Threat Assessment

If war were to result from endogenous behaviour it would surely represent the ultimate irony in strategic thinking. Civilisation would rush towards Armageddon not because of a clash of ideologies or of grandiose ambitions but because the participants were desperately attempting to engage in rational war avoiding strategic behaviour. Man cannot live by the military balance alone. It behoves strategists to be as familiar with value systems as weapons systems. Strategy is a universal preoccupation, but its meaning is always contextual, set by the peculiar problem, perceptions, interest, traditions, and ideologies of those with whom we are dealing. These cannot be understood without a feeling for cultural relativity. When ethnocentrism interferes with knowing the enemy, various unfortunate political and military consequences may follow unless good luck is present. Who knows whom, is a preliminary step before determining who dominates whom - knowledge is an element of power.

Threat assessment, effectively, is a basis function of the strategic planner, but correct threat assessment has proved to be exceptional in strategic history: there has been a curious failure to recognize the difficulties of the task and those professionally involved have done little to develop remedial measures and what improvement there has been has occurred in methods of information gathering rather than in analytical techniques. However, the new methods introduced for learning the local knowledge and natives’ point of view, tends to rely on marginalized - in the lower level of social hierarchy - interpreting people’s behaviour as to how it fits into their own standards. Approaches that trigger class conflicts and have established institutionalized gossip regimes where the truth is lost in the vested interest of most abusive. After the god, it is the truth that is dead. Ironically the art of engineering learning society ended up in producing banal society. The narrow compass of thinking is further increased by shallow approach to nations as mere televised audiences. In Middle East scenario the images that emerges is flawed and frequently serves to support prejudice and prejudice is a poor substitute for sound information. Yet as the American ponder their troubled occupation of Iraq, they might care to reflect on the meaning of this biblical allusion as interpreted by Daniel, it concludes: “you have been weighed in the balances and have been found deficient, your kingdom has been divided and given to the Medes and the Persians.” (Daniel, 5:27) (1).

For the most part, the formidable problems of intelligence gathering, assessment, and prediction impinge on the problem of threats particularly in international politics. The importance of cultural implication in threat assessment, and especially the role of ethnocentrism is highly acclaimed. As it relates to threat assessment, strategic reasoning has been proceeded from conscious and unconscious assumptions that strategy abhors a vacuum and need enemies, therefore enemy images and inherent bad faith theories are elaborated accordingly.

“The capabilities of nations are readily definable as threats because of their intrinsic destructive potential, there must always be room for doubt about intentions, therefore it is argued that threat assessment should concentrate on capabilities rather than intentions. Subsequently the preoccupation with capabilities leads to the guideline that what the enemy can do, it will do.”

The result of these assumptions, were injected with a strong dose of native prudence, is to lead the analyst into dwelling upon the possible hostile behaviour of another nation almost unrelated to cultural or political context. We are therefore left with an image of a hostile strategic man with a given amount of military capabilities and economic resources. The intentions of the other nations tend to be neglected because they are uncertain into the resulting. Political vacuum are projected one’s own assumption of what any rational but hostile man would do. In addition, it is often assumed that what hurts me must help her/him, and that creating such mischief will therefore be an important adversary objective. When threats are identified, the tendency will be to worry more about one’s own vulnerabilities (where can I be hurt) rather than concerning oneself with recreating the other nation’s view of its own interest and priorities. Once other nations are perceived as enemy it will be seen to behave in a hostile fashion, almost regardless of their actual behaviour. After all, strategies must label some or other nations as an enemy, for strategy abhors a vacuum. The circle of the argument is complete. The rational impulse behind these assumptions and ways of thinking is provided by common prudence. However, there are a number of irrational elements in the process, each of which is subversive of sensible strategic planning. Bureaucratic politics provide plenty of clues.

Military establishments need enemies to maintain their professional self image, and the manipulation of energy images is a common way of acquiring clout in resource allocation debates. Similarly, government agencies usually overestimate their adversaries’ military potential. Hence, estimates are always politicised by the interplay of lobby and advocacy of bureaucratic pulling and hauling. However, institutional detachment or independence is not the same as being objective or free from bias. Objective truth would not be the consequences of abolition of bureaucratic politics.

Bureaucratic factors have various implications for threat assessment, but they are not the concern of this paper. Instead, the focus is on the role of ethnocentrism, and the way in which it can reinforce the rational element in the strategist’s syllogism in the direction of irrational threat assessment they make the activity of threat assessment seem clearer, more realistic and simpler than in fact it is . They provide the analyst with confidence in his approach but they invariably mean that he is pursuing it less satisfactorily than he imagines.

