Toward a new world; Intelligence and the policy process, part two

Right it was always the starting point and some of the wordy today even though the procedure is now the National Security Council are considerably less formal. It is routine for the the policy makers the decision makers before they explore a particular topic. Of course sometimes we get an emergency in a crisis where you don't have time to go through these more systematic procedures but in the in the normal course of events you always turn to the intelligence community to come up with a an estimate or which can be which will be a very systematic and carefully prepared document if time is of the essence you may ask for a special national intelligence estimate because you need something quicker. But in any event it this is the starting point now. In a sense your starting point of course is is national purpose or national interest as I suppose our speaker this morning this evening might call upon tomorrow. But whatever you call it it's sort of the basic and enduring aspirations that we as a people feel. That's background. Now if you want to to achieve those broadly

stated purposes you have to translate this into policy. You've got to move beyond aspiration to courses of action because that's what policy means it's doing something. But before you can do that. You have to analyze what stands in the way of our achieving these enduring aspirations and that's where intelligence comes in. And once you've identified what those problems are. And. Another part of the analysis of course is to analyze what your opportunities are. But once you analyze your problems and your opportunities then you have a better basis for saying all right. In the light of these circumstances the best course of action for me to pursue the best policy for me to adopt is to move in this direction without dwelling on it I might move to just a mention of other parts of the process and that is in this kind of analysis you will identify a thousand and one things that would be nice to do. But there are limits in foreign policy you can only do so much if for

no other reason and because there are restraint in the field of resources. You can't do everything you don't have the resources the wherewithal to do all that it might be nice to do. So you have to establish priorities and you have to decide what comes first. Now I give you this framework to indicate that intelligence enters into this policy picture very early in the game. Now. The purpose of intelligence as I've suggested is to identify your problems and your opportunities. The problem in a military sense is of course what are the threats that we face. What is the enemy threat as we call it in the military estimate of the situation. And here we get back to this problem of the of analyzing enemy capabilities and analyzing enemy intentions. This is a very complex topic a very controversial one in military circles and in intelligence circles. And we need not dwell on it here let me simply make a couple of observations. First it would be awfully nice to

know what the enemy intends to do. However there is a grave danger in acting upon your estimate of what the enemy's intentions are because he may act very differently than you had estimated. It is a much sounder course of action insofar as it is feasible to talk in terms of what the enemy is capable of doing that threatens you. And then to be prepared to deal with that threat throughout its entire through all of its dimensions and in all of its parts ensure magnitude. Now that's one point would be very nice to be able to deal to to be able to equip yourself to deal with the enemy's capabilities. In point of fact this is very hard to do because the enemy has a wide range of capabilities. Just to put it in very simple terms for example he can pick the time and place to attack. He has aggressive intentions. Whereas presumably if you have defensive intentions becomes very

difficult for you to always be prepared to deal with his attack at the time and place of his choice. And in the magnitude that he elects to attack. Now that's one dimension of the problem. Realistically we have to deal with to a degree with enemy intentions. Intelligence doctrine allows for this intelligence doctrine provide that if the evidence or if the circumstances clearly suggest that certain courses of action of an enemy are much more probable than other courses of action then it is permissible to gear your own plans to those more probable choices of your enemy. But intelligence doctrine also says that in so doing it cannot be to the exclusion of being able to deal with the other possibilities. Should the enemy elect to do the improbable. So in a sense you're right back where you started from. You almost have to deal with all enemy

capabilities in the real world you can't. You have to try to evaluate what are the probabilities what are the likelihoods in effect what are your other what is your estimate of the enemy's intentions. Now one of the profound facts of the nuclear age is that we can't go into here but we may want to talk a little bit about later is that given a mutual of the Horenstein of the possibility of a thermonuclear war as between let's say the US and the USSR neither side is ever likely to commit its military potential to the full. So automatically you see we've defined the threat as being something below the threshold of an all out there more nuclear war between ourselves in the Soviet Union. We're automatically in the area now of and of estimating intentions or probabilities or likelihood.

This seems a reasonable proposition. But to go back to the intelligence doctrine problem what if that assumption that preconception isn't accurate then how do you deal with that thermonuclear war should it occur. Well we obviously can't go into that at this moment. I simply cite this as an illustration of how you automatically degrade the enemy's capability on the basis that he is unlikely to engage or to initiate this kind of a conflict. And I'm sure that the Moscow planners are proceeding on the assumption that the United States is unlikely to initiate this kind of a conflict. Although they may well be planning to deal with it should it occur and their deployment of the ABM suggest this is a possibility at least. You can go further than this and that is that because the nuclear age. Always has within it the potential of this catastrophic war. Both sides are also very

