1. The changing dimensions of information gathering and response are highlighted in two Foreign Affairs articles by Joseph Nye. Nye notes that as warning indicators become more diffuse and complex, "information about what is occurring becomes a central commodity of international relations, just as the threat and use of military force was seen as the central power resource in an international system overshadowed by the potential clash of superpowers." Nye suggests that international coalitions will, in the future, be based on "the ability quickly to reduce the ambiguity of violent situations, to respond flexibly, and to use force, where necessary, with precision and accuracy." Joseph Nye and William Owens, "America's Information Edge," Foreign Affairs 75, no. 2 (March/April 1996), pp. 20-36; and Joseph Nye, "Peering into the Future," Foreign Affairs 73, no. 4 (July/August 1994), pp. 82-93. See also Gregory F. Treverton, "Estimating Beyond the Cold War," Defense Intelligence Journal 3 (1994), pp. 5-20.
2. See for example, Pauline H. Baker and John A. Ausink, "State Collapse and Ethnic Violence: Toward a Predictive Model," Parameters 26, no. 1 (1996); "Early Warning of Communal Conflicts and Humanitarian Crises," Proceedings of a workshop held at the Center for International Development and Conflict Management, University of Maryland, November 5-6, 1993, Journal of Ethno-Development 4, no. 1 (July 1994); Ted Robert Gurr, "Early Warning Systems: From Surveillance to Assessment to Action," in Preventive Diplomacy, ed. Kevin M. Cahill (New York: Basic Books, 1996); Robert Kennedy, "Warning for National Response in the 21st Century," Strategic Outreach Conference Report, Strategic Studies Institute, US Army War College (August 18-19, 1994); Mary McCarthy, "The National Warning System: Striving for an Elusive Goal," Defense Intelligence Journal 3, no. 1 (1994); Jurjen van der Vlugt and Klaas van Walraven, "Conflict Prevention and Early Warning in the Political Practice of International Organizations," Netherlands Institute of International Relations (February 1996); and Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Vigilance and Vengeance: NGOs Preventing Ethnic Conflict in Divided Societies (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1996).
A number of countries are struggling to improve their capacity to foresee, and respond to, humanitarian and political crises in the post-Cold War era. For an example of national efforts to understand and develop a response to longer-term changing international circumstances, see Canada 21: Canada and Common Security in the Twenty-First Century (The Center for International Studies, University of Toronto, 1994).
For an incisive, documented analysis of the warning-response gap in dealing with humanitarian emergencies, see "Global Humanitarian Emergencies 1995," released by the United States Mission to the UN (January 1995). The so-called "Norwegian Model" offers an example of successful government-NGO cooperation to overcome this gap. The framework for Norwegian efforts is provided by the Norwegian Emergency Preparedness System (NOREPS) and Norwegian Resource Bank for Democracy and Human Rights (NORDEM), which provide flexible stand-by arrangements and foster close cooperation between government, voluntary, and academic agencies.
3. This need was succinctly recognized in the report of The Commission on Global Governance: "Although the need for collection, analysis, and dissemination of information cannot be overemphasized, an even more important task is to initiate action on the basis of information providing early warning of possible conflicts." Our Global Neighborhood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 98, emphasis added.
4. This division is clearly demonstrated by the overwhelming -- and often criticized -- intelligence community emphasis on information gathering at the expense of analysis. According to a recent report, 90 percent of the classified intelligence budget of U.S. agencies is used for the collection of data, while less than 10 percent goes toward the analysis of this information. See the report of the Twentieth Century Fund Task Force on the Future of U.S. Intelligence, In From the Cold (New York: Twentieth Century Fund Press, 1996). Also, the report of the Commission on the Roles and Capabilities of the United States Intelligence Community, Preparing for the 21st Century: An Appraisal of U.S. Intelligence (March 1, 1996).
5. While this seems true of policy professionals, senior policymakers seem to be more divided on the optimal degree of separation between intelligence and policy. The 1995 debate over John Deutch's appointment as director of Central Intelligence with Cabinet rank points up the ambivalence. While most observers applauded his appointment as DCI, many intelligence experts have been critical of the decision to award him Cabinet rank, arguing that its political nature could impede Deutch's ability to offer objective intelligence, especially in times of crisis. Political analysts appear to have a greater understanding of the president's motives. For a general discussion of the separation between collection and analysis on the one hand and the policymaker on the other, see Richard K. Betts, "Policy-makers and Intelligence Analysts: Love, Hate or Indifference?" Intelligence and National Security 3, no. 1 (January 1988), pp. 184-189.
6. A survey of recent newspaper articles and editorials bears this point out. From Chechnya to Yugoslavia to Rwanda, members of the press and public have argued that these conflicts were preventable and have lamented the lack of initiative taken by leading governments and international organizations to head off such disasters.
