حمیراء مشیرزاده

The US foreign policy in the post-World War II has been marked by periods of unilateralism, while in other periods, multilateralism has been more prevailing. The existing works, while explaining certain periods of unilateralism by various domestic and international factors, such as neo-conservative ideology and superpower rivalries in the Cold War, are unable to explain the reason for which in some periods, the US foreign Policy has been more dominant. This article seeks to explain the difference by referring to the conceptual complexity of US presidents. We analyzed the content of news conference transcripts for 11 post-WWII US presidents using the Flesch-Kincaid text readability index to measure presidents’ conceptual complexity. We used the index in our previous study to explain the unorthodoxy of Donald Trump’s foreign policy. Findings suggest with statistical significance that Presidents with low levels of conceptual complexity do not consider many factors as important and prefer unilateral actions by emphasizing short-term achievements. On the contrary, presidents with complex cognition are less likely to believe that the US can solve critical or long-term international issues alone.