By John-Michael Arnold

Abstract—The phenomenon of strategic surprise—a category of unexpected events so consequential that they call into question the premises of existing strategy—has posed a recurring challenge to U.S. foreign policy. Although there is a voluminous literature on the subject, most scholars have focused on surprises unleashed as a deliberate strategy of states in their effort to seize the advantage against adversaries. In recent decades, however, the United States has increasingly confronted a different type of strategic surprise, namely non-state-led surprise. This paper draws on the existing literature about state-led strategic surprise to offer several initial hypotheses to explain this development. By doing so, the paper serves as a basis for further research as well as a backgrounder for policy makers who seek to prepare for the growing challenge of non-state-led surprise.

I. Introduction

The recent cascade of revolutions across the Arab world, which began with the self- immolation of a Tunisian street vendor in December 2010, led to the ouster of four long-ruling dictators, swept away ossified political systems, and bred civil war in Syria. The magnitude of the upheaval was matched by the degree to which it was unexpected by senior U.S. policy makers. In the midst of grappling with the enormous changes, one senior American official remarked anonymously:

This is what happens when you get caught by surprise. We’ve had endless strategy sessions for the past two years on the Mideast peace, on containing Iran. And how many of them factored in the possibility that Egypt moves away from stability to turmoil? None.[1]

In that sense, the Arab upheaval was a manifestation of an old problem in statecraft: “strategic surprise.” One subset of the phenomenon, surprise military attack, has been an especially traumatic aspect of American history. The United States was caught by surprise by the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbor in December 1941, as well as by the terrorist atrocities of September 11, 2001. The United States responded to both of those surprise attacks by enlarging its conception of vital interests and expanding its sphere of responsibilities.[2] Nevertheless, there was a marked difference between Pearl Harbor and 9/11: the former resulted from the strategy of a state, Japan, whereas the latter was perpetrated by a non-state actor, al-Qaeda. The attacks of 9/11 were not the first instance of a marked shift in the nature of strategic surprise. In recent decades, strategic surprise for the United States has increasingly stemmed from the strategies and actions of non-state actors rather than states, whereas during the opening three decades of the Cold War, it more often resulted from the deliberate strategies of states.

Although there is a considerable literature on state-led strategic surprise, the problem of non-state-led surprise has received insufficient attention. This paper sets out to provide a more complete understanding of how and why governments fall victim to various types of strategic surprise. Section II defines the term, presents a basic typology and identifies the principal cases of strategic surprise for the United States since Pearl Harbor. Section III reviews the existing literature on why governments fall victim to state-led surprises, before Section IV sets out four hypotheses to explain why non- state-led surprise has posed an increasing challenge to the United States.

II: Defining Strategic Surprise, Typology of Surprise, and Principal Cases since Pearl Harbor

During the Cold War, driven by the fear of an unexpected nuclear attack, scholars devoted considerable attention to analyzing why governments fall victim to surprise attacks and coined the term “strategic surprise” to refer to such strikes. The seminal analysis was Roberta Wohlstetter’s study of Pearl Harbor, which was followed by numerous further works on the problem.[3] Richard Betts, in a comprehensive study, defines strategic surprise as occurring when “the victim does not appreciate whether, when, where, or how the adversary will strike.” [4]

In addition to military attacks, other types of unexpected changes also upset U.S. foreign policy. A prominent example was the 1979 Iranian revolution, which fatally undermined the United States’ strategy of using the Shah as a bulwark against Soviet influence in the Persian Gulf. Scholars have employed the term “intelligence failure”—a mismatch between intelligence estimates and what later information reveals—to describe such events in order to distinguish them from surprise military attacks.[5] One rationale for the distinction was that the term strategic surprise assumed a situation where a perpetrator deliberately sought to catch a target by surprise.[6] In that sense, the Iranian revolution was not a “strategic” surprise since catching the United States and the world by surprise was not a core aim of the revolutionaries. The element of surprise was, instead, a by-product of actions that had a different aim, namely deposing the Shah.

