Air University Review, January-February 1981

Prisoners of a Concept

cultural myopia and the role of education

Governments and armies must forever be concerned to avoid surprise, yet history—from Troy to Tehran—is full of their failing to do so. If the victims survive, the lesson they learn may prevent a recurrence, but it is often misunderstood, or misapplied, or simply irrelevant. Even when the past is relevant, using it indiscriminately as a guide can be fatal. This is particularly true when we become victims of our own historical myths and see our opponents through a distorting, ethnocentric lens. The human tendency to do so is universal, and the ability of the statesman or military leader to discriminate between relevant and irrelevant and to see recent history objectively is by no means assured. It is a function of his education and experience as well as of the dynamics of the situation in which he finds himself. The latter often encourages him to go wrong.

We tend to assume that world leaders make their decisions after a rational, quasi-omniscient balancing of pros and cons, largely removed from visceral considerations and such factors as spite. Unfortunately, those of us who have been close enough to watch the process discover that there is a high degree of subjectivity, not to say irrationality, in many decisions, and this often leads to unpleasant surprises. Ignorance is as important as malevolence in the scenario of surprise.

A prime example was Nasser’s behavior in 1967. He apparently believed his own rationalization of Egypt’s 1956 defeat—to wit, that Egypt had been defeated by the French and British, not the Israelis, and, by implication, would have smashed the Israelis had the British and French not aided the latter. Thus, he spoke to the troops in Sinai on 22 May 1967, as follows:

In 1956, on the night of October 29, the Israeli aggression against us began. The fighting started on the 30th, and we received the Anglo-French warning, asking us to withdraw west of the Suez Canal a number of miles. On the 31st the Anglo-French attack against us began—the air raids began in the evening—and at the same time the withdrawal of our troops from Sinai to Egypt (i.e. across the Canal) began. Thus, in 1956 there was no opportunity to fight the Israelis. We decided on the withdrawal before the real fighting with Israel began. In spite of our decision to withdraw, the Israelis were unable to take a single one of our positions before we had left it . . . and Ben Gurion refused anything (i.e. cooperation with the British and French) until he had a written guarantee they would protect him from Egyptian bombs. ¹

There was enough truth in what Nasser said to make this version of history plausible to his people (and many others), and popular feelings in Cairo were then riding a crest that made uncritical acceptance of even the wildest concepts very easy. A commonly expressed Egyptian sentiment was that Israel had been protected by the West long enough and the Egyptians were now going to teach it a lesson.

Even if Nasser had been correct about 1956, however, his application of that lesson to the then prevailing situation rested on faulty assumptions about the states of readiness and capabilities of the two armies 11 years later. To what extent Nasser was misled by his army commanders or they were pushed into unwarranted postures by him is as yet unclear. Those of us in Cairo at the time were so surprised by the apparent confidence of the Egyptian military that in one telegram we commented that they acted as though they had a secret weapon of some sort. Washington immediately responded with a frantic telegram asking for details of the weapon. The intelligence community thought the Israelis clearly had the edge and had gone on record to that effect, but the Pentagon was very nervous at the prospect it might be called on to succor Israel, and even back then did not know where it would get the forces to do so. A collective sigh of relief went up when it became clear on 6 June that we would not be called on to intervene.

Nasser, then, was victim of his own propaganda about the Israelis. His willingness to accept his own preconceptions was strengthened by lack of contact and ready acceptance of pejorative stereotypes about the despised opponent. Six years later, in the Ramadan war, the tables were turned, and the Israelis became victims of their preconceptions about the Egyptians. This event has fascinated military writers, who had been largely hung up on the myth of Israeli infallibility, and a good deal of ink has flowed on the subject.

The Israel government established a commission (The Agranat Commission of Inquiry), which investigated the matter and found that the Israelis were surprised not because of any lack of intelligence but because they did not properly evaluate what they had. There was no shortage of information about what the Egyptians were doing, but the Israelis were prisoners of preconceptions about Egyptian abilities and intentions that made them reject the evidence before their eyes. They were convinced the Egyptians could not lay a hand on them.

The Agranat Commission found three reasons for this error in evaluation:

1. Stubborn adherence to "the conception,’’ which assumed that (a) Egypt would not go to war against Israel until she was able to stage air strikes against Israel’s major military airfields in order to paralyze her air force; (b) Syria would not launch a major offensive against Israel except simultaneously with Egypt. The commission noted that this conception was never properly checked and rechecked against the background of changed political circumstances and the acquisition of new weapon systems.

