SE-502 PITFALLS OF STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

PURPOSE:
The purpose of this lesson is to make you aware that oftentimes we view our environment through a looking glass of our own beliefs, values, religions, cultures, and emotions. Unless caution is used when analyzing the strategic environment our bias may have serious consequences when we try to achieve desired objectives.

Papp, Daniel S. Contemporary International Relations: A Framework for Understanding.

LESSON OBJECTIVES:

502.1 Comprehend how bias affects strategic analyses.

502.11 Distinguish examples of bias in a strategic analysis.

We see . . . through the eyes of one participant after the other. Each vision is so different, so contradictory, that in the end we can never be certain of what it is that has transpired . . . the images . . . not only vary widely from one power to another but also from one period to another. The same is true of the images which the involved powers have of each other's actions and motivations. Harrison Salisbury

O wad some poer the giftie gie us To see oursel's as ithers see us! Robert Burns

"For years, the United States viewed the Soviet Union as bent on international expansion and conquest, and the Soviet Union claimed the United States sought imperial growth and economic domination.

Perceptions are often identify three by separate components of -- values, beliefs, and cognitions.

Values give rank and order to conditions, situations, individuals, and objects. An individual's values are what leads that individual to prefer one condition, situation, person, or object over another.

A belief, by contrast, is the acceptance of a particular description of reality as true or legitimate. A belief is usually an effort to explain in a consistent manner a pattern of activity consisting of several pieces of information. It is, in the simplest terms, an analytical answer to a stated question.

Cognition is any piece of information that observers receive about their surroundings that they use to arrive at a value or belief. Cognitions may be either sensory or factual inputs. Watching Saddam Hussein kill his countrymen was our cognitive inputs from which we concluded that dictatorship was a less desirable form of government than democracy.

Perceptions are guides to action. We will analyze some of the differing global perceptions of two recent international actions, namely the U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan.

Vietnam - From August 1950 until April 1975, the United States attempted to create a viable noncommunist state in Vietnam.

The U.S. perceptions:

• Involvement in Vietnam occurred during the depths of the East-West Cold War.
• policy-makers viewed the world in bipolar terms during this era; (either Eastern bloc or the Western bloc).
• policy-makers concluded that the struggle in Vietnam was not between a colonial power and freedom fighters, but rather between anticommunists and communists.
• In the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, during the early 1950s the was in Vietnam began to:

...assume its true complexion of a struggle between Communism and non-Communist forces rather than one between a colonial power and colonists who were intent on attaining independence.

• The "domino theory": The area of Indochina is immensely wealthy in rice, rubber, cork, and iron ore. Its position makes it a strategic key to the rest of Southeast Asia. If Indochina should fall, Thailand and Burma would be in extreme danger. Malaya, Singapore, and even Indonesia would become more vulnerable to the Communist power drive. If they get this peninsula of Indochina, Siam, Burma, Malays, they would have what is called the rice bowl of Asia....And you can see that if the Soviet Union had control of the rice bowl of Asia that would be another weapon which would tend to expand their control into Japan and into India.
• The U.S. perceived the Soviet Union as organizing and directing the Vietminh and formulated its policy on that perception.
• International prestige of the US: Honor, reliability, and commitment.
  

Soviet Union view of U.S. involvement:

• United States had embarked on a policy of active military suppression of national liberation movements undertaken beneath the cover of U.S. Strategic nuclear superiority.
• Soviet media continually lambasted the "aggressive actions of American imperialism" and predicted that the United States could not win the war.
• Meanwhile, the Soviets pointed to Vietnam as a classic case of capitalist imperialism and U.S. expansionist aggressiveness.
  

Afghanistan In 1979, Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. The Soviets claimed that the government had invited them into Afghanistan.

USSR perception:

• Afghan socialism had to be defended regardless of cost. To a doctrinaire Soviet Marxist-Leninist, this would have been a strong argument.
• Soviet decision-makers viewed the Mujahadeen's activities in conjunction with the Iranian revolution, and argued that Soviet national security would be jeopardized.
• Pro-Soviet Afghan government in danger of being overthrown and replaced by a government that could ally itself with Iran.
• An alliance between Afghan and Iran could not only present the USSR with a military threat along its southern borders, but also serve as a center of attraction and possibly alternate loyalty for the millions of Soviet Central Asian Muslims.
• Soviet invasion of Afghanistan protecting internal Soviet security.
• Small controlled war in Afghanistan would be the ideal place to test Soviet weapons and tactics.
• An opportunity to expand the Soviet empire and take one more step toward obtaining the long-desired warm-water port.
• Soviet air power within striking distance of the vital Strait of Hormuz, through which much of the oil imported by Western Europe, Japan, and the United States passed.
  

U.S. perceptions:

• The Soviet Union sought to add to the territory under its influence.
• USSR sought to place itself in a position where it could cut off the West's oil imports from the Persian Gulf.
  

This state of affairs continued until 1991, when the two sides finally agreed to stop sending military aid into Afghanistan. A year later, the government that the Soviet Union had installed in Kabul finally fell to the Mujahadeen. But by then, the Soviet government had fallen as well. It was rather ironic that after the U.S.S.R. and the United States had spent so much time, wealth, and energy on Afghanistan, by the time the Mujahadeen won in Afghanistan, neither Moscow nor Washington were particularly interested in Afghan affairs. Finally, the two former antagonists in the Cold War-which itself was now over-saw Afghan affairs in the same way.