Restricting the term strategic surprise to unexpected military attacks, while drawing a sharp distinction between those cases and intelligence failure is unhelpful for two reasons. First, ascribing the word “strategic” based on the intentions of a perpetrator, rather than by considering the impact upon the victim, leads us to neglect what should be one of the most important concerns. When a government is caught by surprise, it is not necessarily the intentions of other actors that are most significant; instead, it is often the consequences of the event. Hence, it is more helpful to use “strategic” in the sense of “strategically significant.” Unexpected non-attack events can have strategic implications rivaling those stemming from military attacks. For instance, the strategic repercussions of the Soviet Union’s collapse were on a par with the implications of 9/11. Second, the factors that explain strategic surprise and intelligence failures are often the same—they include the “signal to noise ratio,” cognitive failure, and constraints on policy response, as described in Section III.

It is helpful to construe the term “strategic surprise” broadly, as a number of scholars and analysts have done since the end of the Cold War.[7] Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, two of the foremost experts in scenario planning, state that the phenomenon is defined by three elements: it makes a big difference to the future; it forces decision- makers to challenge their own assumptions of how the world works; and dealing with it requires hard choices.[8]

Although these broad definitions are helpful, they lack precision. A criterion is needed to determine whether an event “makes a big difference to the future,” that is, whether it is strategically significant. After all, people and institutions are confronted by surprises every day, many of them largely insignificant. Michael I. Handel’s work on diplomatic surprise furnishes a useful standard; he defines a major surprise as “an unexpected move which has considerable impact on the real or expected division of power in the international system or a major subsystem.” [9]

More also needs to be said about what it means for an event to “force decision makers to challenge their own assumptions of how the world works.” A review of previous geopolitical transformations shows that rarely are such events entirely unanticipated. For example, Bruce Berkowitz, a former U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer and fellow at the Hoover Institution, demonstrates that in the 1980s the U.S. intelligence community produced a number of analyses setting out the difficulties faced by the Soviet system, which at the very least warned of the potential for serious social instability. [10] Similarly, in February 2001, CIA Director George Tenet testified publicly that al-Qaeda posed “the most immediate and serious threat” to America. Daniel Byman describes this as “a clarion example of strategic warning.” [11]

Looking at previous strategic upheavals, someone—whether in the intelligence community or outside government—typically foresaw the contingency, at least by recognizing the broad contours of impending transformation. What is often lacking is specific warning of when and how a game-changing event will occur. Even when certain officials foresee a looming transformation with reasonable clarity, policy changes will not be enacted to take account of the evolving situation if senior policy makers do not focus on the potential for a scenario to become harmful or are constrained from acting on the warning. As Betts emphasizes, “warning is a necessary but insufficient condition for avoiding surprise. Without response, warning is useless.”[12] Surprise can be the product of a failure in warning, in response, or a combination of the two.

With these considerations in mind, I consider a strategic surprise—from the point of view of the United States—to be an event that fulfills the following criteria:

1. Its potential occurrence was not factored into existing strategy— either because senior policy makers lacked strategic warning about its possibility or because, even with strategic warning, response was not forthcoming.

2. Consequently, when the event occurred, it called into question the prevailing premises of U.S. strategy.

3. The event’s occurrence had a considerable impact on the division of power in the international system or a major subsystem.

There remains scope for debate about whether a particular event meets these criteria, since determining the extent to which a contingency’s possibility was factored into U.S. strategy and deciding whether there has been a considerable impact on the division of power continues to be, at least in part, a subjective and retrospective exercise.

Typology of Strategic Surprise

Individual cases of strategic surprise differ from one another along numerous dimensions. For example, there have been military surprises, technological surprises, economic surprises and political surprises. Furthermore, the degree of surprise varies between cases.[13] The USSR’s introduction of offensive missiles into Cuba in 1962 came as a surprise to U.S. policy makers. But, it would have been a bigger surprise if the missiles had become operational before U.S. intelligence discovered them; and it would have been a much larger surprise still if Khrushchev had been able to unveil them publicly before American leaders learned of their existence.

Handel presents a basic typology of surprise, which distinguishes between cases according to their impact on the international system—either major or minor—and according to the number of states participating in launching the surprise.[14] On the latter dimension, he differentiates between unilateral surprise, such as Anwar Sadat’s decision to go to Jerusalem in pursuit of peace, and bilateral surprise, such as the U.S.- Sino rapprochement in the early 1970s, which came as a considerable surprise to the Soviet Union in particular. Handel’s treatment of this dimension does not exhaust the possible cases since it only refers to the number of states participating in launching a surprise. In fact, the United States has confronted numerous surprises that were not launched by states. Therefore, surprises can be differentiated along another dimension, dividing them into state-led cases and non-state-led cases. The latter category includes surprises stemming from the calculated strategies of particular non-state actors, such as al-Qaeda, as well as surprises resulting from the actions—sometimes uncoordinated—of countless individual entities, such as the economic crisis of 2008 onward.

