Custom «Rational Choice Analysis and Literature Review» Essay Paper

In the year 2006 the Chief of the Medical Support Training and Transition Team for the Iraqi Ministry of Defense went to the commander of the Multi-National Security Transition Coalition Team-Iraq (MNSTC-I), LTG Martin Dempsey. The main aim of the visit was to make the case for an increase in the investment by the United States Government (USG) in the development of a self-sufficient medical support infrastructure for the Iraqi Military. The request was for millions of dollars in equipment to set up medical facilities. “The Iraqi Military was supposed to rely on the hospitals administered by the Ministry of Health (MOH) for serious and long-term medical support and tactical care of security forces was to be provided by Iraqi Field Hospitals” (Brown and Paschoud, 2005). According Brown and Paschoud, (2005) “as it became increasingly clear that the MOH had become a sectarian stronghold of the followers of Moqtada al-Sadr, the need to get the field hospitals up and running became a critical requirement”. LTG Dempsey instructed the Medical Support Team and members of the HQ Staff to examine warehouses that had been set aside for support to these field hospitals to ensure that they had the capacity to support the influx of equipment and act as forward depots for the medical effort. When the team went out to the locations to examine the warehouses they were amazed to find pallets and pallets full of medical equipment from floor to ceiling that had had been in the warehouses for some indeterminate amount of time. “The team suspected it might have been ordered during the Coalition Provisional Authority era but no one knew for sure and almost all of the equipment that the team had asked the 3 Commander to request funds for was already right there on the ground” (Brown and Paschoud, 2005). This incident is illustrative of an interagency failure caused by the head of Iraqi Field Hospitals. In this case, rational actor decision caused a failure in the operation of interagency in Iraq. In conclusion, rational choice model some time cause problem when a decision taken by an actor comes out to be irrational.