Richard K. Betts

Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable

Strategic intelligence failures cannot be prevented by organizational solutions to problems of analysis and communication. Analytic certainty is precluded by ambiguity of evidence, ambivalence of judgment, and atrophy of institutional reforms designed to avert failures. Many sources of error are unresolvable paradoxes and dilemmas rather than curable pathologies. Major failures in attack warning, operational evaluation, and intelligence for strategic planning are due primarily to leaders’ psychological attributes rather than to analysts’ failures to detect relevant data. Since analysis and decision are interactive rather than sequential processes, and authorities often hear but dismiss correct estimates, intelligence failure is inseparable from policy failure. Solutions most often proposed—worst-case analysis, multiple advocacy, devils advocacy, organizational consolidation, sanctions and incentives for analysts, and cognitive rehabilitation—are either impractical because of constraints on the leaders’ time, or they are mixed blessings because they create new problems in the course of solving old ones.

Wealth, Power, and Instability: East Asia and the United States after the Cold War

I E a s t Asia is becoming a more important interest to the United States at the same time that it is becoming less stable as an arena of great power interaction.’ This is a bad combination, precisely the opposite of that in Western Europe. It is also not entirely obvious. Superficially, the region appears fairly peaceful at present, but the security order that will replace the Cold War framework is not yet clear.2

Systems for Peace or Causes of War?: Collective Security, Arms Control, and the New Europe

