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Author: James J. Wirtz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317375726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
This collection, comprising key works by James J. Wirtz, explains how different threat perceptions can lead to strategic surprise attack, intelligence failure and the failure of deterrence. This volume adopts a strategist’s view of the issue of surprise and intelligence failure by placing these phenomena in the context of conflict between strong and weak actors in world affairs. A two-level theory explains the incentives and perceptions of both parties when significant imbalances of military power exist between potential combatants, and how this situation sets the stage for strategic surprise and intelligence failure to occur. The volume illustrates this theory by applying it to the Kargil Crisis, attacks launched by non-state actors, and by offering a comparison of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks. It explores the phenomenon of deterrence failure; specifically, how weaker parties in an enduring or nascent conflict come to believe that deterrent threats posed by militarily stronger antagonists will be undermined by various constraints, increasing the attractiveness of utilising surprise attack to achieve their objectives. This work also offers strategies that could mitigate the occurrence of intelligence failure, strategic surprise and the failure of deterrence. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.
Author: James J. Wirtz
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317375726
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 271
Get Book Here
Book Description
This collection, comprising key works by James J. Wirtz, explains how different threat perceptions can lead to strategic surprise attack, intelligence failure and the failure of deterrence. This volume adopts a strategist’s view of the issue of surprise and intelligence failure by placing these phenomena in the context of conflict between strong and weak actors in world affairs. A two-level theory explains the incentives and perceptions of both parties when significant imbalances of military power exist between potential combatants, and how this situation sets the stage for strategic surprise and intelligence failure to occur. The volume illustrates this theory by applying it to the Kargil Crisis, attacks launched by non-state actors, and by offering a comparison of Pearl Harbor and the September 11, 2001 attacks. It explores the phenomenon of deterrence failure; specifically, how weaker parties in an enduring or nascent conflict come to believe that deterrent threats posed by militarily stronger antagonists will be undermined by various constraints, increasing the attractiveness of utilising surprise attack to achieve their objectives. This work also offers strategies that could mitigate the occurrence of intelligence failure, strategic surprise and the failure of deterrence. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, strategic studies, security studies and IR in general.
Author: Erik J. Dahl
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
ISBN: 1589019989
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 289
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Book Description
How can the United States avoid a future surprise attack on the scale of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, in an era when such devastating attacks can come not only from nation states, but also from terrorist groups or cyber enemies? Intelligence and Surprise Attack examines why surprise attacks often succeed even though, in most cases, warnings had been available beforehand. Erik J. Dahl challenges the conventional wisdom about intelligence failure, which holds that attacks succeed because important warnings get lost amid noise or because intelligence officials lack the imagination and collaboration to “connect the dots” of available information. Comparing cases of intelligence failure with intelligence success, Dahl finds that the key to success is not more imagination or better analysis, but better acquisition of precise, tactical-level intelligence combined with the presence of decision makers who are willing to listen to and act on the warnings they receive from their intelligence staff. The book offers a new understanding of classic cases of conventional and terrorist attacks such as Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway, and the bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania. The book also presents a comprehensive analysis of the intelligence picture before the 9/11 attacks, making use of new information available since the publication of the 9/11 Commission Report and challenging some of that report’s findings.
Author: Milo Jones
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 0804787158
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 389
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Book Description
Constructing Cassandra analyzes the intelligence failures at the CIA that resulted in four key strategic surprises experienced by the US: the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, the Iranian revolution of 1978, the collapse of the USSR in 1991, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks—surprises still play out today in U.S. policy. Although there has been no shortage of studies exploring how intelligence failures can happen, none of them have been able to provide a unified understanding of the phenomenon. To correct that omission, this book brings culture and identity to the foreground to present a unified model of strategic surprise; one that focuses on the internal make-up the CIA, and takes seriously those Cassandras who offered warnings, but were ignored. This systematic exploration of the sources of the CIA's intelligence failures points to ways to prevent future strategic surprises.
