Even if it were the case that a specific form of machismo did actually shape the public policy of these two men, I think the cowboy ethos has enough antecedents in pop culture from Robin Hood to Kurosawa's Seven Samurai to have sufficed.
Robin Hood is a different deal altogether. He's usually portrayed as an eloquent smooth talker. Cowboys and sheriffs are portrayed as taciturn types who solve their problems with deeds, not words.
Robin Hood is cunning and deceptive, always turning up in disguise. Cowboys are supposedly straightforward.
Robin Hood is an outright outlaw. Cowboys and sheriffs exist in a legal grey area, where they must lay down the law.
Furthermore, Reagan and W. Bush liked to be photographed on horseback or in cowboy boots or cowboy hats. However, Tony Blair and James Callaghan have never been photographed crouching in trees wearing Lincoln green that I recall. They don't try to exploit that imagery in the same way.
IIRC, I first noticed this ages ago, when I was reading an admiring peace by Larry Niven about Ronald Reagan, when he talked about Iranian hostages being released as "the old cowboy took office". This seemed odd to me, since Reagan was an actor who played cowboys, not actually a cowboy. To his supporters though, this distinction seems to be somewhat elided.--"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
But that the foreign policy of a particular president was significantly shaped by a particular aspect of popular culture is a somewhat controversial claim, especially when applied to the policy of two administrations that have a very rigorous intellectual underpinning to the policy in question. (Not one that I agree with, mind you.) Reagan's foreign policy had less to do with cowboy movies and more to do the theoretical framework set up by James Baker, Alex Haig and Cap Weingberger.
So too, his supporters wore buttons like My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys and refer to him admiringly as a cowboy.
It seems pretty absurd to believe that the image he needed to maintain had no effect on his actions or policies. [ Parent ]
We could draw similar parallels between Christianity and the foreign policy of Vlad Tepes. Clearly, Vlad was heavily influenced by the Church of Romania. Also, he heavily referenced Church writings in many of his decrees. Likewise, he was made into a national hero, in part, because of his public displays of piety. But it is not clear that Christian doctrine had any actual effect on his relations with Hungary or the Ottomans. And, in truth, when push came to shove he renounced the Church of Romania for the support of the Holy Roman Empire to try to regain the crown one last time.
What you seem to me to be doing is to conflate the superficial way in which Reagan and Bush communicate their respective policies with why those policies were formed in the first place. I'll allow it is possible that the desire to be a Hollywood style cowboy may have influenced their foreign policy, but I think it far more likely that they formed their foreign policy for other reasons and presented it in cowboy fashion.
However, cowboy and western themes have been a highly prevalent, highly prolonged theme in US popular culture. It seems very likely such a resonant theme influences the electorate, and through them the elected, as well as directly influencing the leaders themselves.
I don't know much about Vlad Tepes, but consider for instance the American Revolution. How can we prove that it was influenced by British taxation for instance. We cannot show causation by re-running the event. However, we can look at the slogan "no taxation without representation", and from that conclude that taxation was probably a factor.
Similarly, we can look at slogans like "My Heroes Have Always Been Cowboys" and conclude that a cowboy attitude is probably a factor in the same way.[ Parent ]
The foreign policy of the Reagan administration has many source documents, none of which mention cowboys.
There is a big difference between `cowboys have always been my heroes' and `I've going to sell arms to Iran to free American hostages because that's what a real cowboy would do.'
But the cultural impact of the cowboy archetype does seem to be highly significant.
I think you might lack a sufficiently broad experience to see how unusual the adoption of this kind of cultural imagery is. If you saw a Japanese prime minister walking around in laquered armour, or British prime minister crouching in a tree wearing a hat with a feather in it, you'd recognize a significant and unusual cultural phenomenon. Being too close to it, and habituated to it, you don't see the fundamental oddness of it.[ Parent ]
As for the lacquered armor point, it's a silly point. That cowboys have been culturally influential in the US is not in dispute. The question is whether the cowboy myth has fundamentally altered US foreign policy.
You're the one who brought up this "foreign policy" strawman. I've never made any claims about it.
The nature of culture is that it's virtually impossible to point to it as a single factor behind a policy decision. But the pervasiveness of culture still makes it a significant force across all decisions.--"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
I thought that to be a clear indication we were talking about foreign policy, the against terrorism of which is a significant part.
But if you don't want to narrow the discussion to foreign policy, that's fine. Point me to any aspect of the Reagan administration's policies that would be substantially different were Reagan not a self-styled cowboy.
``The nature of culture is that it's virtually impossible to point to it as a single factor behind a policy decision.''
Right. I'm not asking for that. But if it is that significant, there will be decisions where the influence is clear. For example, there are spots in al-Farabi's writing where you can clearly see the influence of Islam and there are points in his writing where he differs from Aristotle and Plato whom he usually follows pretty closely. Quite a few of those differences are explicable through the influence of Islam. If Farabi wasn't a Muslim, it is hard to believe that he would have wrote those passages. But that doesn't mean that those passages are solely written because of Farabi's religion.
Likewise, if being a cowboy holds that much sway over Reagan and Bush, then it seems to me that there must be some element of the policy of their administrations that a guy can point to and say, `see, normally you'd expect someone of this particular ideology to say X but because they are cowboys, they said Y.' But if you can't do that, there is no sound basis to say that being a cowboy was anything other than a bit of public posturing.
History is not a subject in which causes can be determined with certainty. Any time Historian A says Cause 1 was important, it's possible for Historian B to say, no, that was trivial, it was Cause 2 instead.
Now if you want specific examples where the cowboy role could influence policy, there are obvious things to choose from. Alaskan oil-drilling for example: if your self-image is as a frontiersman, you're more likely to want to explore and exploit the frontier. The disbanding of the Iraqi army is another example: co-opting them would have been the pragmatic thing to do given the lack of stabilizing manpower. But cowboys and sheriffs defeat their enemies, they don't co-opt them (unlike Robin Hood after he beat Little John at quarterstaffs, for instance).
But there's not much point me naming a bunch of instances. There are very many to choose from, and you're just going to say "oh no it isn't" to each one. Possibly you're on the far-Realist edge of the Realist-Idealist spectrum.--"Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise." -- Bertrand Russell[ Parent ]
