HIS343H1 Chapter Notes - Chapter 5: Political Science Quarterly, Tet Offensive
Document Summary
World war ii: intelligence failures & successes (part. Betts, richard k. surprise despite warning: why sudden attacks succeed. political science quarterly. Focus on problem of warning and how to improve intelligence collection, rather than how to improve political response to signs of warning. Common view of surprise as an absolute problem rather than a matter of degree. Derivation of theories from single instances instead of comparative studies. Analysts of surprise attacks need to distinguish more carefully between intelligence, warning, and response. The question is not yes/no, but a measure of "how much" Intensity / duration of debate regarding response and degree of response. Even with warning, people have failed to react quickly enough. Stalin sent out warning shortly before, but was not centralized or efficient enough to do much. Problem not necessarily intelligence, but the fact that deployments were not flexible enough to respond to warnings. Warning just before the fact is hardly better than no warning.
