Intelligence and Strategic Surprises Revisited: A Response to Richard K. Betts's "Surprise, Scholasticism, and Strategy"

Abstract

The point of departure for Intelligence and Strategic Surprises (Levite, 1987) was a review of some twenty-five years of academic research into the surprise phenomenon. This review revealed that a remarkably broad consensus had emerged in the discipline regarding that phenomenon, pertaining most clearly to its ubiquity and high probability of occurence (i.e., inevitability) but also extending to its underlying causes. Studies reflecting this broad consensus were conveniently referred to by Betts as the “orthodox school,” whose origins can be traced back to Roberta Wohlstet-ter's pathbreaking study of Pearl Harbor (Wohlstetter, 1962). As Betts correctly points out, not only the classical studies of surprise but also most of the more recent ones belong to this “orthodox school.” This clearly is not the case with Intelligence and Strategic Surprises (ISS) , which Betts, in his comprehensive and insightful review of the book, classifies as the first member of the “revisionist school” of surprise. In his review, Betts dwells on the differences between the so-called “orthodox” and “revisionist” schools as well as on some specific features of ISS . Making ISS into a one-book “revisionist school” is flattering, if hardly justified.1 In addition, some of the differences Betts sees between the two “schools” are more imagined than real. Still, he does highlight some genuine disagreements between ISS and the orthodox school, although he usually attributes them to the failings of ISS . This response therefore seeks to clarify briefly the areas of agreement and disagreement between ISS and the orthodox school pertaining to methodology and theory as well as to policy implications.