Second, despite efforts to improve early warning indicators of possible flare-ups, such events are likely to remain equivocal, subject to considerable uncertainty, and capable of diverse interpretations. It is not that potential major trouble spots cannot be identified; rather, the problem lies in understanding such situations well enough to forecast which ones are likely to explode and when. Experts and observers are likely to differ in their estimates of how serious a low-level situation will become, with what probability, and how soon.
Third, early warning indicators typically do not speak for themselves; they require analysis and interpretation. But the kinds of knowledge and theories needed for this purpose may be in short supply. As noted earlier, specialists have worked more on improving possible indicators than on developing better theories and models to assess and predict the significance of the indicators.27
Fourth, even in a case in which there is relatively good warning, policymakers may be reluctant to credit the warning and to take preventive action because they have been subjected too often to the "cry wolf" phenomenon. Oddly enough, intense policy concerns that actions may be seen as premature or unnecessary -- revealing an embarrassing policy naivete, or worse, the possible unneeded commitment of scarce resources -- generate a real wariness of "false triggers."28 These policymakers, typically preoccupied with a battery of other problems that require urgent attention, often give only the barest attention to new, low-level crises that may never develop into serious concerns.
Fifth, and related to this, overload induces passivity. Given the large number of simmering crises, and given the ever-growing limitation of resources, policymakers find it impractical to respond with preventive actions to all of them, thinking that is reinforced by the general lack of knowledge regarding what efforts would be effective. Early warning of an equivocal, uncertain nature in such situations is insufficient for costly or risky responses.
Thus, in many ethnic and religious conflicts, humanitarian crises, or severe human rights abuses, timely or accurate warning may not be the problem at all. Rather, for one reason or another, as noted, no serious response is likely to be taken solely on the basis of early warning simply because a simmering situation that threatens to boil over may not be deemed important enough to warrant the type and scale of effort deemed necessary to prevent the hypothetical catastrophe. Moreover, this reaction can occur not only when what is at stake is only dimly perceived or not foreseen at all, but also if the coming crisis is fully and accurately anticipated.
Indeed, sixth and finally, it may be that a reluctance to act in the face of warning at times results not because warning is not taken seriously, but rather because decision makers take it very seriously but are nonetheless deterred by the prospects of a "slippery slope," that is, inexorable -- and potentially intractable -- involvement in an already nasty problem. This dilemma is particularly poignant for political leaders who must weigh incurring political costs now (in addition to the human and material costs that action entails) for benefits that will accrue downstream, if at all, with no guarantees that they would be given credit for preventing a disaster, now a non-event. Thus, even in cases where the prospect of a catastrophe is taken seriously, there may be a lack of "political will" to take timely and effective action.
Numerous observers have noted that governments often ignore an incipient crisis until it has escalated into a deadly struggle or a major catastrophe. All too often political leaders find it difficult to persuade their people to support potentially costly and risky operations before a disaster actually occurs. As one report put it:
People throughout the world tend to be guided by the media -- and they are predominantly Western media -- in determining when a problem warrants international action. Television coverage of a situation has become, for many, a precondition for action. Yet for most commercial networks, the precondition for coverage is crisis. There has to be large-scale violence, destruction, or death before the media takes notice. Until that happens, governments are not under serious internal pressure to act. And by then, the international community's options have usually been narrowed, and made more difficult to implement effectively.29But as noted earlier, even when events that could precipitate a major humanitarian or violent crisis are perceived in a timely manner and accurately evaluated, decision makers will often still defer taking preventive action. As we have seen, this inaction is either because the warning is not taken seriously, for the reasons mentioned, or because the warning is taken very seriously but decision makers are loath to confront the unpalatable choice of responses facing them. Particularly for the complex and seemingly intractable disputes that have characterized much of the violence of the post-Cold War period, it may be less the unfolding crisis that conditions how a decision maker processes warning than the implications of that crisis for action.
Nevertheless, it is a truism to note that policymakers prefer to receive unequivocal warning before deciding whether and how to respond. But, as noted earlier, high-confidence early warning is seldom available, and it can be highly disadvantageous if policymakers defer action altogether until more conclusive warning is available. It is precisely because unambiguous warning is so difficult to obtain that policymakers must confront the question of what types of response are useful and acceptable, even though the warning is uncertain or equivocal.
As noted earlier, once the problem of warning is linked with its implications for action, it becomes significantly redefined. Early warning of a possible crisis is desirable not in and of itself but insofar as it provides decision makers with an opportunity to make a timely response of an appropriate kind that might be otherwise impossible. Warning gives the decision maker time to decide what to do and then to prepare to do it. Warning provides an opportunity to avert the expected crisis, to modify it, or to redirect it into some less dangerous and less costly direction. On occasion, warning may provide an opportunity to deal with a conflict-of-interest situation or misperceptions before they lead to a military conflict.
