Blinders, Blunders, and Wars What America and China Can Learn David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, Bonny Lin C O R P O R A T I O N ELECTRONIC COPIES OF RAND RESEARCH ARE PROVIDED FOR PERSONAL USE; POSTING TO A NONRAND WEBSITE IS PROHIBITED. THIS PUBLICATION IS AVAILABLE FOR LINKING OR FREE DOWNLOAD AT www.rand.org For more information on this publication, visit www.rand.org/t/RR768 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gompert, David C. Blinders, blunders, and wars : what America and China can learn / David C. Gompert, Hans Binnendijk, Bonny Lin. pages cm Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-8330-8777-5 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. War—Decision making—Case studies. 2. Strategy—Case studies. 3. Military history—Case studies. 4. United States —Military policy—Decision making. 5. China— Military policy—Decision making. I. Binnendijk, Hans. II. Lin, Bonny. III. Title. U162.G65 2014 355.02'75—dc23 2014036605 Published by the RAND Corporation, Santa Monica, Calif. © Copyright 2014 RAND Corporation R® is a registered trademark. Cover image: German troops surrender to Russian soldiers during World War II (Time Life Pictures, Getty Images/used with permission) Limited Print and Electronic Distribution Rights This document and trademark(s) contained herein are protected by law. This representation of RAND intellectual property is provided for noncommercial use only. Unauthorized posting of this publication online is prohibited. Permission is given to duplicate this document for personal use only, as long as it is unaltered and complete. Permission is required from RAND to reproduce, or reuse in another form, any of its research documents for commercial use. For information on reprint and linking permissions, please visit www.rand.org/pubs/permissions.html. The RAND Corporation is a research organization that develops solutions to public policy challenges to help make communities throughout the world safer and more secure, healthier and more prosperous. RAND is nonprofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the public interest. RAND’s publications do not necessarily reflect the opinions of its research clients and sponsors. Support RAND Make a tax-deductible charitable contribution at www.rand.org/giving/contribute www.rand.org Preface The premise of this study is that the likelihood of governments committing strategic blunders—starting wars by misjudgment—depends on how well they use information available to them. The thought behind this, coming from neuroscience, is that infor- mation processing is at the heart of decisionmaking. This begs two questions: • What is the role of information in strategic decisionmaking? • Why are bad strategic decisions made? The answers could shed light on how strategic blunders can be avoided. Answering them requires a blend of information science and empirical research: the former by a tour of decision theory, behavioral psychology, organizational theory, and information technology, and the latter by a tour of historical cases of strategic decisions, bad and good. When the two answers are combined, it may be possible to see how enhancing the value of information can counter the tendency of governments to blunder. Or so we hope. This inquiry is important because the possibility of governments causing wars by blunder does not seem to be receding—the twentieth century was the worst yet. It is also timely, for war between twenty-first-century great powers, especially China and the United States, is most likely to be the result of misjudgment by one, the other, or both, but could be terribly destructive nonetheless. If anything, the danger of bad deci- sions leading to Sino-American hostilities is rising because of China’s growing military might and increasing tensions between China and U.S. allies and partners in Asia. When these words were written, China and the United States were in a state of elevated tension precipitated, it is fair to say, by China’s attempt to gain control of the airspace above the East China Sea by claiming an expansive Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ). Although China warned that it may take “defensive” action to enforce the ADIZ, the United States has defied this warning. It is doubtful that the Chinese would go to war, least of all with the United States, over these particular claims. Still, this flare-up has called attention to the potential for conflict involving the world’s strongest powers, not because either one has more to gain than to lose from war, but because one or the other commits a blunder. iii iv Blinders, Blunders, and Wars: What America and China Can Learn The study is not about how to eliminate the possibility of conflict by freeing Sino- American relations of disagreements and creating perfect accord. Rather, it accepts that discord, misunderstanding, and occasional confrontation are likely, and it seeks to understand how, nonetheless, to avoid decisionmaking errors that could lead to a conflict neither side really wants. Although China and the United States have strong reasons to remain at peace, history shows us—as this study reminds us—that war can happen by misjudgment. Indeed, so damaging would war between China and the United States be, to both countries and to the rest of the world, that misjudgment may be the most plausible way one could start. So it is important to understand how that could happen. The authors believe that it is helpful to apply to the Sino-American case lessons from the history of wars started by bad decisions. Much of the death and destruction from war over the past two centuries resulted from blunders. Napoleon invaded Russia expecting to destroy its army in a climactic battle that never happened; he retreated months later with remnants of his half-million-man force. Where Napoleon failed, Hitler thought he could succeed; he too lost. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor unleashed enough American anger and military-industrial might to inflict unspeak- able destruction and total defeat on Japan four years later. Argentina’s military junta ordered the occupation of the Falkland Islands, convinced the British would not fight to recover them; the result was a humiliating defeat. When Soviet leaders decided to invade Afghanistan, they set in motion a chain of events that would end Soviet com- munism a decade later. These and other cases examined in this study show that national leaders, their advisors, and their bureaucracies are capable of gross overconfidence, sloppy analysis, lapses of objectivity, wrong-headed preconceptions, disregard of facts that cast doubt on those preconceptions, zeal at the cost of rationality, suppression of debate, pun- ishment of dissent, and other failures, fallacies, and fantasies that can lead to wrong choices and bad results. The propensity of human beings to blunder seems as great in matters of war and peace as it is in daily life. Not every decision to go to war is a blunder: sometimes it is a rational, even best, choice. Similarly, not all wars are avoidable or, for that matter, ought to be avoided: the decisions of Britain and France to fight Hitler after his invasion of Poland were if any- thing overdue. But history offers us—indeed, it bludgeons us with—enough examples of wars by blunder to warrant deeper analysis of why they occur and what, if anything, can be done to prevent them. Chinese decisionmaking in setting up the ADIZ, from what we know of it, is instructive. Aside from the merits of the competing claims to the islands, waters, and airspace of the East China Sea, Chinese leaders were wrong if they thought that Wash- ington would not react forcefully to their move, which it did by promptly sending strategic (no less) bombers through the disputed zone. Or, if they expected such a U.S. reaction and decided to establish the zone anyway, Chinese decisionmakers could have Preface v precipitated a crisis that could turn violent unless they backed down, which they have in a manner done. Either way, although conflict with the United States would produce more harm than good for China, its leaders made a choice that could have made it more likely. Whether this was a smart or dumb gamble is yet to be seen. Why Chinese leaders—or, for that matter, American leaders—would miscalculate is a question to which we will return after seeking to learn why strategic blunders have occurred in the past. This study integrates historical, political, psychological, organizational, and tech- nological analyses, including recent advances in explaining human decisionmaking. Its cases span two hundred years and involve blunders committed and blunders averted. Again, special attention is given to how the use of information, including intelligence, affects strategic decisions. The world is in the midst of an information revolution, and it is fair to think that this could lead to better decisionmaking. However, far more inno- vation and investment have gone into enhancing the supply of information than its use, including in deciding matters of war and peace. In studying complex matters of strategic choice, personal experience is no substi- tute for research. But experience can complement research. We should note that two of the authors—David Gompert and Hans Binnendijk—have between them served as officials in every U.S. administration from Richard Nixon’s through Barack Obama’s, including four tours on the staff of the National Security Council. They have witnessed and been involved in numerous strategic decisions. With the limits of personal observa- tion in mind, they have attempted to impart judgment from experience to this study’s analysis and recommendations. This study has been made possible because of RAND’s policy of commission- ing research of importance to the American public and the world. More than that, it touches the core value of an institution dedicated to rationality in public decisionmak- ing—to paraphrase the late James Q.