Author: Robert Jervis
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0801457610
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 249
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Book Description
The U.S. government spends enormous resources each year on the gathering and analysis of intelligence, yet the history of American foreign policy is littered with missteps and misunderstandings that have resulted from intelligence failures. In Why Intelligence Fails, Robert Jervis examines the politics and psychology of two of the more spectacular intelligence failures in recent memory: the mistaken belief that the regime of the Shah in Iran was secure and stable in 1978, and the claim that Iraq had active WMD programs in 2002. The Iran case is based on a recently declassified report Jervis was commissioned to undertake by CIA thirty years ago and includes memoranda written by CIA officials in response to Jervis's findings. The Iraq case, also grounded in a review of the intelligence community's performance, is based on close readings of both classified and declassified documents, though Jervis's conclusions are entirely supported by evidence that has been declassified. In both cases, Jervis finds not only that intelligence was badly flawed but also that later explanations—analysts were bowing to political pressure and telling the White House what it wanted to hear or were willfully blind—were also incorrect. Proponents of these explanations claimed that initial errors were compounded by groupthink, lack of coordination within the government, and failure to share information. Policy prescriptions, including the recent establishment of a Director of National Intelligence, were supposed to remedy the situation. In Jervis's estimation, neither the explanations nor the prescriptions are adequate. The inferences that intelligence drew were actually quite plausible given the information available. Errors arose, he concludes, from insufficient attention to the ways in which information should be gathered and interpreted, a lack of self-awareness about the factors that led to the judgments, and an organizational culture that failed to probe for weaknesses and explore alternatives. Evaluating the inherent tensions between the methods and aims of intelligence personnel and policymakers from a unique insider's perspective, Jervis forcefully criticizes recent proposals for improving the performance of the intelligence community and discusses ways in which future analysis can be improved.
Author: Peter Jackson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135769737
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 309
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Book Description
Intelligence has never been more important in world politics than it is now at the opening of the twenty-first century. The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, along with the politics and diplomacy of the Second Gulf War, have brought intelligence issues to the forefront of both official and popular discourse on security and international affairs. The need for better understanding of both the nature of the intelligence process and its importance to national and international security has never been more apparent. The aim of this collection is to enhance our understanding of the subject by drawing on a range of perspectives, from academic experts to journalists to former members of the British and American intelligence communities.
Author: Uri Bar-Joseph
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019067699X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 281
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Book Description
The study of strategic surprise has long concentrated on important failures that resulted in catastrophes such as Pearl Harbor and the September 11th attacks, and the majority of previously published research in the field determines that such large-scale military failures often stem from defective information-processing systems. Intelligence Success and Failure challenges this common assertion that catastrophic surprise attacks are the unmistakable products of warning failure alone. Further, Uri Bar-Joseph and Rose McDermott approach this topic uniquely by highlighting the successful cases of strategic surprise, as well as the failures, from a psychological perspective. This book delineates the critical role of individual psychopathologies in precipitating failure by investigating important historical cases. Bar-Joseph and McDermott use six particular military attacks as examples for their analysis, including: "Barbarossa," the June 1941 German invasion of the USSR (failure); the fall-winter 1941 battle for Moscow (success); the Arab attack on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973 (failure); and the second Egyptian offensive in the war six days later (success). From these specific cases and others, they analyze the psychological mechanisms through which leaders assess their own fatal mistakes and use the intelligence available to them. Their research examines the factors that contribute to failure and success in responding to strategic surprise and identify the learning process that central decision makers use to facilitate subsequent successes. Intelligence Success and Failure presents a new theory in the study of strategic surprise that claims the key explanation for warning failure is not unintentional action, but rather, motivated biases in key intelligence and central leaders that null any sense of doubt prior to surprise attacks.
Author: James J. Wirtz
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501713353
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305
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Book Description
In this account of one of the worst intelligence failures in American history, James J. Wirtz explains why U.S. forces were surprised by the North Vietnamese Tet Offensive in 1968. Wirtz reconstructs the turning point of the Vietnam War in unprecedented detail. Drawing upon Vietcong and recently declassified U.S. sources, he is able to trace the strategy and unfolding of the Tet campaign as well as the U.S. response.
Author: Kjetil Anders Hatlebrekke
Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
ISBN: 0748691847
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 337
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Book Description
What is intelligence - why is it so hard to define, and why is there no systematic theory of intelligence? Kjetil Anders Hatlebrekke creates a new, systematic model of intelligence analysis, arguing that good intelligence is based on understanding the threats that appear beyond our experience, and are therefore the most dangerous to society.
Author: Bill Gertz
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1596987103
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
New York Times bestselling author Bill Gertz uses his unparalleled access to America's intelligence system to show how this system completely broke down in the years, months, and days leading up to the deadly terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
Author: Isabelle Duyvesteyn
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317967046
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 107
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Book Description
Reliable information on potential security threats is not just the result of diligent intelligence work but also a product of context and culture. The volume explores the nexus between the intelligence process and strategic culture. How can and does the strategic outlook of the United States and the United Kingdom in particular, influence the intelligence gathering, assessment and dissemination process? This book contains an assessment of how political agendas and ideological outlook have significant influence on both the content and process of intelligence. It looks in particular at the premise of hearts and minds policies, culture and intelligence gathering in counterinsurgency operations; at case studies from imperial Malaya and Iran in the 1950s and at instances of intelligence failure, e.g. the case of Iraq in 2003. How was intelligence, or the lack thereof, a product of political culture and how did it play a role in the political praxis? The book shows that political agendas and the ideological outlook have a significant influence upon both the content and process of intelligence. This book was originally published as a special issue of Intelligence and National Security.