Applying the definition of strategic surprise set out above, Table 1 lists the principal strategic surprises for the United States since Pearl Harbor, divided into state-led and non-state-led cases.

During the first three decades of the Cold War, strategic surprise came, largely, in the form of state-led surprises. The exception was the Hungarian revolution: a citizen-led attempt to change the political order of a state, which itself prompted a state-led surprise, namely the Soviet invasion of the country in 1956. By contrast, beginning with the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, the last three decades have seen the United States increasingly confront non-state-led surprises. Section IV sets out possible explanations for why this has occurred, drawing on the factors that explain why governments fall victim to state-led surprise, as identified in the existing literature and reviewed in the next section.

III: Why Governments Fall Victim to State-Led Surprise

Two types of explanatory factors are discernible for why governments have been blindsided by other states: characteristics of the strategic environment; and capacities of governments and policy makers.[15]

The Strategic Environment

Handel states that the empirical record shows a correlation between the ideological character of the international system and the frequency with which diplomatic surprise occurs. In a homogenous system, in which actors share common ideology and beliefs, diplomatic surprises are more frequent since there are fewer ideological barriers to one state changing its alliances or relationships. Indeed, in the classical balance of power system, diplomatic surprise serves as the “regulator” of the system.[16] Consider, as an example, the European system between 1815 and 1914, in which German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck exemplified the practice of surprise diplomacy. Shortly after the Crimean War, Bismarck wrote about the importance of perfect flexibility of international relationships, limited only by the requirements of national interest.[17] By contrast, in a heterogeneous system, such as the Cold War, in which there are conflicting ideological positions and the stakes of changing such positions are higher, surprise is less frequent. Nevertheless, when it does occur in such a system, it tends to have a greater impact, as was the case with U.S.-Sino rapprochement in the early 1970s.[18] While Handel identifies the ideological character of an international system as the key determinant of the frequency of surprise, he also argues that the higher the number of principal actors in a system, the higher the probability of surprise.[19] With a greater number of principal actors, there are more actors who can take unexpected, strategically significant decisions. Technological change is another systemic factor that has precipitated surprise. Carl von Clausewitz observed that “basically surprise is a tactical device, simply because in tactics time and space are limited in scale.” [20] In the nineteenth century, the considerable time required to move large bodies of troops meant there was little prospect of catching an enemy by surprise. Twentieth century technological advances changed that. With the advent of mechanized warfare and air power, it became possible to concentrate substantial force quickly, permitting surprise to be achieved at the strategic level, as Nazi Germany demonstrated with its attack against the Soviet Union in June 1941 and Japan dramatically underscored later the same year through its strike on Pearl Harbor.

Capacities of Governments and Policy Makers

In analyzing a government’s ability to avoid strategic surprise, one can distinguish between certain factors that inhibit the warning of policy makers and other factors that inhibit response by those leaders. An important that can inhibit warning is cognitive failure. Jervis outlines a number of constraints on accurate perception that reduce actors’ sensitivity to new information. Most significant is the tendency for people to assimilate new information to their preexisting beliefs.[21] A particularly glaring example was the reaction of Louis Johnson and Sidney Souers, respectively Defense Secretary and National Security Advisor to President Truman, to the 1949 Soviet atomic weapons test. Previously, both had received U.S. intelligence estimates that suggested mid-1953 as the most likely date for when the USSR would test an atomic bomb.[22] In spite of compelling evidence, both initially refused to believe that America’s
nuclear monopoly had ended four years earlier than anticipated. Instead, Souers hoped there had been a reactor accident.[23] Furthermore, Jervis notes that the smaller the change conveyed by new information, the less likely it is to be perceived.[24] Therefore, intelligence analysts and policy makers tend to refrain from altering their pre-existing beliefs in response to new information until a transformation becomes sufficiently large, which in many cases means a strategically significant event has already occurred.

Another generic reason for absence of warning is the tendency for “signals” to be lost among a cacophony of background “noise,” as described by Wohlstetter.[25] As she uses the term, a signal is a piece of evidence that points to an action or an adversary’s intention to undertake a certain action. Meanwhile, noise describes the “background of irrelevant or inconsistent signals.” [26] Hence, the lower the “signal to noise” ratio, the more difficult it will be to detect an impending event.