2. The head of the Intelligence Branch had assured the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) that it would have sufficient advance warning of enemy intentions to start an all-out attack. This assurance was the cornerstone of IDF defense plans, but there was no warrant for offering it.

3. In the days preceding the war, the research department of the Intelligence Branch came by an abundance of warning information but failed to evaluate it properly because of doctrinal adherence to the "conception’’ and willingness to explain away the enemy’s deployment at the front lines— although it was unprecedented in its scale and direction—as evidence of a defense move in Syria and a multi-division exercise in Egypt.²

The Israelis found themselves in this mind-set because they had developed a theory of "secure borders" to justify retention of their military conquests in 1967, and that theory practically precluded the possibility of an attack. They were not alone in this respect. Our intelligence community, giving too much credence to Israeli intelligence, was caught almost as foolishly as the Israelis were. Indeed, the initial reaction of most of us who had been following the Near East for years was that the Egyptians and Syrians were insane to undertake such an enterprise against the overwhelmingly powerful Israel defense forces. Yet the Egyptians won a tremendous psychological and political victory, and had their command and control structure and their commanders been more flexible and responsive, they could have had a net military victory as well, instead of ending tip with Israeli troops on the West Bank of the Canal. Sadat knew what he was doing, and it was we who were the fools not to see it. We were all prisoners of a concept based on Egypt’s miserable performance in 1948, 1956, and 1967, when its armed forces assumed forward postures they were unprepared to maintain in the face of determined enemy action.

In the past 20 years there have been a number of excellent studies of the phenomenon of surprise. The classic is Roberta Wohlstetter’s Pearl Harbor, Warning and Decision (Stanford University Press, 1962), which rigorously examines the American failure to perceive that the Japanese were about to attack. She uncovers, among other things, some truly pitiful examples of the lack of coordination among our different services. She records, for instance, that "The Navy had three conditions of alert, No. 1 being full alert condition, No. 2 and 3 tapering off toward routine conditions. The Navy always went into a full alert and then tapered off. The Army’s alert system worked in reverse. It started with an alert No. 1, which covered sabotage; No. 2 was designed for an air attack; and No. 3 was full alert.’’ (Thus, when the Army declared alert No. 1, the Navy mistakenly assumed it was on full alert. Meanwhile, the Army saw no need to go on higher alert status because it had so much confidence in the Navy’s ability to handle everything.) ‘‘The fact that Army and Navy alert practices in this respect had nothing in common was just one more detail in the picture of a respectful and cordial, but empty, communication between the services."

Interservice cooperation and coordination have obviously improved a great deal since those innocent days when our concepts of security were pretty rudimentary, but when the next military emergency occurs, we will uncover similar lacunae. Communications are still "cordial, but empty" on too many occasions, and interservice rivalries are still a factor in producing misunderstandings and mistakes. Furthermore, even when the rivalries are buried, mankind’s tendency always to take the other fellow’s perceptions and understandings for granted is augmented geometrically under stress.

More important to Wohlstetter's analysis, however, is the distinction between what she terms "signals’’ and "noise.’’ Signals are defined as intelligence as to the enemy’s intentions, and noise as false or ambiguous information that clogs the circuit and prevents proper reading of the factual information. Thus, in spite of our ability to decipher Japanese codes and awareness that war was imminent, the information (and misinformation) we had was interpreted by the commanders at Pearl Harbor to mean the Japanese intended to strike somewhere south of Japan instead of to the east. They did not consider seriously the possibility of a strike at Hawaii because it was inconceivable to them that the Japanese would try it.

In June 1941 the Russians were caught napping by the German invasion in spite of the amazing series of warnings that were conveyed to them by one means or another, including a remarkably accurate report of German battle plans given to the Soviet military attaché in Berlin six months before the attack. Warnings came from the British and the Americans, from the Soviet master spy in Tokyo, Richard Sorge, and from other intelligence sources too numerous to mention here. All of them seem to have been treated by the Soviets as probable provocations. Stalin believed that the Germans would attack sooner or later, but he expected to receive an ultimatum from Hitler first and apparently intended to alert his army then and not before. As a result, the Red Army was not alerted in spite of the readily visible German military concentrations along the border and in spite of frequent German overflights and other activities an intelligence service would normally interpret as signs of an impending attack. The strength of Stalin’s views on the subject was such that some local commanders at first prevented their troops from returning German fire for fear they would be responding to a provocation and would thereby give the Germans an excuse for attacking.

