In public political life, think tanks and personalities express positions and programmatic goals. Think tanks process and analyze these, while personalities apply them as policies.
This book aims to contribute to the research of political science through a thorough study, analysis, and documentation of the intervention of think tanks. Three think tanks were selected: the Heritage Foundation, the Brookings Institute, and the Institute for Policy Studies. To highlight and evaluate their influence on shaping positions and the main axes of U.S. foreign policy, two cases were analyzed: on one hand, the Iran/Contras affair in Nicaragua, and on the other, the policies of promoting, controlling, and "freezing" nuclear armaments in the U.S. during President Reagan's tenure.
Additionally, this book aspires to contribute to the field of international relations, by developing, through the lens of realist theory, a holistic view and research on critical issues of the international system, such as bipolarity, superpower competition, as well as the strategy of containment, both in areas of sovereign influence and in the internal dynamics of the two poles that affected developments. Undoubtedly, a programmatic aim of this study is the examination, through the lens of neoclassical realism, of think tanks as key factors that decisively contributed to shaping the ideological and political positions of the American president, as well as his corresponding decisions, with the primary goal always being the establishment of terms for hegemony and dominance over the so-called Eastern bloc, in the service of the principle of hegemonism through power.