Handel summarizes the main explanatory factors for a low signal to noise ratio by citing three “noise barriers” through which warning signals must flow: the enemy; the international environment; and self-generated noise.[27] These barriers can distort signals. Difficulties in assessing the intentions of the enemy stem, first, from deliberate deception practiced by an adversary. The ability to read signals can also be constrained by divisions among an adversary’s leadership. Although Japan’s Admiral Yamamoto had inaugurated contingency planning for Pearl Harbor in January 1941, the plan was resisted by the Japanese General Staff until October.[28] When an adversary’s leaders have conflicting aims, there will likely be two or more sets of equally correct, yet contradictory, signals that can be received.[29] Before October 1941, it was impossible for the United States to know that Japan would aim to strike at Pearl Harbor, since the Japanese leadership itself had not yet decided on that course of action.

The international environment can prevent policy mak- ers from foreseeing strategic change either because so much is occurring that there is insufficient focus on a contingency, or because the environment is quiet, which leads to an assumption that it will remain so. In the late 1960s, the Johnson Administration was so focused on the war in Vietnam that other impending strategic events, such as the Six-Day War and the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, received scant attention.[30] By contrast, Handel notes how the mood of détente muffled the tension between the protagonists at the time of the Yom Kippur War.[31]

Finally, self-generated noise results from the tendency for analysts and policy makers to develop a set of hypotheses and assumptions about an adversary’s intentions and capabilities.[32] Henry Kissinger, in a candid and frank discussion of why the United States and Israel were surprised by the Yom Kippur War, explains how incorrect assumptions about President Sadat’s objectives laid the foundation for surprise. Israeli

and American analysts recognized that Egypt and Syria lacked the military capability to regain territory by force. Since they could not achieve that type of victory, it was concluded they would not attack.[33] This assumption amounted to what is known as “mirror-imaging”—projecting U.S. and Israeli conceptions of rational action onto Sadat. In fact, his fundamental objective was not territorial gain, but rather, as Kissinger puts it, “shaking belief in Israel’s invincibility and Arab impotence.” [34]

Notwithstanding these reasons for analytical failure, it is not clear that the United States is worse than other governments at discerning evolving strategic situations. In the case of the Iranian revolution, Jervis notes that “other countries that were not so tied to the Shah do not appear to have seen the situation any more clearly.” [35] Although the recent upheaval in the Arab world came as a surprise to the United States, it apparently also came as unexpected news to leaders such as Hosni Mubarak and Muammar Gaddafi, who had more to lose from the situation. One week into the protests in Egypt, Mubarak apparently told President Obama: “These protests will be over soon. I know my people. I respect your opinion, but I’m better informed.” [36]

Turning to the common reasons for why governments fail to respond to an impending transformation, even when they receive some degree of warning, I will now address two factors that are particularly important: bureaucratic pathologies that inhibit effective response; and the tradeoffs and limits faced by policy makers.[37]

Bureaucratic pathologies are the constraints that make it difficult for an institution to shift its procedures and resources, even after receipt of strategic warning.[38] One constraint is the amount of time required to alter the operating procedures of a bureaucracy. In December 1941, U.S. forces on the Philippines received nine hours of warning of the threat from Japan since they learned of the attack against Pearl Harbor. Even so, that proved insufficient to re-orient operating procedures. Hence, when Japanese aircraft attacked the Philippines nine hours after Pearl Harbor, the attacking forces found the U.S. aircraft lined up on the ground wingtip-to-wingtip.[39] In the case of the 9/11 attacks, Posner highlights some of the institutional constraints that prevented the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation from adequately responding to the strategic warning of al-Qaeda’s threat. For example, as a law enforcement agency, it had a prosecutorial mind-set rather than a preventative one.[40]

Meanwhile, senior policy makers lack time, must contend with numerous competing political priorities, and have limited time horizons. They must constantly monitor and engage in numerous policy areas, which limits the time available for close examination of any specific issue. Returning to the comment by the exasperated American official at the beginning of this paper; while admitting that the Arab upheaval came as a surprise, the official cites the other strategically important issues that were consuming their attention: dealing with Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and the Middle East peace process. Furthermore, policy makers in a democratic system are liable to receive little benefit for planning for contingencies lying in the distant future.[41]

Although it is possible to cite individually the various factors that cause government agencies and policy makers to become the victims of surprise, it often arises out of several factors operating in conjunction with one another. Hence, as Thomas Schelling writes, “surprise, when it happens to a government, is likely to be a complicated, diffuse, bureaucratic thing.” [42]

III: Possible Hypotheses to Explain the Increasing Challenge of Non-State-Led Surprise

From Table 1, two puzzles emerge that have not been adequately addressed in exist- ing scholarship. First, do the same factors that account for vulnerability to state-led surprise also account for vulnerability to non-state-led surprise? Second, what explains the increasing challenge posed by non-state-led surprise to the United States in recent decades?