reluctant to employ military force. For any purpose at all because once employed it is always like it is always the strong possibility that it may get out of control. Wars have a historical tendency to get out of control. They acquire their own dynamic their own logic many times that logic is unrelated to the initial reason for the employment of military force. World War 1 being a classic example. And therefore there is on the side on the part of both sides a very powerful restraint operating to inhibit the use of force at all. And therefore we have witnessed in the in the post war age era since 1945 the Atomic Age gone. That the threshold of violence has tended to be rather low that there has been great restraint and inhibitions operating on both sides. So here again your analysis may suggest to you that far from having to be able to deal with the full sized. Soviet capability of what is it maybe one hundred twenty five Soviet divisions in Europe

in being that far from being here having to be required to deal with that capability. The actual threat in Europe is of some lesser order of magnitude that is the problem maybe of an accident or a miscalculation or a boundary dispute or something or some event that occurred it's probably going to be by the way the elder von Moltke is a fourth course of action the one you never dreamed would happen. But whatever it is there is the general expectation that your that the Soviets are unlikely to mount a messy all out ground attack against Western Europe. Why. Because they must recognize that embarking on a course of action of this kind has great potential dangers. On the assumption that they don't want to face that danger of a thermonuclear war presumably they would not risk this kind of provocation. Again you see you're dealing with enemy intentions. Now we could we could talk about this a great deal it's the heart of the intelligence process trying to draw

distinction between capabilities and intentions. But let's leave the later discussion in case you want to pursue it more fully. Any further discussion of that let me turn now to the to the next aspect of this I want to talk about. And in in in a measure here I'm summing up some of the things that have been said already. Let's I want to talk a little bit about expectations. We've already talked about the unexpected the unexpected being the attack on Pearl Harbor the German launching of the battle of the Bulge the Soviet placing the missiles in Cuba. That was where we had an intelligence failure and we had to face the unexpected that fourth course of action that the elder Malky talked about. I want to talk about the opposite side of the coin now and that is the effect of expectations on the policy process and I want to cite just two illustrations. I'm sure most of you were here last night when Jenna Marshall

talked about the war in the Middle East. You remember during the question period the matter came up with a so-called tactical employment of nuclear weapons and going to Marshall's basic position was. That these weapons the use of these weapons was just too dangerous to contemplate because once employed for any purpose the war was likely to explode into an all out there in the nuclear exchange. And there are a lot of people who hold this view. And it's a very understandable view and I don't propose because I don't think it's serves our purposes in this context to discuss the merits or demerits of that position. But I want to call your attention to a very important aspect of that position. If your expectation is that any employment of nuclear weapons will inescapably to use the popular vernacular these days escalate into a general nuclear war. What does this do to a responsible decision maker in any capital who has these weapons under his control.

Well let's take the present the United States let's assume for the moment that he agrees with General Marshall that his escalation expectation with respect to any employment of nuclear weapons is that if they're used for any purpose that war will become a general nuclear war. How likely do you think he is to ever employ the first nuclear weapon. This would be like asking somebody to play Russian roulette with every chamber of the revolver loaded. And I don't think anybody here wants to play Russian roulette against those odds. In fact I would submit that if the escalation expectation is that there is even a 50/50 chance that if you ever use nuclear weapons you're going to initiate ultimately the big nuclear exchange. If it's 50/50 in other words a revolver with every other chamber loaded those are odds you don't want to face either. And it's very hard to conceive of an issue.

In the world emerging where the president in that kind of situation would every lead to make the first use of nuclear weapons even for tactical purposes. So my only point here is to point out that your expectations have can have a profound effect. On the decision making process because if your decision maker views the situation one way his options are of a certain character. And there are many options if you're starting from the premise that any use of nuclear weapons will mean a big thermonuclear war. If on the other hand you say I can control the use of tactical nuclear weapons this is my expectation. And if you go one step further and say I intend to do everything in my power to make this expectation come true and you have a very different baseline from which to make the decision to initiate the employment of nuclear weapons for tactical purposes. You can you can extend this analysis more broadly to the question of escalation generally. A very popular topic with respect to Vietnam some weeks ago Senator McGovern made a speech

in which he said it is inescapably the case that when we escalate the war in Vietnam the enemy will escalate the war. Well think about that proposition for a moment. If we escalate the war and it's inescapably the fact that the enemy also will then take that as the occasion for us collating the war however you may define escalation. What is this a sure prescription for. This is a sure prescription for the war getting out of control ultimately the war will inescapably then become ultimately a general nuclear war. If your expectation is as Senator McGovern apparently has the expectation that any escalation produces a counter escalation then this is a sure prescription for saying you better not get in in the first place. But what's that or a formula for that's not a formula for policy. That's a formula for complete inaction. That's trying to live in a world which doesn't exist in a world where there is no risk.

