Knowing the Adversary: Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessment of Intentions in International Relations

Abstract

States are more likely to engage in risky and destabilizing actions such as military build-ups and preemptive strikes if they believe their adversaries pose a tangible threat. Yet despite the crucial importance of this issue, we don’t know enough about how states and their leaders draw inferences about their adversaries’ long-term intentions. This book draws on a wealth of historical archival evidence to shed new light on how world leaders and intelligence organizations actually make these intentions assessments. The book examines three cases: Britain’s assessments of Nazi Germany’s intentions in the 1930s, America’s assessments of the Soviet Union’s intentions during the Carter administration, and the Reagan administration’s assessments of Soviet intentions near the end of the Cold War. The book advances a new theoretical framework—called selective attention—that emphasizes organizational dynamics, personal diplomatic interactions, and cognitive and affective factors. It finds that decision makers don’t pay as much attention to those aspects of state behavior that major theories of international politics claim they do. Instead, they tend to determine the intentions of adversaries on the basis of preexisting beliefs, theories, and personal impressions. The book also shows how intelligence organizations rely on very different indicators than decision makers, focusing more on changes in the military capabilities of adversaries. The book provides a clearer picture of the historical validity of existing theories, and broadens our understanding of the important role that diplomacy plays in international security.