Pseudo-Wisdom and Intelligence Failures

Almost all the strategic surprises that the major powers suffered in the last one hundred years are at least partly attributable to some form of intelligence failure. For the United States the new millennium started with two major failures of this sort: the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001 and the absence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Naturally, the ever-growing literature in Intelligence Studies treats this topic with special emphasis, at least on a par with other salient issues such as the consumer–producer interface and/or the perennial question of politicization. Despite the widespread attention, no single definition of intelligence failure commands a wide-enough consensus within the discipline or among practitioners. Though obviously related to strategic surprise, whether these should be lumped together with tactical-level shortcomings in intelligence is unclear. Failure can occur at different stages of the intelligence cycle, and distinguishing between these phenomena is probably desirable. However, in the major historical cases, telling apart the otherwise conceptually distinct tasking failure from collection failure, or both from analytic failure and dissemination failure, has proven to be rather difficult. Noting these complications, the focus hence is on analytic failures of a strategic nature.