Few surprises have been quite as complete on such a vast scale as this one. Barton Whaley, in Code Word Barbarossa, concludes that the Wohlstetter model of noise versus signals does not apply fully here, because the Soviets were victims of a careful campaign of deception mounted by the Germans. They did not lack clear, unambiguous information but chose not to credit it because it did not accord with their expectations, which were in part wishful thinking—they were not ready for a German attack, so there would not be one. Hitler had always issued ultimatums in the past; therefore, they would have some warning, and meanwhile they must beware of provocateurs. Thus the Soviets were in prime psychological shape to be hoodwinked.

There are obvious factors of fatigue, group dynamics, rationalization, projection, wishful thinking, etc., which explain the phenomenon of surprise. There are obviously circumstances in which surprise is inevitable because one side does not have the means to know what the other is doing. There are numerous cases, however, where the information is available but is not acted on properly. In general, we hear what we want to hear, and we interpret events in ways that will support our preconceptions. It takes a massive and unequivocal change in an opponent’s tactics, such as the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, to convince us that those conceptions should be reexamined because they no longer explain what is happening. In the meantime, decision-makers tend to stick to comfortable hypotheses and close their minds to contrary views.

This tendency is reinforced when there is not time for full consideration of all the options and all the relevant information. This is all too common in the arena of national security affairs, and the drama of both foreign relations and military operations is how to reconcile the need for decisive and timely action with the need to know the facts and to make the correct decision. Decisions made in a hurry may be correct, but they may also be based on a superficial reading of insufficient information and the drawing of a premature conclusion as to what is at stake and how we must react. The Russians, for all their freedom from democratic restraints, seem more deliberate than we in their process of decision-making, and while this does not save them from error—witness Afghanistan—they at least give themselves some time for reflection; while our impatient poker players insist that the President slap his six-shooter on the table and declare that Judge Colt has won. As long as God was our patron and our resources limitless, we could do this with relative impunity. Theodore Roosevelt could bully the Sultan of Morocco because there was no way the latter could retaliate against the United States, and no one else cared much what happened to him.

Today we could not get away with it because the world has changed, and so has our role.

To return to my original point, it has been my experience that even when there is ample time, the decision-making process routinely proceeds from imperfect understandings and preconceptions the decision-makers have about the nature of the problem, particularly when it becomes too important to be left to the experts. We then become prisoners of theories and rationalizations advanced to justify a given course of action which may have been decided on for good reasons but reasons which are essentially irrelevant to solving the problem at hand, e.g., domestic-political considerations which have influenced our Cyprus and Middle East policies. There is a high degree of institutionalized irrationality in this process, and while this is intuitively understood by many of the subordinate participants, those in charge normally suffer the illusion that they are proceeding in a logical and orderly way to resolve a problem. When it does not work, they blame circumstances or the actions of others; they rarely admit that in fact the fundamental assumptions of their policies are invalid and that they were victims of a misperception, willful or otherwise.

The common thread that runs through the examples of surprise described above is one of miscalculation based on a set of perceptions about the behavior of the other fellow. In some instances these are national or ethnic stereotypes: "The Egyptians (or Jews, or Chinese, or Russians) are incapable of fighting a modern war.’’ Sometimes it is a question of ideological imperatives—the British and Americans are capitalists seeking to get Hitler bogged down in Russia; therefore, their warnings about his intentions are not to be taken seriously. Sometimes it is a rejection of, or a failure even to consider, the unprecedented—the Japanese have never come as far as Hawaii before; it would be foolish of them to do so now. Common to such deliberations is an unwillingness to examine coldly the rationalizations on which the consensus is based, or an unawareness that they are rationalizations. Also common to them in many parts of the world is the devil theory of history: If something goes awry, it must be the fault of the colonial power, or the neoimperialists, or the Soviets, or the Arabs, or the Jews—any explanation that will permit evasion of the unpleasant realities of internal incompetence or unreliability.

Much thought has been given to prevention of such miscalculations. The favorite initial response is to recommend reorganization and restructuring of intelligence organizations and to recommend that there be some provision for a devil’s advocate to argue against the popular consensus. While both of these may help, both are limited in effectiveness. The errors are human and tend to repeat themselves no matter who is in charge of the intelligence agency, particularly since he is likely to have the same type of people feeding him information that his predecessor had; and no matter how he moves them around, the total product has an institutional consistency. Furthermore, the analysts and directors of such agencies sometimes have their own intellectual axes to grind and may shape output accordingly.

