Alex Mintz - The Polythink Syndrome: U.S. Foreign Policy Decisions on 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and ISIS

THE POLYTHINK SYNDROME

U. S. Foreign Policy Decisions on 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and ISIS

Alex Mintz and Carly Wayne

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

Stanford University Press

Stanford, California

2016 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University.

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mintz, Alex, 1953 author.

The polythink syndrome : U.S. foreign policy decisions on 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and ISIS / Alex Mintz and Carly Wayne.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-8047-9515-9 (cloth: alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-9676-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8047-9677-4 (electronic)

1. United StatesForeign relations20012009Decision makingCase studies. 2. United StatesForeign relations2009Decision makingCase studies. 3. National securityUnited StatesDecision makingCase studies. 4. Group decision makingUnited StatesCase studies. I. Wayne, Carly, author. II. Title.

JZ1480.M564 2015

327.73056dc23

2015030662

Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10/14 Minion

Table of Contents

Preface

How do presidents and their advisors make war and peace decisions on military intervention, escalation, de-escalation, and termination of conflicts? Why do they often make sub-optimal decisions? Why do important policy goals, plans, and aspirations frequently result in inaction? The leading concept of group dynamics, Groupthink, offers one explanationcohesive policy-making groups, such as advisors to the President, often make sub-optimal decisions due to their desire for uniformity over dissent, while ignoring important limitations of chosen policies, overestimating the odds for success and failing to consider other relevant policy options or possibilities. But presidential advisory groups are often fragmented and divisive. We thus introduce Polythink, a group decision-making dynamic whereby different members in a decision-making unit espouse a plurality of opinions and offer divergent policy prescriptions, which can result in intragroup conflict, a disjointed decision-making process, and decision paralysis and inaction as each group member pushes for his or her preferred policy direction.

In The Polythink Syndrome, we analyze U.S. national security and foreign policy decisions such as the pre-9/11 national security choices, the decisions to enter into and withdraw from Afghanistan and Iraq, the crisis over the Iranian nuclear program (analyzed from both the American and the Israeli perspectives), the summer 2012 UN Security Council debate on the civil war in Syria, decisions in the 201314 IsraeliPalestinian peace negotiations, and the 2014 U.S. decision to attack ISIS. We illuminate the prevalence of Polythink, a phenomenon no less problematic or common than Groupthink, demonstrating how otherwise smart, experienced decision makers can engage in flawed decision-making processes that deeply affect the security and welfare of a country. We also discuss how Polythink characterizes many corporate and business decisions and day-to-day decisions and can thus have important implications for group-based decision-making processes outside of the political realm, such as in marketing, R&D, and financial decisions.

Furthermore, we explain how leaders and other decision makers (for example, in business) can transform Destructive Polythink into Productive Polythink, illuminating the potential ways in which this group dynamic may be effectively directed toward sound decisions. By shining a light on Polythinks symptoms and consequences, and on the factors that lead to Polythink, we seek to offer actionable policy prescriptions for elite decision makers to offset the negative attributes of this phenomenon and engage in more optimal policymaking processes.

Acknowledgments

We thank Mrs. Miri Furst-Homa and Dr. Ehud Eiran for comments and valuable input on various sections of this book. We have also benefited from comments given to Alex Mintz in seminars and presentations at the Davis Institute of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the 2012 International Society of Political Psychology Meeting in Chicago, the 2012 Columbia-Lauder Dialogue Group at IDC Herzliya, and the 2014 Science for Peace Conference in Milan, Italy.

The Polythink Syndrome

Pearl Harbor and September 11

On September 11, 2001, the United States of America was attacked by al-Qaeda terrorists who flew three American jetliners into the World Trade Center towers in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. The terrorists even aimed a fourth plane at the U.S. Capitol building or the White House before resistance from the planes passengers forced them to change course. The plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, killing all on board. More than 3,000 people were killed in these devastating events, including 2,606 in the World Trade Center, 246 victims on the four airline flights, and 125 in the Pentagon. The overwhelming majority of these casualties were civilians. Fifty-five military personnel were killed in the assault on Washington. These attacks were carefully planned and executed by Osama bin Laden and his covert fundamentalist Islamic terrorist group, al-Qaeda.

Since the 9/11 attacks, the U.S., and the world, have never been the same. Following the attacks, the U.S. entered the costly War on Terror, launching two wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Today, ongoing unrest in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan, the ISIS threat, and other terrorist attacks around the globe continue, with offensive operations by the U.S. in Iraq, Syria, and other countries in the region occurring as well.

Thus, as most academics, politicians, and pundits agree, the War on Terror continues to have profound implications for American citizens and others around the globe in an array of arenasaffecting the economy; individual freedoms and civil liberties; the security of airline transportation; the personal safety of civilians in the U.S., the Middle East, and other parts of the world; and even the conduct of modern warfare itself. However, American foreign policy decisions during these turbulent years have often been criticized as suboptimal or even damaging to Americas interests and security. The central goal of this book is to address this troubling paradoxhow do smart, experienced decision makers make faulty policy decisions or experience decision paralysis and inaction in the face of critical foreign policy crises?

Polythink

At first glance, many analysts and laymen alike draw parallels between September 11 and the last devastating attack on American soil that similarly transformed the world. On December 7, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, U.S. forces in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, were stunned in a deadly surprise attack by Japanese forces, leaving 2,402 Americans dead and another 1,282 wounded. Altogether, the Japanese sank or severely damaged eighteen ships, including eight battleships, three light cruisers, and three destroyers. On the airfields, the Japanese destroyed 161 American planes and seriously damaged 102 (World War II History Info 2010). As with September 11, 2001, this attack was arguably the main catalyst for the U.S. entry into a global war of epic proportions that truly changed the face of the world as we know it today.

But how is it that such a powerful and sophisticated nation as the U.S. allowed both of these deadly attacks to happen in the first place? More generally, how is it that presidents and their policy-making teamsincluding foreign policy and national security expertsmade policy decisions that led to such negative outcomes? Were similar factors at play in both instances? Or was it, as we will demonstrate in this book, the result of two very different, but similarly destructive, types of sub-optimal group decision-making processes at the elite level? Were these foreign and national security decisions and policies that allowed a seemingly militarily inferior enemy to inflict such damage on the American homeland a result of the distinct group dynamics among the military, intelligence, and diplomatic arms of the U.S. government? Namely, were these attacks the result of the phenomenon of