Uncertainty, Forecasting and the Difficulty of Strategy

Abstract

Strategy in practice inevitably involves the forecasting of future cause-effect relationships. Four basic sources of uncertainty that make it difficult to predict and “test” these relationships, associated variables, as well as parameters can be distinguished: aleatory uncertainty; complex systems; mental, cognitive and physiological limits; and the enemy. To a varying degree, all four contribute to the difficulty inherent in predicting the international security environment, intelligence and deception, friction, strategic interactions with the enemy, and revolutions in military affairs. Since none of the basic sources of uncertainty can be eliminated by technical or organizational measures, strategy will always remain difficult.

Notes

1. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, edited and translated by Michael Howard and Peter Paret (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Everyman's Library, 1993), p. 138.

2. Clausewitz, p. 146.

3. Clausewitz, p. 99.

4. Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 17.

5. Colin S. Gray, Weapons Don't Make War (Lawrence, KA: University Press of Kansas, 1993), p. 10.

6. Clausewitz, p. 110.

7. Clausewitz, pp. 110–111.

8. Gray, Modern Strategy, pp. 26–44.

9. Edward N. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, revised and enlarged edition, 2001), pp. 87–91.

10. See, for example: Lawrence E. Key, “Cultivating National Will,” Maxwell Paper, no. 5 (Maxwell AFB, AL: Air War College, 1996) and Edward N. Luttwak, “Toward Post-Heroic Warfare,” Foreign Affairs, vol. 74, no. 3 (May/June 1995), pp. 109–122.

11. E. Bardach, The Implementation Game (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977), pp. 251–252.

12. Fred Charles Iklé, Every War Must End (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991); J. C. Wylie, Military Strategy: A General Theory of Power Control (Shrewsbury: Distributed by Tri-Service Press Ltd, 1989. Reprint with a new introduction. Originally published: New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1967), esp. pp. 84–87.

13. Roberta Wohlstetter, “Slow Pearl Harbours and the Pleasures of Deception,” in Intelligence and National Security, eds. Robert L. Pfaltzgraff, Uri Ra'anan, and Warren Milberg (Hamden, CT: Archon Books, 1981), pp. 23–34.

14. Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1962).

15. Iklé, pp. 42–50.

16. Charles F. Doran, “Why Forecasts Fail,” International Studies Review, vol 1, no. 2 (1999), p. 11.

17. Nicholas Rescher, Predicting the Future (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1998), p. 64.

18. Woodrow J. Kuhns, “Intelligence Failures: Forecasting and the Lessons of Epistemology,” in Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence, eds. Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken (London: Frank Cass, 2003), p. 93.

19. Wayne G. Jackson, “Scientific Estimating,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 9, no. 3 (Summer 1965), pp. 8–9.

20. Other, related causes such as the difficulty in training strategists are outlined in Colin S. Gray, “Why Strategy is Difficult,” Joint Forces Quarterly, no. 22 (Summer 1999), pp. 6–12. See also Robert Ayson, “Strategic Uncertainty,” New Zealand Army Journal, no. 21 (July 1999), pp. 37–41.

21. National Research Council, Review of Recommendations for Probabilistic Seismic Hazard Analysis: Guidance on Uncertainty and Use of Experts Society (Washington, DC: The National Academy Press, 1997), p. 31.

22. Advisory Council on Global Change, World in Transition: Strategies for Managing Global Environmental Risks (Berlin: Springer, 2000), pp. 194–196.

23. For an introduction to complex adaptive systems, see for example Mitchell Waldrop, Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos (New York: Touchstone, 1992).

24. C. F. Kurtz and D. J. Snowden, “The New Dynamics of Strategy: Sense-making in a Complex and Complicated World,” IBM Systems Journal, vol. 42, no. 3 (2003), pp. 462–483.

25. Lawrence Freedman, “The Revolution in Strategic Affairs,” Adelphi Paper, no. 318 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1998), p. 44.

26. George J. Stigler, “The Economics of Information,” Journal of Political Economy, vol. 69, no. 3 (June 1961), pp. 213–225.

27. Paul R. Kleindorfer, Howard C. Kunreuther, and Paul J. H. Schoemaker, Decision Sciences: An Integrative Perspective (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 24–44; Richards J. Heuer, Psychology of Intelligence Analysis (Langley: Center for the Study of Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency, 1999).