As for the devil’s advocate, he risks becoming a pariah if he effectively challenges a popular consensus. (It is easier if the consensus is unpopular or unappealing.) Few people have the courage to do that, and those who do are often made to pay for it by having their careers stunted. This may not be the perception from the top, but it is a lively one from the bottom. It is axiomatic that the man at the top can rarely know when he is unconsciously stifling dissent, particularly if he does not make a determined effort to ensure that dissent can be expressed freely, and few of us do so because dissent is usually unwelcome, even to the most charitable of us.

Even when dissent channels are open, there is no infallible way we can prevent misjudgments because they are endemic to the human condition. Roberta Wohlstetter comments:

If the study of Pearl Harbor has anything to offer for the future it is this: We have to accept the fact of uncertainty and learn to live with it. No magic, in code or otherwise, will provide certainty. Our plans must work without it.

We would do better, however, if we educated our policymakers and military leaders more thoroughly to be wary of simplistic answers and more alert to the diverse character of the world’s peoples and the inner complexities of some of their problems. An open mind that knows something about the other side is less likely to accept popular concepts uncritically. This will not solve the problem of groupthink, because the group has its own momentum that will carry even the clearest thinker with it, unless he wishes to isolate himself. It would, however, give the clear thinker better tools with which to work.

It is, of course, easier to point out the shortcomings than to provide the remedy, and it is difficult to reconcile the requirements of specialized, professional education with a broader understanding.

Doctors are so often among our political illiterates precisely because they do not have time to educate themselves beyond their professional field. Similarly, the Air Force pilot has so much to absorb in the way of professional skills that he has little time for intellectual pursuits. Nor, given the qualities we seek in a pilot, should we expect him to have much interest in intellectual matters. We want a fighter, not a reflective philosopher, in the cockpit.

If, however, he is going on to senior positions in the Air Force, he needs some sophistication. He needs to understand that international problems are complex, that he cannot project American behavior onto Iranians, that things are seldom what they seem, that American actions often look different when seen from abroad, and that it is a mistake to see everything bad that happens abroad as a manifestation of U.S-Soviet rivalry.

Where does he get that broader understanding? Certainly not in American high schools, nor in most universities. Often it is possible to proceed all the way to a Ph.D. in happy ignorance of foreign languages or cultures, and without the slightest understanding of foreign affairs. After all, we have rarely thought it necessary to know about the outside world; it was up to them to learn about us—like the woman I saw on TV the other night brandishing a sign at the Cuban immigrants that said, "We speak English here.’’

We could afford this happy ignorance in our days of autarky. We are no longer in that blessed state. We have not been for a long time, but it took OPEC to bring it home to us. Our survival today depends on our showing some sophistication about the outside world and about the choices available to us in such places as Iran and Afghanistan. We cannot afford to be prisoners of historical myths, comfortable oversimplifications, and Procrustean concepts.

To my mind, the only place the Air Force officer is likely to get that sophistication is at a service school or a university. The number who can enjoy the latter luxury is limited. The burden will have to be borne by the service schools, and particularly the Air War College. This is difficult to do in an era when the emphasis is on professional skills and studying war. The decision to apply such emphasis has been conscious and deliberate, at the highest levels, and there is much to be said for it.

It is not for me, an outsider, to tell the Air Force how to use its resources in time and manpower, but we should always beware of throwing the baby out with the bathwater (an expression from pre-inside plumbing days). We are a nation of overreactors, and the problem in our society is always how to keep the swings between reasonable limits. Thus, I suggest the Air Force take another look at the pendulum and see if a gentle little adjustment is possible.

Air University (ATC)

Notes

1. Al-Ahram, May 2, 1967.

2. For a fuller study of this classic case, see Avi Shlaim, "National Intelligence Failures: The Case of the Yom Kippur War," World Politics, April 1976.

Photo courtesy of Department of the Navy, Office of Information, Washington, D.C.

Disclaimer

The conclusions and opinions expressed in this document are those of the author cultivated in the freedom of expression, academic environment of Air University. They do not reflect the official position of the U.S. Government, Department of Defense, the United States Air Force or the Air University.

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