Consideration of the warning-response problem requires that we introduce another dimension into the analysis at this point. Since response to warning is never without cost or risk, the development of warning-response systems, contingency response options, or ad hoc responses requires careful consideration of the possible costs as well as of the expected benefits of each option, weighed, of course, against the costs and benefits of inaction. At the same time, there are undoubtedly some responses to early warning of an equivocal and ambiguous character that are less costly than others. One could, for example, quietly intensify the collection of intelligence and/or begin discreet consultations with selected allies in order to clarify an uncertain situation before "going public" with more assertive measures, such as placing forces at increased readiness.
Admittedly, some low-cost responses may make only a limited or uncertain contribution to dealing with a troublesome situation. There may be, in other words, a trade-off between responses that promise a great deal but are costly and risky, and responses of a more modest but still useful kind that do not pose large costs and risks. The experience with trade-offs of this kind in dealing with the problem of surprise attack may be suggestive. In part, the trade-off dilemma in these cases can be dealt with by developing a calibrated warning-response system, one in which the level-of-readiness response increases with the level or urgency of warning.
For special historical reasons related to the trauma of Pearl Harbor, as noted earlier, American analysts concerned with the warning problem have focused attention primarily upon the danger of a surprise all-out military attack. Lesser types of threats and crises associated with the broader, and in many ways, more complex tasks of preventive diplomacy and preventive actions have not yet received as much systematic attention in efforts to develop warning-response systems. Thus, the major uses of warning contemplated by the U.S. planners in the past have focused upon (a) the use of warning to alert military forces in order to reduce their vulnerability and to shorten their response time; and (b) the use of warning to reinforce deterrence by signaling to the adversary a strong and credible commitment to respond.
A broader range of threats and types of crises should engage the interest of policymakers and specialists on crisis anticipation. Similarly, a broader range of response options than the two uses of warnings noted above should be developed.30 A longer, more diversified list of possible uses of warning would include, but are not limited to, the following (general response options are listed here without attempting to judge their utility in any particular situation):
The preceding list of response options characterizes in general terms the types of responses available to decision makers and is intended for illustrative purposes. More specific options must be identified in policy planning tailored to the type of situation and problem that is envisaged by the warning. Obviously, different types of incipient crises will require identification of different response options.31
This brief list should not obscure the implied steps that each measure entails. For example, using military demonstrations to underscore one's seriousness of purpose must be balanced against the desire to control the level of engagement (and avoid a "slippery slope").
So much of this list seems like straightforward policymaking. What we mean to emphasize, however, is the need for an explicit effort to map various responses to anticipated developments -- before those developments occur -- and to associate particular response options more closely with foreseeable cues. 32
A word of caution may be in order. "Missed opportunities" implies that the "misses" constitute important policy failures of various kinds. Indeed, it is difficult, if not impossible, to avoid the analytic conclusion that such "failures" contributed measurably to a worsened situation on the ground. This assumption, that a crisis situation is the measure against which policy decisions and their aftermath are judged, may contribute to analytic clarity, but it fails to represent adequately all of the factors that constrain policy decisions -- especially in times of crisis. Indeed, as we have tried to illustrate, factors unrelated to the crisis situation (domestic elections, credibility and other strategic concerns, or other international problems) can affect a decision maker's receptivity to warning more than the circumstances causing the alarm -- even when warning is "loud and clear." Moreover, these other factors are frequently perceived by decision makers not only to be legitimate to take into account, they are often seen as more legitimate considerations than circumstances on the ground. Indeed, decision makers most closely associated with many of these so-called missed opportunities resulting in policy "failures" often strongly resist that indictment, arguing instead that their action (or wise restraint) was in the best interest of the public that they serve. Thus, even as the following discussion focuses on the crisis situation as the main measure of the effectiveness of actions taken (or not), we recognize the tensions that exist within the full context of these situations.
The assertion that a missed opportunity occurred is an example of counterfactual reasoning, a practice that is very frequently resorted to in everyday life as well as in serious analysis of historical outcomes. However widespread and indeed indispensable, counterfactual analysis is recognized to be a very weak, problematical method. This is not the occasion to discuss recent efforts by scholars to identify requirements for more disciplined uses of counterfactual reasoning.33 Suffice it to say that statements that missed opportunities occurred in cases of failure of preventive diplomacy must be evaluated carefully to distinguish highly plausible from implausible or barely plausible claims. Efforts to do so are necessary not merely to improve historical analysis of cases in which preventive diplomacy was not attempted or was ineffectual; more rigorous counterfactual analysis is necessary also to draw correct lessons from such failures.