One of the most important issues in defence policy discussion in general and in threat assessment in particular is proper weighting of enemy intentions as against its capabilities.
Intentions are not as changeable as stereotypes or theory might suggest.

On major matter, and nothing is more important than going to war, basic intentions rarely change overnight, although final decisions can obviously be traced to one moment. On the mental aspects of a country’s foreign policy, such as its proclivity for war, the objective constraints within which decision making work are powerful. While one cannot accurately predict how particular governments will respond to some situation, one can usually infer with some confidence the issues over which they will run risks and be prepared to fight. A knowledge of relevant history should add to the strength of a strategist’s conjecture. History give, some indication of intentions, patterns, and national styles. In relation to a given country it is usually possible to identify types of behaviour which will be avoided because they will be too costly. Negative interests are usually identifiable, and they are to some extent controllable by outsiders. This is the basis of theories of deterrence. By demonstrating the will and capability to inflict certain costs on nation B in the event of the latter undertaking certain undesirable actions, nation A helps to shape the negative interest of B. This fact is of special importance to a defensive alliance such as Nato, it puts a premium on identifying enemy’s interest and on devising strategies to deter their leaders from contemplating dangerous initiatives.

Intense ethnocentric view point produces extreme suspicion towards the behaviour of others . Stereotyping another nation as a dangerous adversary will affect one’s own attitudes and precautions. These in turn will affect the attitudes and precautions of the other nation. The typical results of such a situation are the development of costly overkill capacities and intensified international tension. This is the disadvantage corollary to the benefit of group identity. Strange and real as the substantive issues may be between groups the need for identification with a group remains the strongest factor in instigating, perpetuating, and exacerbating social conflicts. Ethnocentrism can assist military efficiency by simplifying situation and unifying groups. The corollary to this advantage is the disadvantage of inflexibility. This phenomenon is particularly common in military planning because of group link, cognition dissonance, bureaucratic inertia and the predisposition of authoritarian characters towards a rigidity of outlook. Ethnocentrism reinforces all these tendencies. Amongst the manifestations of this rigidity are the tendency to neglect unpalatable information and the adherence to existing plans longer than the circumstances justify. This puts a premium on having non ethnocentric leader. A particular leader can afford the character and atmosphere of the whole policy making group, which in turn will affect the selection and slanting of information which helps structure policy and serving decisions. There is more to politics than impersonal forces: personalities can affect our destinies. Ethnocentrism seems likely to reduce a group’s ability to change, orthodoxy and dogmatism are intensified at the cost of real learning together. Ethnocentrism and nationalism tend to produce an inability to change when change is necessary for adaptation and high readiness for violent encounters with other groups.

The problem of group think is not basically one of intellectual shortcoming. Group processes can subvert even the best and brightest. Amongst the main symptoms of group think are: an illusion of invulnerability which creates excessive optimism, the attempt to rationalise away discrepant info to protect existing assumptions to maintain the integrity of the images of the group, an unquestioned belief in the group’s inherent morality, enabling members to ignore the ethical dimensions of the enemy based on culture bound thinking, a rejection of non conformist view points to reinforce in group norms, a self censorship of deviations from the apparent group consensus, a shared illusion of unanimity concerning judgements conforming to the majority views and the emergency of self appointed ‘mind guards’ to protect the group from adverse information that might shatter their complacency about the effectiveness and morality of their decision. These symptoms are closely related to those involved in ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism encourages group think, group think exacerbates ethnocentrism and ethnocentrism reinforces group think. The inter play between them is subversive of rational strategic analysis and planning. Ethnocentrism can help military efficiency in significant ways, but apparently only at the cost of bringing along in its wake bundle of characteristics associated with authoritarian ways of doing things, which includes a propensity towards a variety of types of incompetence. Only at the lowest level of action in producing ruthless fighter, can ethnocentrism predisposition be said to be really functional to the success of a system. Therefore, ethnocentrism is a major disadvantage for political - strategic practitioner, because he/she wants to know the enemy in order to beat him. The more it pervades upwards, the more dysfunctional it becomes. At the level of strategic planning it results in the creation of false images of potential adversaries. The exaggeration of enemy images may be functional for budgeting purposes, but at what cost, if the imaginary enemy is subsequently engineered into being a real one?