commitments are honored, the system inevitably turns small conflicts into big ones, by requiring states to get involved when it is not in their interest to do so. This was the main reason that realists like Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan fell out with liberal hawks over the Vietnam War. The Cold War redefinition of collective security as the global coalition against communist aggression, in rhetoric from Dean Acheson to Dean Rusk, fed 22. Waltz, Theory of International Politics, p. 112. International Security 17:1 I 20 the domino theory: South Vietnam was important not in itself, but as a matter of principle. Fighting in Vietnam meant avoiding the mistakes of the 1930s in not fighting in Manchuria or Ethiopia. Morgenthau posed the counterproductive effect of the principle: It is the supreme paradox of collective security that any attempt to make it work with less than ideal perfection will have the opposite effect from what it is supposed to achieve. . . . If an appreciable number of nations are opposed to the status quo. . . . the distribution of power will take on the aspects of a balance of power. . . . The attempt to put collective security into effect under such conditions . . . will not preserve peace, but will make war inevitable. . . . It will also make localized wars impossible and thus make war universal. For under the regime of collective security as it actually works under contemporary conditions, if A attacks B, then C, D, E, and F might honor their collective obligations and come to the aid of B, while G and H might try to stand aside and I, J, and K might support A s aggression. . . . By the very logic of its assumptions, the diplomacy of collective security must aim at transforming all local conflicts into world conflicts . . . since peace is supposed to be indivisible. . . . Thus a device intent on making war impossible ends by making war universal.23 Realist arguments against a collective security system for Europe rest on both fearcthat it would not work when needed, or that it would work when it should not. If commitments falter in a crunch, defense against a rogue power will be weaker than if the regular NATO alliance had remained the guarantor of security. If it does work, however, it precludes denying protection to Eastern European countries against each other or a great power. This makes a crisis in that cauldron of instabilities more likely to erupt than to stew in its own juices. Concern with this implication of the classic scheme of collective security for involvement in the Balkans, embodied in Article 10 of the League Covenant (to ”preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity of all members”), was a specific reason for U.S. domestic opposition to joining that organization over seventy years WHY DOES COLLECTIVE SECURITY KEEP COMING BACK? The Wilsonian ideal of collective security was buffeted by history from all sides in the 1930s, and again after the anti-fascist alliance split. Redefinitions 23. Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics Among Nations, fifth ed. (New York: Knopf, 1973), pp. 411412. See also Stromberg, ”The Idea of Collective Security,” pp. 258-259. 24. Henry L. Stimson and McGeorge Bundy, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York Harper, 1948), pp. 102-103. Systems for Peace or Causes of War? I 21 in the first half of the Cold War were also driven from favor-for hawks, by disappointment with the development of the UN after Korea, and for doves, by disillusionment with the crusade in Vietnam. The term’s renewed popularity does not come from a change of mind about the earlier disillusionments, but from the apparent inadequacy of alternative constructs for adjusting to the outbreak of peace, and because some now define the concept in narrow ways that avoid troublesome implications. At the same time, there is no agreement on whether the most troublesome commitment would be to counter aggression by a great power or to pacify wars between Eastern European states over borders and ethnic minorities. Many proponents of a collective security system for post-Cold War Europe are ambivalent or opposed outright to requiring intervention in a new generation of Balkan wars. Richard Ullman proclaims that “Europe’s peace has become a divisible peace,’’ yet endorses a European Security Organization (ESO) that would include “a generalized commitment to collective security. Each member state would commit itself . . . to come to the aid of any other if it is the victim of an armed attack.” The obligation, however, would not extend to little victims. Eastern Europe’s fate is to be excluded as “a vast buffer zone between the Soviet Union and Germany.” If cross-border violence erupts over national minorities in Kosovo or Transylvania, ”the major powers would be unlikely to get involved to an extent greater than through diplomacy and perhaps economic pressure.’’ Besides “walling off ” local conflicts, the benefit of the buffer zone that Ullman anticipates is to facilitate great power confidence in a shift toward defensively-oriented military doctrines.” Similarly, Charles Kupchan and Clifford Kupchan prescribe collective security, yet at the same time make a gargantuan concession to traditional balance of power by endorsing tacit recognition of ”areas of special interest” such as a Russian droit d u regard in Eastern Europe.26 These notions recognize the defects in the Wilsonian ideal type, and they may reassure the great powers about their security, but they de-collectivize collective security. Uncertainty about whether the system would cover Eastern Europe is crucial. There are two essential trends in Europe today: in the West, economic and political integration, consensus on borders, and congruence between nations and states; in the East, the reversdisintegration and lack of con25. Ullman, Securing Europe, pp. 28, 29, 68, 73-74, 78, 147. 26. Kupchan and Kupchan, ”Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe,” pp. 156157. International Security 173 I 22 sensus or congruence. Will the stability of the West be protected by holding the mess in the East at arm’s length? Ullman believes the new collective system would handle misbehavior by one of the great powers, but not small ones,27 presumably because the stakes are higher. By the same token, however, the costs and risks (such as involvement of nuclear weapons) would be higher too, so the balance of costs and benefits does not obviously make pacification of small wars in Eastern Europe a less attractive objective. It should hardly be as daunting for the system to settle a fight between Hungary and Rumania or between Ukraine and Poland as to confront one between Russia or Germany and the rest of the continent. At the same time, apparent sideshows in Eastern Europe may offer occasions for abrasions and misperceptions among the great powers if they disagree about intervention. One nightmare would be a Russian attack on Ukraine (far less fanciful than a Soviet attack on NATO ever was; Russian vice president Rutskoi has already broached the issue of recovering the Crimea for Russia).28 Under true collective security, members of the system would have to aid Ukraine-doing what NATO would not do for Hungary in 1 9 5 6 t h ~ ~ evoking the danger of escalation and nuclear war. Under realist norms, the West should leave Ukraine to its fate-tragic for the Ukrainians, but safer for everyone else. If we prefer the latter course, why try to dress it up by associating it with collective security? If one is genuinely interested in collective security as something different from traditional spheres of influence and alignments based on power and national interest, it is hard to write off responsibility for dealing with wars involving either great or small states; but if one is primarily interested in avoiding escalation of limited wars into large ones, it is hard to accept advance commitment to engage either sort of challenge before knowing exactly what it is. Since the collective security concept cannot be copyrighted, promoters have the right to amend it to accommodate standard criticisms. Confronted with questions about how the system would handle particular worrisome scenarios, however, some of the revisionists argue not just that the system should be exempted from responsibility for that type of conflict, but that such problems will not arise. 27. Ullman, Securing Europe, p. 68. 28. Celestine Bohlen, “Russian Vice President Wants to Redraw Borders,” New York Times, January 31, 1992, p. A9. Systems for Peace or Causes of War? I 23 Conceptual Confusion and System Dysfunction If revisions of the collective security idea are used to cover arrangements that fit better under other basic concepts like traditional alliance formation, or are used to dignlfy an arrangement other than a functioning security system, they make it less likely that effects of the system can be predicted from its design. Since collective security is an emergency safety system, and cannot be tested in peacetime the way a real machine can, dysfunctions due to confusions in design may not be evident until the time when the system is most needed. CONFUSION OF CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES Since the collapse of communism it has not always been clear whether the invocation of collective security is meant to enforce peace or to celebrate it. Less emphasis is usually placed on how the system would restore peace in the face of war than on why war (or at least war worthy of concern) will not arise. Ullman writes: If one were to rely on the historical record of generalized commitments to collective security, one could not be hopeful. . . . But it is arguable that the conditions now emerging in Europe make the past a poor predictor. . . . No major state has revisionist ambitions that its leaders think they could satisfy by sending troops across borders. . . . A genuine congruence of interests and goals sharply distinguishes the present from previous eras. . . . it is unlikely th

The New Threat of Mass Destruction

Since the Cold War, other matters have displaced strategic concerns on the foreign policy agenda, and that agenda itself is now barely on the publics radar screen. Apart from defense policy professionals, few Americans still lose sleep over weapons of mass destruction (wmd). After all, what do normal people feel is the main relief provided by the end of the Cold War? It is that the danger of nuclear war is off their backs.