7. Indeed, lack of timely or adequate intelligence has been blamed for everything from Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990 to the failure to warn airline passengers of information that terrorists have targeted a particular carrier. See, for example, Jim Wolf, "Embattled CIA Nominee Acknowledges U.S. Intelligence Failures," Washington Post, October 4, 1991; John Mintz, "Intelligence Blamed in Saudi Attack; Military Officials Dispute Hill Report on Fatal Dhahran Bombing; Hill Report Faults U.S. Deference to Saudi Hosts," Washington Post, August 15, 1996; David B. Ottaway, "U.S. Considers Slugging It Out With International Terrorism; Aides Split on Whether to Target Groups or States That Sponsor Them," Washington Post, October 17, 1996.
8. Gordon W. Prange with Katherine V. Dillon and Donald Goldstein, Pearl Harbor: The Verdict of History (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1986), see especially pp. 549-551.
9. Although that is not to say that policymakers do not want to know that such events are imminent, only that when compared to direct national threats, these contingencies are simply deemed less important.
10. As will be discussed later in the paper, there were a number of short-term and long-term signals that demonstrated the threat of military action by Iraq. Though many in mid-1990 may have been surprised by the timing and scope of Iraq's action, the mobilization of its army on the Kuwaiti border was no secret. For a detailed discussion of these warning signals, see Bruce Jentleson, With Friends Like These: Reagan, Bush, and Saddam, 1982-1990 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1994), especially pp. 167-176.
11. This section draws from Chapter 20 of A.L. George and R. Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974); and from A.L. George, "Warning and Response: Theory and Practice," in International Violence: Terrorism, Surprise and Control, ed., Yair Evron (Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1979). For a useful summary and interpretation of the results of laboratory studies, see Joseph De Rivera, The Psychological Dimension of Foreign Policy (Columbus, Ohio: C.E. Merrill Publishing Co., 1968), pp. 53ff.
12. A number of off-the-record discussions with analysts and policymakers familiar with the relationship between the intelligence and policy communities have noted the sometimes notorious competition among the various intelligence agencies for primacy in informing the policy process. Assessments of potential crisis situations find agencies at times in sharp disagreement with one another regarding the likely outcome. Such sustained disagreement often leads, over time, to the marginalization of the agency that is at odds with the intelligence agency offering the estimates that reinforce the policy inclinations of the key decision makers.
13. See, for example, Glenn D. Paige, The Korean Decision (New York: Free Press, 1968), especially pp. 349-352. Ample warning is acknowledged by Truman in Years of Trial and Hope, 1946-1952, vol. 2, Memoirs (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956), p. 331.
14. Burton I. Kaufman, The Korean War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1986), p. 33.
15. Allen Whiting concluded that both Washington and Beijing miscalculated the danger of each other's position: the U.S. underestimated Chinese warnings against moving across the 38th parallel; China, for its part, overestimated the threat to its security of UN troops crossing the 38th parallel; in China Crosses the Yalu (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1960), see especially pp. 163-172. Whiting updated the study, making use of newly declassified materials, in his "The U.S.-China War in Korea," in Avoiding War: Problems of Crisis Management, ed., A. L. George (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), pp. 103-125.
16. Avi Shlaim, The United States and the Berlin Blockade, 1948-1949 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), pp. 415-416.
17. Baghdad Radio, July 17, 1990, cited in Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993), p. 48.
18. "Kuwait: How the West Blundered," in The Gulf War Reader, eds., Christopher Cerf and Micah L. Sifry (New York: Times Books, 1991), pp. 99-106. Originally published in The Economist (September 29, 1990).
19. Jentleson, With Friends Like These, pp. 173-174 (see note 10).
20. A number of sources have included discussions of, and excerpts from, the meeting between Ambassador Glaspie and Saddam Hussein, including Jentleson, With Friends Like These, pp. 169-171; and Freedman and Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991, pp. 51-55.
21. See, for example, Freedman and Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990-1991, p. 63; Jentleson, With Friends Like These; "Kuwait: How the West Blundered," in The Gulf War Reader.
22. Africa Watch, "Rwanda: Talking Peace and Waging War: Human Rights Since the October 1990 Invasion" (February 27, 1992).
23. John Erikkson, The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Synthesis Report (Copenhagen: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, March 1996), p. 21.
