[p2p-research] Candid Interviews with Former Soviet Officials Reveal U.S. Strategic Intelligence Failure Over Decades

[Paul D. Fernhout]

Just to show when the "professionals" with billion dollar budgets go wrong:
""Previously Classified Interviews with Former Soviet Officials Reveal U.S. 
Strategic Intelligence Failure Over Decade: 1995 Contractor Study Finds that 
U.S. Analysts Exaggerated Soviet Aggressiveness and Understated Moscow's 
Fears of a U.S. First Strike"
   http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/nukevault/ebb285/index.htm
"""
While the BDM analysts found that some interpretations of Soviet policy were 
consistent with the interview evidence (e.g., the Soviet interest in 
avoiding nuclear war and Moscow's quest for superiority), they identified 
what they believed to be important failures of analysis, including:
     * "[Erring] on the side of overestimating Soviet aggressiveness" and 
underestimated "the extent to which the Soviet leadership was deterred from 
using nuclear weapons." [I: iv, 35]. Recent evidence from oral history 
sources supports this finding.  The Soviet leadership of the 1960s and 19702 
suffered from a strategic inferiority complex that supports its drive for 
parity with (or even superiority over) the United States. All of the 
strategic models developed by Soviet military experts had a defensive 
character and assumed a first strike by NATO (See Document 3 at pages 26-27, 
Oral History Roundtable, Stockholm, p. 61)
     * "Seriously misjudg[ing] Soviet military intentions, which had the 
potential [to] mislead…U.S. decision makers in the event of an extreme 
crisis." For example, the authors observed that the Soviet leadership did 
not rule out a preemptive strike option, even though U.S. officials came to 
downplay the "probability" of Soviet preemption.  This misperception left 
open the possibility of U.S. action during a crisis that could invite a 
Soviet preemptive response and a nuclear catastrophe. [I: iv, 35, 68, 70-71]
     * "Serious[ly] misunderstanding … the Soviet decision-making process" 
by underestimating the "decisive influence exercised by the defense 
industry." That the defense industrial complex, not the Soviet high command, 
played a key role in driving the quantitative arms buildup "led U.S. 
analysts to … exaggerate the aggressive intentions of the Soviets." [I:7]
"""

Relevant, about a more peer based model of mutual security:
   "Morton Deutsch on Mutual Security"
   http://www.beyondintractability.org/audio/morton_deutsch/?nid=2430
"""
[Interview with Morton Deutsch: E.L. Thorndike Professor and Director 
Emeritus of the International Center for Cooperation and Conflict Resolution 
at Teachers College, Columbia University]
   Q: You're starting to see the analogy to international conflict, or 
intractable conflict on a larger scale?
   A: Yes. Well, I wrote a paper about preventing World War III. That was 
during the height of the cold war, I think I wrote it in 1982, it was called 
"The Presidential Address to the International Society to Political 
Psychology." And there I took the relationship between the United States and 
the Soviet Union and characterized it as a malignant relationship, which had 
some of the characteristics that I was talking about with the couple. It was 
right for both the United States and the Soviet Union to think that the 
other was hostile, would undo it, would damage it, you know, all of these 
things. The relationship was a malignant one. They had to become aware of 
the malignancy, and the only way out really was recognizing that it's 
hurting, recognizing that there is a potential better way of relating. And 
that better way of relating involves having a sense that one can only have 
security if there's mutual security. And that's true in most relationships. 
That's particularly true to recognize groups that have had bitter strife 
where they've hurt each other. They have to deal with the problem of how to 
get to where they can live together. It may be ethnic groups within a given 
nation or community. They can only live together if they recognize that 
their own security is going to be dependent on the other person's security. 
So each person, each side, each group has to be interested in the welfare of 
the other.
   On a national level it has to deal with military and other economic 
security. At the group level and personal level, it often has to do with 
psychological security. It has to do with someone recognizing, I shouldn't 
be treating the other in an undignified, disrespectful way. So in an 
interpersonal relationship, that kind of security, recognizing that not only 
are you entitled to it, so is the other person entitled to it. And if you 
don't give that other person that entitlement the relationship is going to 
move in the other direction, back to bitter conflict.
"""

--Paul Fernhout
http://www.pdfernhout.net/