When I think obviously it's it's the case that inaction also carries risks because by the failure to do certain things we may simply be creating a situation where other things which are even more dangerous can occur. So my only point here is that this business of your expectations with respect to enemy responses to your own actions or with respect to the inevitability of something happening. If you do such and such is a very important part of this whole business of determining policy and decision making. I was talking a little earlier about how in the policy process the United States Intelligence Board is asked usually at the very early stage of the process to come up with a national intelligence estimate. One of the most important kinds of special intelligence estimates produced by the United States intelligence board is a an estimate along these lines. What is likely to be the

Soviet reaction let us say if we do such and such in Iran or what is likely to be the Soviet reaction if we blockade the port of Haifa. And you can just extend this out into the night. So the point here is that we're very much concerned with this whole business of expectations and therefore we call upon the intelligence community to to look into this kind of thing in a very specific way. But so far we've had nothing but problems. Is there any way out of this rather bleak picture. We've had notable failures of intelligence. Are we ever likely to be perfect. The answer is No. We're faced immediately with the problem that the older von Moltke talked about. We can expect the unexpected. And so I say the first lesson we have to learn from all of this is that a planner

almost has to calculate in his plans that there will be miscalculation on one side and the other a bull in a confrontation or in an actual war situation. In previous talks here at the institute I've spelled out in considerable. Detail how this element of miscalculation appears to be one of the essential dynamic forces operating in a limited war. And in crises and in confrontations. Whether you start with Korea or Cuba or anything else you will find miscalculation on both sides. Korea we miscalculated we didn't think the Chinese communist would intervene if we marched beyond the thirty eighth parallel toward the yellow they did. Khrushchev miscalculated he could put the missiles in Cuba. Went ahead and we intervened very effectively did force them out and so on you could just spin out the history of since 1945 and find this element a miscalculation almost always present

so I think the first lesson is the planner better think about the probability of miscalculation. Some of you may be very interested in this connection with a in a in a an issue of the team out I think it was July 66. An issue of The Journal of the social sciences. This entire issue was devoted to the subject misperception and the Vietnam War. It was written by Ralph White. Who I believe is a social psychologist who used to be with us Ira. He talks about the the misperceptions and Vietnam War in a very interesting way he talks about the images which both sides have of the other. I think I can remember what most of these images were and I might just tick them off because one of them is germane to what we're talking about here one. One is particularly germane for one thing. We have an image both sides have an image of a diabolical enemy.

This has been true also and this is true also of course in World War 1 World War 2 when I think probably Professor White would say it's in the inescapably the case particularly for people such as ourselves where when we become involved in wars it becomes a very moral issue that's involved in the war to end wars and war to make the world safe for democracy and so forth. The world then becomes black and white. There are the good guys and the bad guys like in a television Western and they're the aggressors and the defenders and it becomes very neatly sorted out. Of course the real world it isn't black or white at all it's so it's very great but in any event the enemy is always diabolical. Another image is that you have of what's called the virile self image both sides have it that you simply can't back off from the challenge. And you spelled this out in great detail. The virile self-image she has another sort of related.

Image and that is there is military overconfidence on both sides. And he points out that this is occurred in other wars as well and it's because of his overconfidence by the way that you tend to get a source of miscalculation because if both sides are mis estimating their own capabilities on the plane. On the plus side and if your enemy is more accurately estimating your own capabilities you have immediately a source of miscalculation on both sides and the Middle East war I think the General Marshall talked about last night is a good example of this I guess the Soviets certainly must have miscalculated the Arab capabilities in the situation or they wouldn't of let this thing happen. This is again one of the images that he talks about. Well let me just mention the fourth one that he talks about that particularly important here. He says that this is he calls this selective inattention selective inattention. Well that's another way of talking about this business of perception.

You're just inattentive to signals that don't conform to your policy predilections. You don't perceive them for what they are. Again I simply cite this as this issue of The Journal of the social sciences something an issue that some of you may be very much interested in because it talks about some of the things I've tried to talk about this morning in the context of Vietnam. Now to get back to the question of remedies I've already suggested one of the things the planner has to do is to take into account the possibility of miscalculation. And in I have suggested that we ought to look think about enemies misperceptions 2 as something that we have to take into account as a possibility that Hanoi may be mis perceiving the United States intentions and that this can be a very important part of your estimate of the situation in arriving then it's your own policy choices. Now another thing which is a much more plebeian kind of thing that you can do to help the

situation of the role of intelligence in the policy process. Is to do what is referred to in military circles as war gaming. In other words you can bring together as we do now the principals who would be involved in a particular crisis and have them actually play out a wargame under a very under a set of particular circumstances. As I say this is being done. There is a for example within the Joint Chiefs of Staff agency known as the joint war games agency and they have they conduct all kinds of war games and strategic nuclear exchange type war games. Limited war games but they also conduct a very important kind of war game called political military games. And in these games they bring together the military and civilian leaders in Washington who are respond who would be responsible for dealing with a particular situation should it develop and they actually play out in a game

