reasoning approaches help explain any causal mechanisms. The findings suggest that Analogical reasoning may have played a more significant role in President Kennedy's final decision to invade Cuba than previously thought. The findings further suggest that by using the Analogical reasoning approach, our understanding of President Kennedy's foreign policy in Cuba is enhanced when compared to the Groupthink and Bureaucratic Politics Model approaches emphasized in past research.

Intervention in Libya is an anomaly in President Barack Obama's foreign policy during his eight years in the office. This thesis aims to analyze the decision-making process leading to this unprecedented step. Using Graham Allison's Bureaucratic Politics Model, the purpose of this analysis is to investigate the influence of some presidential advisors and allies on his final decision. Data for this study were collected using President Obama's public statements, biographies of several members of the administration, and secondary academic sources. After some general context, the thesis closely examines the selected period from the first protests in Libya on February 15 to the beginning of the Operation United Protector on March 31. This timeframe of forty-five days is further divided into the week-by-week process tracing analyses. The development on the ground in Libya is merged with changes of attitude in the American administration and changing alliances among the members of the advisory team of the President. The Bureaucratic Politics Model is used to analyze specific tactics used by American officials to impose their preferred scenario. The study also tests the applicability of several new methodological approaches within the Bureaucratic Politics Model like the palace politics perspective,...