Is Strategy an Illusion

Strategy is the essential ingredient for making war either politically effective or morally tenable. It is the link between military means and political ends, the scheme for how to make one produce the other. Without strategy, there is no rationale for how force will achieve purposes worth the price in blood and treasure. Without strategy, power is a loose cannon and war is mindless. Mindless killing can only be criminal. Politicians and soldiers may debate which strategic choice is best, but only paciasts can doubt that strategy is necessary. Because strategy is necessary, however, does not mean that it is possible. Those who experience or study many wars and strong reasons to doubt that strategists can know enough about causes, effects, and intervening variables to make the operations planned produce the outcomes desired. To skeptics, effective strategy is often an illusion because what happens in the gap between policy objectives and war outcomes is too complex and unpredictable to be manipulated to a speciaed end. When this is true, war cannot be a legitimate instrument of policy. This article surveys ten critiques that throw the practicability of strategy into question. It pulls together many arguments that emerge in bits and pieces from a variety of sources. Some are my own formulation of skepticism implicit but unformed in others’ observations; few analysts have yet attacked the general viability of strategy head-on. The notion that effective strategy must be an illusion emerges cumulatively from arguments that: strategies cannot be evaluated because there are no agreed criteria for which are good or bad; there is little demonstrable relationship between strategies and outcomes in war; good strategies can seldom be formulated because of policymakers’ biases; if good strategies are formulated, they cannot be executed because of organizations’ limitations; and other points explored below. Unifying themes include the bar-

The Soft Underbelly of American Primacy: Tactical Advantages of Terror

In given conditions, action and reaction can be ridiculously out of proportion.... One can obtain results monstrously in excess of the effort.... Lets consider this auto smash-up.... The driver lost control at high speed while swiping at a wasp which had flown in through a window and was buzzing around his face.... The weight of a wasp is under half an ounce. Compared with a human being, the wasps size is minute, its strength negligible. Its sole armament is a tiny syringe holding a drop of irritant, formic acid. ... Nevertheless, that wasp killed four big men and converted a large, powerful car into a heap of scrap. -Eric Frank Russell1

Should Strategic Studies Survive

Political science attends to causes and consequences of war but only fitfully welcomes study of its conduct, because few grasp how much the dynamics of combat shape politics. Bernard Brodie called for development of strategic studies on the model of the discipline of economics, because neither the military nor academia treated the subject rigorously. His call was answered in the early cold war, with mixed results. Theories about nuclear deterrence burgeoned while empirical studies of war lagged. The late-cold war impasse in nuclear strategy, rooted in nato doctrine, shifted attention to conventional military operations and empirically grounded theory. Since the cold war, research on general theoretical questions about war and peace has been prospering, but education in military matters has been eroding. Interdisciplinary strategic studies integrate political and military elements of international conflict, but there is no recognized discipline of military science; military analysis is smuggled into political science and history departments, where it is resisted by calls to conceptualize security broadly or focus on purely theoretical work. If serious military studies are squeezed out of universities, there will be no qualified civilian analysts to provide independent expertise in policy and budget debates, and decisions on war and peace will be made irresponsibly by uninformed civilians or by the professional military alone.

Conventional Deterrence: Predictive Uncertainty and Policy Confidence

For over three decades the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has based its deterrent on the principle that the United States would retaliate with nuclear weapons if a Soviet conventional attack against Western Europe succeeded. This notion has long troubled most strategic analysts. It remained generally acceptable to political elites, however, when U.S. nuclear superiority appeared massive enough to make the doctrine credible (as in the 1950s); when the conventional military balance in Europe improved markedly (as in the 1960s); or when detente appeared to be making the credibility of deterrence a less pressing concern (as in the 1970s). None of these conditions exists in the 1980s, and anxiety over the danger of nuclear war has prompted renewed attention to the possibility of replacing NATOs Flexible Response doctrine (a mixture of nuclear and conventional deterrence) with a reliable conventional deterrence posture that might justify a nuclear no-first-use (NFU) doctrine. 1

Must War Find a Way?: A Review Essay

Stephen Van Evera’s book revises half of a afteen-year-old dissertation that must be among the most cited in history. This volume is a major entry in academic security studies, and for some time it will stand beside only a few other modern works on causes of war that aspiring international relations theorists are expected to digest. Given that political science syllabi seldom assign works more than a generation old, it is even possible that for a while this book may edge ahead of the more general modern classics on the subject such as E.H. Carr’s masterful polemic, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, and Kenneth Waltz’s Man, the State, and War.1

Paranoids, Pygmies, Pariahs and Nonproliferation Revisited

This is an updated version of an article which appeared in Foreign Policy, no. 26 (Spring 1977). The article is reprinted with the permission of Foreign Policy and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. The original text is in Roman; the updates are in italics.