environment what the courses of action are and how and how how those issues are decided or might be decided. Now it's very important to remember about wargaming that the purpose of the game is not to tell you what you would do if the situation should actually develop that way. The purpose of the game is to identify the crucial the critical factors. And to identify the various options that are open to you so that if the situation actually did develop in some way you're much better equipped to deal with it than would otherwise be the case. The simple truth of the matter of course is that the situation never actually develops the way it developed in the world and therefore the solutions you arrive at the war game are never applicable in the actual situation. But as General Marshall used to say the important thing about doing advance planning is not that the plan produced will be relevant to the situation but rather that the process of going through that planning equip you to deal with the situation much more effectively than would otherwise be the case in other words this is a another argument for saying we have to a lot of contingency planning. I might by the way just

indicate what I mean by planning. It has to do with this business of foreseeing the future again. You can't produce a plan that will fit if you do contingency as I have suggested. But what a plan does it. It's the process of looking into the future as best you can in order to arrive at present decisions. And if you're looking to the future says that the most crucial problem facing the world is the population explosion. And certainly that's one of them. Then presumably on the basis of that conviction you will undertake certain actions. Now finally with respect to remedies I think that the most important area that needs better analysis. And cure is a problem I alluded to at the outset of one of the key things I want to talk about I can only mention it and that is that we may have the most perfect intelligence in the world. Our estimates baby 100 percent accurate that yes the Soviets are going to put missiles in Cuba. Yes the Chinese Communists will intervene.

But even if you had perfect intelligence you still have the problem of translating it into policy. What do you do about it. And as I suggested earlier one of the things you that faces you here is the planner the operators the policymakers the decision makers the doers. Just often doesn't like to hear what he doesn't like to tune in on what the intelligence officer is telling him. Because as I suggested at the outset we often believe what we want to believe and if we're hearing bad news. If our intelligence officer is telling us something about the likely course of events which doesn't conform to the policy choice I'd like to make then we we turn off our hearing and we don't hear that advice and therefore we don't act upon it. I think that if if a close analysis were made of the post-war world war two period that many of the so-called

failures of intelligence in that period not the ones I've cited these were truly intelligence failures. But many other failures to act have not been because of the lack of intelligence accurate forecasts of what the future might hold but rather an unwillingness to act upon the basis of that intelligence. And I cite simply the so-called surprise of the Soviet satellite in October of 57. This was not a surprise. This was accurately estimated by many circles in Washington that the Soviets had this capability and would be likely to do it at about the time that they did. We've all heard the common allegation that the our big problem is we always underestimate the enemy. We for example mis estimated when the Soviets would get the atomic bomb. Or. It was if you were going on to graduate work might want to. And if you're in this kind of field you might want to consider doing a master's thesis on the question I get examining that hypothesis.

Have we really been that bad in our estimates. Or has the real problem van that we haven't acted upon the estimates that we have received. Getting back to the Soviet Tomic weapon for example it has been said time and time again so that has become a myth. The kind of thing that John Marshall was talking about. Respect to the Middle East war. It's become a myth that we grossly underestimated when the Soviets would get the atomic bomb. The evidence simply will not support that proposition. In 1046 Irving Langmuir a very distinguished physicist was German of the very distinguished committee of scientists and they were asked this precise question. And they came to the very simple conclusion that the Soviets had the scientific ability to produce this weapon that if they put enough priority on the task. They should be able to achieve it within three years. 1949 when they got. Now I cite this and you can cite lots of others I cite this only because I think it's a tendency we have to which the word was flagellation I think we like to beat ourselves. And what I

think is really involved here is that the people who say we grossly mis underestimate the enemy capability what they're really saying is they're finding an excuse for not having done the things that they the policymakers should have done in the first place. They simply did not act upon the intelligence received. They didn't put enough high and they didn't put a high enough priority on doing something about that possibility about that kind of contingency. Well these are some of the of the remedies I'm suggesting. The planner has to think about the. THE UNEXPECTED. We have to try to reduce the area of the unknown by doing things such as political war gaming by doing better contingency planning. And finally we have to learn better how to translate intelligence and into policy which brings us back basically of course to this whole question of intelligence and the policy process. And with that I leave it to you for any questions you may have to want to explore particular aspects

of interest to you. Thank you. Thank you. You have been listening to the Institute on world affairs a series of lectures and discussions held each year on the San Diego State College campus. At this session the principal speaker was Colonel Donald S. Bussey U.S. Army retired a senior specialist in national defense of the Library of Congress. The institute brings together noted leaders from all walks of life who address themselves to the perplexing problems that face mankind. The Institute on world affairs was broadcast and recorded as a public service by the US radio and television facility of San Diego State College San Diego California. This program was distributed by national educational radio.

This is the national educational radio network now.