The factors identified for why governments and leaders are blindsided were developed by analyzing state-led surprises. Little comparative analysis has been undertaken of the problem of non-state-led surprise, although Byman’s study of the 9/11 attacks provides helpful analysis of a single case and a project by the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy evaluated several of the cases identified.[43] Further work should be a priority in order to resolve the two puzzles set forth.

A useful approach would be a comparative study of why the United States fell victim to the seven non-state-led surprises identified in Table 1. Such a study would exhibit a generic weakness of the comparative method, as identified by Lijphart—the problem of “many variables, small number of cases.” [44] Even so, an initial study could compare the seven cases in order to generate hypotheses. As Lijphart describes, such case studies would “start out with a more or less vague notion of possible hypotheses, and attempt to formulate definite hypotheses to be tested subsequently among a larger number of cases.” [45] Following an initial hypothesis-generating study, the number of cases could be expanded by considering additional instances of non-state-led strategic surprise confronted by countries other than the United States.

The remainder of this article focuses on the second puzzle, namely why non-state- led surprise has been an increasing challenge for the United States in recent decades. The existing literature on state-led surprise suggests four hypotheses that warrant investigation.

First, consideration should be given to the international system’s transformation from the bipolar structure of the Cold War to an era of unipolar American power. A non-state-led surprise, the collapse of the Soviet Union, was a necessary cause of that transformation. William Wohlforth argues that both hegemonic theory and balance- of-power theory hold that the raw power advantage of the United States since the end of the Cold War means that “no other major power is in a position to follow any policy that depends for its success on prevailing against the U.S. in a war or an extended rivalry.” [46] As a status quo power, the United States regards many strategic surprises as against its interests. It is plausible that its power advantage since the end of the Cold War has worked to dissuade other states from taking strategic actions inimical to America’s interests, thereby reducing the frequency of state-led strategic surprise.

Second, technological change, and the extent to which it has produced a relative shift of power away from governments and towards non-state actors, warrants analytical attention. Advances in communication and information technologies produced the rise of around-the-clock global capital flows, hastening the decline of government influence over financial markets in the 1980s and 1990s.[47] As a result, shifts in global private investment could cause sudden changes in regional and global economic conditions, a key factor in the onset of the Asian financial crisis.[48] Did technological change contribute to the economic crisis of 2008 onward by facilitating the global trade in complex financial products? How significant was it as a cause of the recent upheaval in the Arab world by providing a tool to instigate or facilitate large-scale protests?

Third, as noted, the characteristics of an enemy often act as a “noise barrier” by distorting warning signals. Byman points out that Al-Qaeda, like a considerable number of terrorist groups, was a “hard target” since its members were difficult to identify, their actions difficult to anticipate and their organization difficult to infiltrate.[49] Nevertheless, for a number of the other non-state-led surprises in recent decades, there has not been an entity resembling an adversary. In the case of political revolutions, such as the fall of the Shah, the collapse of the USSR and the Arab upheaval, there was no enemy as such; instead surprise was produced by the actions of opposition movements that enjoyed varying degrees of popular support. On the one hand, that meant U.S. intelligence did not face the challenge of deliberate deception by an adversary. But, on the other hand, before the surprises began to manifest themselves and key actors began to coalesce, there was not really a single entity that could have been the object of U.S. intelligence efforts. Similarly, the economic surprises identified stemmed from the actions of countless individuals and entities, complicating the analysis of emerging trends. As we will see, these observations hold important lessons for policy makers and intelligence analysts looking to head off future non-state-led surprises.

