Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects
by John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon (Georgetown University Press)
Reviewed by Jason U. Manosevitz
The importance of strategic warning analysis is something all can agree upon. If you believe, as I do, that this kind of analysis is vital for sound policymaking, then you would agree that it deserves our attention. Unfortunately, this is probably where agreement about strategic warning analysis ends.
There is a lot of debate about the state of strategic warning analysis ranging from what it is, to who should produce it, to how to do it, to how to get it to policymakers, and when, how, and why policymakers should heed the strategic warnings they receive. I believe policymakers are more interested in the usefulness of analysis to their decisions than any labels put on analysis and that strategic warning analysis needs to advance beyond military issues. Moreover, while I think it is important that the President and senior cabinet officials receive strategic warnings, it is at least equally important that mid-level officials receive such analysis because they are the ones that often bring decision points to senior leaders who implement policy.
In their book Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects, John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon argue that the IC must regenerate its ability to conduct strategic warning. They see the IC’s strategic warning capability has having deteriorated from the elimination of key positions, such as the National Intelligence Office for Warning, over emphasis on current analysis, and a decline in specialized training. Gentry and Gordon both have served in the IC and their work is a product of their collaboration in designing and teaching the National Intelligence University’s Strategic Warning Analysis Certificate Program. Their book was also driven by their sense that Cynthia Grabo’s classic work, Handbook of Warning Intelligence, was out of date. In short, Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects is intended to be a kick in the IC’s hypothetical butt as well as a new teaching tool.
Like much of the strategic warning literature, Gentry and Gordon begin by differentiating strategic warning from tactical analysis. They define strategic warning as “the process of alerting senior leaders to the emergence of important threats and opportunities that require a policy decision to deter, defend against, or exploit.” Tactical analysis, for them, “refers generally to notification of an immediately impending threat.” Readers may stumble on the fruitfulness of defining strategic warning as a process and tactical warning (or current intelligence) as a product. In subsequent chapters, however, it becomes clear that by strategic warning, Gentry and Gordon generally mean warning of significant, conventional security threats.
Gentry and Gordon review four strategic warning cases. They present three: Germany’s invasion of the USSR in 1941, Germany’s invasion of Normandy in 1944, and Egypt and Syria’s attack on Israel in 1973, as examples of states that failed to accurately assess threats or accept warning messages. The fourth, the IC’s warning in October 1990 that Yugoslavia was on the brink of collapse, is used as an example of how warning analysis can be spot on but ignored by senior policy makers because it is an unwelcome message.
The case studies are short, historical summaries that narrow down what Gentry and Gordon mean by strategic warning and help set up subsequent chapters about government institutions, analytic methods, cognitive issues, and engagement of senior intelligence consumers related to strategic warning analysis.
To complement the history of strategic warning provided by case studies, Gentry and Gordon provide a chapter on the evolution of the U.S., British, Dutch, and NATO warning institutions. The section on the U.S. is the most comprehensive and brings the reader up to date on the current state of warning institutions in the U.S. More discussion of what prompted revisions to Director of Central Intelligence Directive 1/5 in 1975 and 1979 would have been useful, particularly by tracing why the definition of strategic warning analysis evolved beyond analysis of the USSR. Adding more clarity about how the changes in the warning institutions mapped to events or to strong personalities would also have helped readers understand the causal factors in institutional changes in warning analysis.
Gentry and Gordon provide three chapters addressing strategic warning tradecraft. And they devote a full chapter to emphasizing the enduring importance of “indications and warning” (I&W) lists, pointing out the usefulness, limitations, vulnerabilities, and key characteristics of this approach. They review a wide range of other approaches and techniques, most of which they find lacking, save for horizon scanning and scenario analysis. It is surprising, however, that they quickly dismiss the value of Philip Tetlock’s work on prediction markets because there is nothing inherent in prediction markets that makes them ill-suited for strategic warning and because Gentry and Gordon state early in the book that improving the “batting average” of strategic warning analysis is one of their goals. Without systematically tracking predictions, a core aspect of prediction markets, it is impossible to improve the accuracy of analysis. Similarly, Gentry and Gordon make no mention of the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and threats technique, which seems ideally suited to address strategic warning analysis.
Policymaker receptivity to, and action upon, strategic warning analysis is critical. Gentry and Gordon concentrate on U.S. Presidents to give a flavor of the analyst-policymaker relationship. They briefly trace different decision making styles, covering Presidents from Roosevelt to Trump, and convey that various Presidents were open to or rejected analysis as it suited their needs. This leads Gentry and Gordon to reiterate previous findings in the study of intelligence on the importance of analysts understanding the needs of their clients.
Gentry and Gordon view institutional influences and models for strategic warning as a major determinant for the quality and effectiveness of strategic warning analysis. They review five different models, which span from senior leaders being their own analysts to the broad Every Analyst A Warning Analyst (EAAWA) model. In one chapter addressing institutional issues they strongly criticize the EAAWA model because they do not think line analysts are capable of conducting warning analysis or that managers are willing to support it. They argue instead that a small, dedicated unit of senior analysts is better suited to carrying out the warning function and that this unit should be allowed to circumvent the normal process for coordinating analysis. Gentry and Gordon do not address the potential pitfalls of this model or how to overcome them, such as group think, confirmation bias, or analytic cherry picking.
Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects adds to the debate about strategic warning analysis. It is also set up as a teaching tool that would be useful in a classroom setting. But there are significant gaps. One such gap in Gentry and Gordon’s work is the role of collection in strategic warning, beyond I&W lists. Senior intelligence officials’ and policymakers’ decisions about what collection platforms to invest in are critical inputs for strategic warning analysis and deserve close attention. For example, had intelligence officers decided to not recruit Adolf Tolkachev, whose reporting in the 1980s was critical to understanding Russian military research and weapons development, strategic warning on Russia would have been significantly undermined. Gentry and Gordon’s quick dismissal of cyber issues as a topic for strategic analysis, I think, is also problem, given how critical technology and the “wired world” is to the security of our country. Cyber issues may not lend themselves easily to I&W lists, as Gentry and Gordon argue, but I think this is all the more reason to develop new approaches to deal with this complex analytic issue.
This book earns a mild two out of four trench coats.
Jason U. Manosevitz is a seasoned officer in the Intelligence Community with 15 years of experience covering military and political issues in Asia and the Middle East, managing global coverage issues, and teaching analytic tradecraft. He is also a Studies in Intelligence Editorial Board Member and has written several articles and book reviews on intelligence analysis. All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the US Government.
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