28. Advisory Council on Global Change, pp. 279–282.

29. Thomas Hellstöm and Merle Jacob, Policy Uncertainty and Risk: Conceptual Developments and Approaches (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001), p. 16–19.

30. Irving Janis, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (Boston, MA: Houghton-Mifflin, 1972).

31. Clausewitz, p. 83.

32. André Beaufre, An Introduction to Strategy (London: Faber and Faber, 1965), p. 22 (emphasis in original).

33. Wylie, p. 66.

34. Beaufre, pp. 34–35.

35. James J. Wirtz, “Theory of Surprise,” in Paradoxes of Strategic Intelligence, eds. Richard K. Betts and Thomas G. Mahnken (London: Frank Cass, 2003), pp. 101–116.

36. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace, p. 16.

37. Janice Gross Stein, “The 1973 Intelligence Failure: A Reconsideration,” The Jerusalem Quarterly, vol. 24, no. 7 (Summer 1982), pp. 51–52.

38. Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

39. David S. Alberts and Thomas Czerwinski, eds., Complexity, Global Politics, and National Security (Washington, DC: National Defense University Press, 1998).

40. For examples, see Steven Rieber, “Intelligence Analysis and Judgmental Calibration,” International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, vol. 17, no. 1 (Spring 2004), pp. 97–112; Richard Hundley, Past Revolutions, Future Transformations (Santa Monica: RAND, 1999), pp. 43–44. For a theoretical discussion of the problem of nonlinearities in forecasting, see Doran, pp. 11–41.

41. Gray, Weapons Don't Make War, pp. 92–99.

42. Richards J. Heuer, “Limits of Intelligence Analysis,” Orbis, vol. 49, no. 1 (Winter 2004), pp. 75–94.

43. Bruce Berkowitz and Allan E. Goodman, Strategic Intelligence for American National Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989).

44. Richards J. Heuer, “Cognitive Factors in Deception and Counterdeception,” in Strategic Military Deception, eds. Donald C. Daniel and Katherine L. Herbig (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), pp. 31–69.

45. Edward J. Epstein, “Incorporating Analysis of Foreign Government's Deception into the US Analytical System,” in Intelligence Requirements for the 1980's: Analysis and Estimates, ed. Roy Godson (New Brunswick: National Strategy Information Centre, 1980), pp.127–129; Donald C. Daniel and Katherine L. Herbig, “Propositions on Military Deception,” in Strategic Military Deception, eds. Donald C. Daniel and Katherine L. Herbig (New York: Pergamon Press, 1982), pp. 3–30.

46. C. Perrow, Normal Accidents: Living with High-Risk Technologies (New York: Basic Books, 1984).

47. Clausewitz, p. 138.

48. Clausewitz, pp. 138–139.

49. Alan Beyerchen, “Clausewitz, Nonlinearity, and the Unpredictability of War,” International Security, vol. 17, no. 3 (Winter 1992/93), pp. 59–90; Barry D. Watts, “Clausewitzian Friction and Future War,” McNair Paper, 68 (Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Revised Edition, 2004), pp. 67–76.

50. Stephen J. Cimbala, Clausewitz and Chaos: Friction in War and Military Policy (Westport: Praeger, 2001), pp. 3–4, 10–11.

51. Watts, “Clausewitzian Friction and Future War,” pp. 19, 21.

52. Luttwak, Strategy: The Logic of War and Peace.

53. Hundley, p. 9. Emphasis in original.

54. And that some minimum strength along all dimensions is necessary for success in it. Colin S. Gray, “RMAs and the Dimensions of Strategy,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Autumn/Winter 1997–98), pp. 50–54.

55. Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff, “The Sources of Military Change,” in The Sources of Military Change, eds. Theo Farrell and Terry Terriff (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002), pp. 3–20.

56. James R. FitzSimonds and Jan M. van Tol, “Revolutions in Military Affairs,” Joint Forces Quarterly (Spring 1994), pp. 25–26.

57. Clifford J. Rodgers, “‘As if a New Sun Had Arisen’: England's Fourteenth–Century RMA,” in The Dynamics of Military Revolution, 1300–2050, eds. Williamson Murray and Macgregor Knox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), pp. 15–34.

58. Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 2002), p. 6.

59. Colin S. Gray, Strategy for Chaos (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 120.

60. Colin S. Gray, Transformation and Strategic Surprise (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, 2005).

61. John Whitman, “On Estimating Reactions,” Studies in Intelligence, vol. 9, no. 3 (Summer 1965), p. 3.