A useful start in this direction can be made by distinguishing different types of missed opportunities. The following is a provisional (no doubt incomplete) listing:
In addition to some such typology of different types of possible missed opportunities, we need, as noted earlier, some way of assessing the merits of claims that there was indeed a missed opportunity to avoid the disaster that followed. Counterfactuals are a way of rewriting history (exploring the possibility of an alternative outcome) by conducting a mental experiment -- i.e., "if only this rather than that had been done, the outcome would have been quite different." Some counterfactual assertions are more plausible than others. Those of us who believe in the necessity for timely responses to early warning may inadvertently exaggerate the plausibility of a missed opportunity in cases that developed into major conflicts or severe humanitarian catastrophes.
Several suggestions can be made for assessing the plausibility of assertions of a missed opportunity. A basic distinction needs to be made between two connotations of "opportunity." One use of the term implies that a significantly better/good outcome would surely have been achieved if it were not for . . ., or if only this rather than that had been done. A weaker connotation of the term "opportunity" is that a better outcome was possible; it might have been achieved if . . . A still weaker connotation states merely that a better outcome was possible but without indicating what might have been done to secure it. In making assertions of a missed opportunity, and of course, in evaluating such claims, it is important to keep this distinction in mind. Frequently, critics who identify a missed opportunity blur this distinction.
Admittedly, it is often difficult to judge the degree of confidence that can be ascribed to what appears to have been a missed opportunity. Practitioners who engage in efforts at preventive diplomacy may well regard these distinctions as an academic exercise. It must be recognized that those who engage in preventive actions often do so without demanding of themselves that they be able to predict outcomes with high confidence; they make what they regard to be appropriate efforts and use what leverage they have to influence the course of events. They reason that when the stakes are high, one must make efforts to influence the course of events even when prospects of success are highly uncertain. It is only human to believe that adverse outcomes might have been avoided or moderated, if only . . . .
Such explanations for what may be dubious claims on behalf of a particular missed opportunity leave us with the task of developing reasonable ways of evaluating them. To construct a good counterfactual analysis of a missed opportunity one needs to start with a good explanation of the actual outcome of the case at hand. This step is important, obviously, because the counterfactual changes what are thought to be the critical variable(s) that presumably accounted for the historical outcome. If one has an erroneous/unsatisfactory explanation for it, then the counterfactual analysis that argues that a better outcome was possible, "if only . . .," is likely to be flawed. Both the historical explanation and the counterfactually derived alternative to it are likely to be more correct or plausible if they are supported by relevant generalizations (and theory).
In formulating hypothetical missed opportunities and in evaluating them, at least two questions need to be addressed: First, was the alternative action possible at the time and known to be possible, or was it something that one sees only in retrospect. If the latter, then the claim of a missed opportunity is weakened since it rests on the argument that alternative action could have and should have been seen at the time. Missed opportunities that rest too heavily on hindsight carry less plausibility but, of course, such claims should not be dismissed if one wants to draw useful lessons from such experiences. An after-the-fact identification of an action or strategy not known or considered at the time can still be useful in drawing lessons.
Missed opportunities differ, too, depending upon whether the alternative is a simple, circumscribed action or whether it is a sequence of actions over time. In the latter case, counterfactual reasoning involves a long, complex chain of causation involving many variables and conditions, all of which would have to fall into place at the right time for the missed opportunity to be realized. The plausibility of a missed opportunity is enhanced, in contrast, when the chain of causation is shorter and less complicated. A missed opportunity is obviously less plausible when it rests on the belief or expectation that a different set of actions could have occurred over time and overcome a series of obstacles, thereby achieving a successful outcome.
The second question: Was there at least one or a few decisive turning points? Those who take a "path dependent" view of history point to the importance of "branching points" in a developing situation. At such points, once events start down a certain path, all possible future outcomes are not equally probable. If an analyst who asserts that there was a missed opportunity does not provide a plausible scenario of how the outcome would have been more favorable, then it is not yet a strong candidate for a plausible missed opportunity.
Those of us interested in assessing possible missed opportunities more rigorously may find it useful, if not indeed necessary, to keep such distinctions in mind. At the same time, we believe that the difficulties of assessing missed opportunities should not discourage us from efforts to do so. It is not that we are interested in rewriting history per se. Rather, careful study of possible missed opportunities is necessary if we are to learn from experience.34
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