Fourth, these challenges were likely compounded by bureaucratic pathologies, especially the institutional structures of the U.S. government, which remained more focused on state-level challenges and have arguably not given sufficient attention to building capacities attuned to non-state groups and trends. In the case of the Arab upheaval, U.S. official relations were focused on the ruling regimes, rather than groups that would lead the revolutions and become influential in their aftermath, such as the Muslim Brotherhood. As one experienced American official put it: “There is no question it was easier when Mubarak was around. All you had to do was make one phone call. Now you have to make one hundred.” [50] The fact that U.S. official engagement was primarily with Arab governments likely contributed to the lack of warning about the pressures building in those societies and also likely constrained the ability of the United States to respond in the aftermath of the upheaval, since a critical first step was forging links with newly important actors. More broadly, as Paul Bracken has argued, people skills inside the intelligence community have not kept up with changes in the twenty-first century strategic environment.[51]

V: Conclusions

Understanding why the United States has been blindsided by non-state-led surprises, and explaining their increasing challenge, should be a theoretical and policy priority. From a theoretical perspective, our current understanding of the effect of surprise on foreign policy is incomplete, as demonstrated by the two puzzles identified. From a policy perspective, only with a clear understanding of what has caused the increased incidence of the challenge can steps be taken to reduce the constraints on better analysis of, and response to, non-state-led transformations.

Even so, a strong finding from the literature is that surprise is very difficult to avoid.[52] That is why, in thinking about defense plans, Betts argues that “the simple ideal is a posture that will suffice despite surprise.” [53] Hence, U.S. strategy should be formulated to be as resilient to strategic surprise as possible, including to non-state-led surprises. An important priority is to build official links with as broad an array of actors as possible, rather than just relying on links with other governments. Doing so will help maximize the degree of influence the United States has on actors whose importance may increase dramatically in the future. Additionally, in formulating strategies, the United States should pay particular attention to future “temporal surprises”—contingencies that will definitely happen, but whose timing is uncertain.[54] The mortality of leaders in political systems that do not have well-established mechanisms for the transfer of power is one source of such surprises. To take an important example, the throne in Saudi Arabia will, in the not too distant future, pass to a monarch who is not a son of Abdul Aziz ibn Saud, the Kingdom’s founder. The current monarch, King Abdullah, is almost ninety years old and in poor health; the Crown Prince is aged seventy-six. Meanwhile, the youngest son of the Kingdom’s founder is already in his late sixties.[55] The determination of a new royal line in Saudi Arabia will definitely happen, so the United States should be thinking now about how to build links with the likely power brokers in the Kingdom to maximize U.S. influence in dealing with the potential repercussions of a succession crisis in the strategically important country. Likewise, the United States should be giving appropriate consideration to who are likely to be the most important political actors in Cuba after both Fidel and Raul Castro have passed away.

No matter how many resources are devoted to intelligence collection and analysis, the United States will be surprised in the future, including by non-state-led transforma- tions. As well as doing their utmost to avoid being blindsided, U.S. policy makers must either develop what Betts calls a “tolerance for disaster” or, better still, build government structures and design strategies that are as effective as possible in spite of surprise.[56]

About the Author

John-Michael Arnold holds an MA in International Relations from Yale University. He currently works as a researcher at a think tank in Washington, DC.

Endnotes

1. David Sanger, Confront and Conceal: Obama’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power (New York: Crown Pub- lishers, 2012), 300.

2.  John Lewis Gaddis, Surprise, Security, and the American Experience (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004), 13.

3.  Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1962).

4.  Richard K. Betts, Surprise Attack (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press), 4.

5. See, for example, Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution and the Iraq War (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2010), 2.

6.  Ariel Levite, Intelligence and Strategic Surprises (New York: Columbia University Press, 1987), 2.

7.  For example, see Paul Bracken, Ian Bremmer and David Gordon, eds., Managing Strategic Surprise: Lessons from Risk Management and Risk Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

8. Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall, “Ahead of the Curve: Anticipating Strategic Surprise,” in Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics, ed. Francis Fukuyama (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 94.

9.  Michael I. Handel, The Diplomacy of Surprise: Hitler, Nixon, Sadat (Cambridge: Center for International Affairs, Harvard University, 1981), 4.

10.  Bruce Berkowitz, “U.S. Intelligence Estimates of Soviet Collapse: Reality and Perception,” in Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics, ed. Francis Fukuyama (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007).

