Abstract
This project is an attempt to understand why strategic surprise is a recurring phenomenon in international affairs. There is an obvious but incomplete answer: some national leaders will always keep their plans secret to gain advantage over or protect themselves from rival countries. But surprise also often appears to be a self-inflicted injury whereby leaders in Country A actually have sufficient information to assess Country B’s goals but are nonetheless surprised when Country B does something that harms Country A’s interests. The consequences for Country A of such analytic and policy failures are extremely severe, which is why we use the adjective strategic to describe the impact of the surprise. So this project is an attempt to explain why national leaders time and again experience strategic surprise despite having sufficient information beforehand that should allow them to avoid this unpleasant outcome.To understand surprise in international affairs, we have to know where it actually occurs, and so this project focuses on the people—national leaders and their advisors and staff—who experience it. We are not using material or organizational theories because the former do not examine the phenomenon of surprise and the latter is unsatisfying because its explanatory power is inconsistent. Since our level of analysis is the cognition of officials, this project makes use of concepts from political psychology to explain why decision-makers frequently commit occupational self-harm in the course of their duties. We will look at two factors—how officials process incoming information and how they perceive foreign counterparts—to determine if these independent variables can offer a consistent and compelling explanation for our dependent variable, which is strategic surprise. To understand the first independent variable, we will identify the cognitive scripts officials used to process incoming information and the extent to which these scripts led officials to make analytic errors and pursue unsuccessful policies.
To understand the second independent variable, we will examine the extent to which officials had some (or any) empathy towards the foreign actor, to determine if these officials had a correct or flawed understanding of what the foreign actor was trying to achieve.
This project uses three cases of US officials experiencing strategic surprise in the 20th century—US-Japan relations prior to Pearl Harbor, China’s intervention in Korea, and deepening US involvement in Vietnam—to test if our two independent variables have explanatory power. The results are compelling: using cognitive scripts and levels of empathy show a clear impact on strategic surprise, as seen in the high frequency of US officials misinterpreting foreign adversary actions, missing opportunities to advance US goals relative to that adversary, and taking steps against the adversary that backfire and have the opposite of the desired effect.
- In the case study on US-Japan relations, we see prevailing scripts and low levels of empathy resulting in four major cognitive errors that constitute strategic surprise: the US did not understand why Japan would not hew to US strategic preferences nor why Tokyo found them to be objectionable; the US did not understand that leveraging superior economic power against Japan would backfire; the US assumed incorrectly that Japan would be deterred by a large US military force build-up in the Philippines; and US officials failed to understand that pushing Japan to exit its quagmire in China was humiliating and therefore could not be rushed.
- In the Korean War case study, we see prevailing scripts and low levels of empathy resulting in four cognitive errors that constitute strategic surprise: the US did not understand why the People’s Republic of China was deeply suspicious of and hostile towards Washington; US officials did not realize that their decision to not intervene in the closing moments of China’s civil war and then focus on offshore bases in Japan and the Philippines would lead communist powers to conclude that the US did not consider the affairs of mainland East Asia to be a major national interests; US officials did not realize how its decision in June 1950 to dispatch US troops to defend South Korea and deploy US warships in the waters between China and Formosa would make China’s leadership conclude that the US was taking sides in China’s civil war; and US officials ignored China’s repeated warnings that US troops moving through North Korea should not approach China’s border.
- In the Vietnam case study, we see prevailing scripts and low levels of empathy resulting in four major cognitive errors that constitute strategic surprise: the US exaggerated South Vietnam’s strategic importance to US security; the US assumed that vast amounts of US aid would enable South Vietnam to stand up to North Vietnam on the battlefield and offer a more attractive vision for Vietnamese nationalism for the populace; the US assumed inflicting material pain on North Vietnam in the form of bombing campaigns would make Hanoi abandon its goal of conquering South Vietnam; and US officials failed to take advantage both major differences both between North Vietnam’s sponsors and Hanoi as well as within North Vietnam that would have allowed the US to either gain time to strengthen South Vietnam or create a face-saving exit from the conflict.
The conclusion that strategic surprise can be explained by understanding how officials use scripts to process incoming information and these officials’ levels of empathy towards foreign actors is a useful addition in the field of International Relations. This approach offers new analytic tools for academics to study foreign policy decisionmaking and gain a deeper understanding why otherwise intelligent and well-informed officials make terrible decisions. And it equips government officials to be more mindful of how they do their jobs, making them more aware of what are probably unconscious assumptions regarding the efficacy of various policy tools as well as about the goals, motivations, strategies, and behaviors of foreign adversaries.
| Date of Award | 1 Jun 2023 |
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| Original language | English |
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| Supervisor | Kenneth Payne (Supervisor) |