24. Holly J. Burkhalter, "The Question of Genocide: The Clinton Administration and Rwanda," World Policy Journal 11, no. 4 (Winter 1994/95), pp. 44-54, originally quoted in Keith Richburg, "Witnesses Describe Cold Campaign of Killing in Rwanda," Washington Post, 8 May 1994. For additional studies of the Rwandan genocide, see Howard Adelman and Astri Surhke, The International Response to Conflict and Genocide: Lessons from the Rwanda Experience, Study 2: Early Warning and Conflict Management (Copenhagen: Steering Committee of the Joint Evaluation of Emergency Assistance to Rwanda, 1996); Alain Destexhe, Rwanda and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (New York: New York University Press, 1995); Gerard Prunier, The Rwanda Crisis: History of a Genocide (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995). For an incisive critique of bureaucratic phenomena that accompanied the UN's sluggishness, written by the person specializing on Rwanda in the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, see Michael N. Barnett, "The Politics of Indifference at the United Nations: The Security Council, Peacekeeping and Genocide in Rwanda," forthcoming in Cultural Anthropology.
25. Likewise, it is not difficult to find excuses not to act. In Rwanda, for example, even in the aftermath of genocide, the limited U.S. contribution of armored personnel carriers to UNAMIR was delayed for two months while the State Department haggled with the UN over compensation for the vehicles.
26. Such reluctance may be a Western phenomenon. In an essay prepared for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev argues that the response tendency in many former bloc states, as well as other repressive regimes, tends to be exactly the opposite: knee-jerk crackdowns. The essay, "Nonviolent Leadership," is part of a volume that the Commission is preparing on the role of leadership in preventing deadly conflict.
27. This difficulty is highlighted, for example, in Ted Robert Gurr and Barbara Harff, "Conceptual, Research and Policy Issues in Early Warning Research: An Overview," The Journal of Ethno-Development 4, no. 1; also, Janie Leatherman and Raimo Vyrynen, "Structure, Culture and Territory: Three Sets of Warning Indicators," paper prepared for the 36th Annual Convention of the International Studies Association, Chicago, IL, February 21-25, 1995.
28. The "cry wolf" dilemma in warning and response is cogently summarized by William Zartman: "The biggest problem in the early warning debate is not whether an event is preceded by warning signals but whether warning signals are followed by an event. There are many more prior indications than there are ensuing events; many warning signals simply fizzle and seemingly impending events work themselves out . . . What is needed is tornado warnings that announce tornados but also that do not announce non-tornados. The corridors of policy-makers reverberate with cries of `wolf!'" I. William Zartman, "Preventing State Collapse: The Argument," draft paper, Working Group on Collapsed States, The Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC, November 1996.
Other observers have noted that while greater vigilance in warning and response does result in an increase in "cry wolf" outcomes, errors of this type are preferable to extremely costly failures resulting from lack of attention to developing events.
29. Our Global Neighborhood, pp. 94-95 (see note 3).
30. A number of experienced intelligence and policy specialists have endorsed the need for developing a response "repertoire" that includes a wide array of responses, some small, possibly covert, and low cost, others large, public, and more costly. The rationale that "the response must fit the warning" is a simple one, but not one easily realized. The response repertoire, of course, should include the many different responses that can be made by nongovernmental organizations. See, for example, the remarks by John Brinkerhoff in Strategic Outreach Conference Report: Warning for National Responses in the 21st Century, SSI/Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College (August 18-19, 1994). See also the study by Michael Lund, Preventing Violent Conflicts: A Strategy for Preventive Diplomacy (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1996).
31. A recent World Bank report provides a very interesting example of the possible utility of differentiating early warning signals with respect to identifying (a) different possible adverse consequences, and (b) appropriate preventive actions for each such consequence. Nat J. Colletta, Markus Kostner, and Ingo Wiederhofer, The Transition from War to Peace in Sub-Saharan Africa (Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996), see especially pp. 32-38.
32. These cues do not necessarily need to occur to be foreseeable; indeed early preventive measures may mean that they never occur.
33. See, for example, Philip E. Tetlock and Aaron Belkin, Counterfactual Thought Experiments in World Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).
34. This is the objective of a study for the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World, directed and edited by Bruce W. Jentleson, to be published in late 1997 by Rowman & Littlefield (Boulder, CO). Some problems of obtaining and using warning by NGOs in humanitarian crises are discussed in Robert I. Rotberg, ed., Vigilance and Vengeance (see note 2).
ALEXANDER L. GEORGE is Graham H. Stuart Professor Emeritus of International Relations at Stanford University. A leading academic specialist on deterrence, crisis prevention and management, and coercive diplomacy, Dr. George came to Stanford in 1968 after 20 years at the Rand Corporation, where he had been head of the social science department. The most recent of his many scholarly publications are Limits of Coercive Diplomacy (1994) and Bridging the Gap: Theory and Practice of Foreign Policy (1993). Deterrence in American Foreign Policy, which he coauthored with Richard Smoke, won the Bancroft Prize in 1975. In 1983 he was the recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Five-Year Prize Award.
JANE E. HOLL is executive director of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict. Prior to joining Carnegie, Holl was a career officer in the United States Army, serving most recently as director for European Affairs on the National Security Council staff. She holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University.