11. Daniel Byman, “Strategic Surprise and the September 11 Attacks,” Annual Review of Political Science 8 (2005): 151.

12. Betts, Surprise Attack, 87.

13. Richard K. Betts, “Surprise, Scholasticism, and Strategy: A Review of Ariel Levite’s Intelligence and Strategic Surprises,”
    International Studies Quarterly 33 (1989): 342.

14. Handel, Diplomacy of Surprise, 2.

15. Paul Bracken, “How to build a warning system,” in Paul Bracken, Ian Bremmer and David Gordon, eds., Managing Strategic Surprise: Lessons from Risk Management and Risk Assessment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 25.

16. Handel, Diplomacy of Surprise, 10.

17.  Henry Kissinger, “The White Revolutionary: Reflections on Bismarck,” Daedalus 97 (1968): 911.

18.  Handel, Diplomacy of Surprise, 9–10.

19.  Handel, Diplomacy of Surprise, 10.

20.  CarlvonClausewitz,OnWar,trans.MichaelHowardandPeterParet,(Princeton:PrincetonUniversityPress,1984),198.

21.  Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 143.

22.  Jeffrey T. Richelson, Spying on the Bomb: American Nuclear Intelligence from Nazi Germany to Iran and North Korea (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2006), 77.

23.  Richelson, Spying on the Bomb, 90.

24.  Robert Jervis, “Deterrence and Perception,” International Security 7 (1982): 25.

25.  Roberta Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, 3.

26.  Roberta Wohlstetter, “Cuba and Pearl Habor: Hindsight and Foresight,” Foreign Affairs 43 (1965): 691.

27.  Michael I. Handel, “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise,” International Studies Quarterly 21 (1977): 462–464.

28.  Betts, Surprise Attack, 45.

29.  Handel, “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise,” 464.

30.  John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 267.

31.  Handel, “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise,” 469.

32.  Handel, “The Yom Kippur War and the Inevitability of Surprise,” 469–470.

33.  Henry A. Kissinger, Years of Upheaval (Boston: Little, Brown & Company, 1982), 460.

34.  Kissinger, Years of Upheaval, 460.

35.  Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, 21.

36.  Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 296.

37.  Byman, “Strategic Surprise and the September 11 Attacks,” 136.

38.  Byman, “Strategic Surprise and the September 11 Attacks,” 149.

39.  Wohlstetter, Pearl Harbor, 366 and 396.

40.  Richard Posner, “The 9/11 Report: A Dissent,” New York Times, August 29, 2004, accessed October 31, 2012, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/08/29/books/the-9-11-report-a-dissent.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

41.  Richard Posner, “Thinking about Catastrophe,” in Blindside: How to Anticipate Forcing Events and Wild Cards in Global Politics, ed. Francis Fukuyama. (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2007), 12.

42. Thomas Schelling, foreword to PearlHarbor: Warning and Decision, by Robert Wohlstetter(Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1962), viii.

43.  See Byman, “Strategic Surprise and the September 11 Attacks,” and Janne E. Nolan, Douglas MacEachin and Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise: Formulating U.S. Security Policy in an Age of Uncertainty (Washington, DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy, 2006).

44. ArendLijphart,“Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,”The American Political Science Review65 (1971),685.

45.  Arend Lijphart, “Comparative Politics and the Comparative Method,” 692.

46.  William Wohlforth, “The Stability of a Unipolar World,” International Security 24 (1999), 7.

47.  Janne E. Nolan, Douglas MacEachin and Kristine Tockman, Discourse, Dissent, and Strategic Surprise, 86.

48.  Ibid.

49.  Byman, “Strategic Surprise and the September 11 Attacks,” 165.

50.  Sanger, Confront and Conceal, 316.

51.  Paul Bracken, “How to build a warning system,” 27.

52.  See, for example, Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable,” World Politics 31 (1978).

53.  Betts, Surprise Attack, 296.

54.  This terminology is drawn from Richard Danzig, Driving in the Dark: Ten Propositions About Prediction and National Security (Washington, DC: Center for a New American Security, 2011): 16.

55.  Karen Elliott House, “Next up in the Middle East mess? Saudi Arabia’s succession fight,” Washington Post, September 14, 2012, accessed October 31, 2012, http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/next-up-in-the-middle-east-mess-saudi-arabias-succession-fight/2012/09/14/b316e7ec-fd44-11e1-a31e-804fccb658f9_story.html56  Richard K. Betts, “Analysis, War, and Decision: Why Intelligence Failures Are Inevitable,” 89.