Hear no evil, see no evil: Why the United States gets net assessment wrong

Abstract

ABSTRACT Whether it’s the attack on Pearl Harbor, the outbreak of the Korean War, the start of the Gulf War, or the 9–11 terrorist attacks, the United States has suffered no shortage of strategic intelligence failures in its history. More recently, however, the United States has suffered from a different brand of mishap – a failure of net assessment, where the United States under- or overestimated how our allies would fare in a conflict against known adversaries. This article lays out two competing theories for why these net assessment failures happen – the missing variable hypothesis versus self-delusion. It then tests these theories against three cases of net assessment failures – Iraq in 2014, Afghanistan in 2021 and Ukraine in 2022. This article argues that contrary to popular belief, American net assessment failures are not primarily due a failure to collect the right information or an inability to assess the ‘will to fight’. Rather, American net assessment failures often stem from self-delusion. Because these assessments are often done at the upper rungs of government and include more qualitative judgements about friendly and enemy willpower and proficiency, senior government officials often shape their assessments to best fit their policy preferences. In other words, they fall victim to the confirmation trap. Consequently, if the United States aims to produce better net assessments in the future, then it needs to guard against this bias by professionalizing net assessment.