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Tom Blau, Instructor |
Fall 2002 |
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Calls welcome: 202-685-2261 |
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Cell 703-928-5322 |
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tomblau1@earthlink.com |
Office hours in the two hours before class; prefer appointment |
COURSE OUTLINE
This course studies the process of making national security decisions. This study requires developing models of decision-making, reviewing the real world structure in which they work, examining classic cases, describing the new environment for national security decision-making, and analyzing current and future decisions such as those on force structure.
The goal of the study of national security decision-making is to make us more effective national security actors. Such study also presumes that greater insight about how we work in such processes will increase our awareness of our biases, and increase our intellectual openness to the interests of others in the process (even our enemies). And in the “real world,” this study is worthwhile because if we get national security decisions wrong, little else matters.
The low-level (relatively concrete) goal of the course is to increase student appreciation of key factors driving national security issues, perspectives and approaches used in deciding those issues, and tools available to reach or to modify national security goals. The higher-level goal of the course is, as a result of the above, to empower students to make better national security decisions, and thereby to support national, institutional and personal goals, including professional growth.
The course emphasizes reading key texts and using them orally and in writing. As readings accumulate, our tools for dealing with national security decisions should improve. This course makes no distinction between “having” an idea and expressing it. Wirtten and oral presentation counts.
The course sequence reflects its methodology. First, focus on the conceptual: Integrate problems, purposes and tools to better understand the decision-making process. Second, the narrowly environmental: Compare against the current institutional framework that provides channels for action and constraints against national security decisions. Third, the application: Test the understanding of concepts/ tools and channels/ constraints in examining classic past and future cases of national security decision-making, including the new global environment as a source of strength, weakness, opportunity and threat.
Students should read assigned text before coming to a class session.
The specific grade elements of the course are:
A class paper, in the form of a briefing delivered “live” = 30%
Class paper/briefing in a final hard copy. = 30%
Written comments on other briefings. = 20%
Other class participation. = 20%
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Class session |
Title |
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Section I. |
Decision-making Dynamics, Issues, Approaches: 7 class meetings |
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1 2 3-4 5-6 7 |
Conceptual models of decision Perception, cognition, culture and mistakes Nonlinear systems General rational action: Economics and defense decisions Particular rational action:
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8 |
Run-through of draft briefing
presentation |
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Section II. |
The
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9 10-11 |
Constitution, President, NSC, Congress and NGOs State, DOD and intelligence |
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Section III. |
Applications: Cases in NSDM: 3 class
meetings |
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12 13 14 |
Classic crises The new environment for national security decisions Key national security decisions |
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15 |
Biefing presentation |
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Exam week |
Submit hard copies of revised
briefing |
Richard Betts, Surprise Attack.
Elliot Cohen and John Gooch. Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure
in War.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in
International Politics.
Everything else will be either on-line or on reserve.
Stephen A. Cambone. A
New Structure for National Security Planning.
Graham Allison, “Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis.” American Political Science Review 63. September 1969. 689-718. The leading political science approach to national security decision-making.
James G. March and Johan P. Olson, “Garbage Can Models of Decision-Making in Organizations.” In March & Roger Weissinger-Baylon, Ambiguity and Command (Marshfield, MA: Pitman Publishing, 1986). 11-28. Patterns of how organizations actually behave.
Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Pages TBD.
Cambone, A New
Structure for National Security Planning. Chapter 2. On the divided view of national security
among
David D. Newsom. “Foreign Policy and Academia,” Foreign Policy 101, Winter 1995-96. 52-67. Can academics help?
The domestic environment for national security decision-making, and its impact on the structure of NSDM.
Theorists vs. the “real world.”
The challenges to rational NSDM, and why it matters.
What are the challenges in understanding reality in security affairs, especially for policymakers and analysts?
Do our experiences fit a “garbage can model”?
What systems are useful to organizing decisions?
Cohen and Gooch. Military Misfortunes: The Anatomy of Failure in War. 1-94.
Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics. Pages TBD.
The rest of Cohen & Gooch.
How do we organize against making big mistakes, and why do we fail?
How do the routine means of decision handle crisis?
What unique costs and benefits does a military organization
provide? The
What is the impact of the political environment?
What is the impact of a hostile forces?
In general, how do technologies and threats compel new decisions by military organizations?
Tom Czerwinski.
Coping with the Bounds:
Speculations on Nonlinearity in Military Affairs.
§ Introduction through chapter 4
§ Chapters 6 and 10
§ Excerpt from Robert Jervis, Complex Systems: The Role of Interactions.
What is nonlinearity? Why is it new? Why is it important?
What are nonlinear “aids to learning” and “decision tools”?
What traditional decision making approaches does nonlinearity challenge?
What is the relationship between nonlinearity and the real-world phenomenon of globalization? Information warfare? The war on terrorism? Acquisition and future forces?
Albert Wohlstetter, “Analysis and Design of Conflict Systems,” in E.S. Quade, Analysis for Military Decisions. (1966). 103-148.
Edward S. Quade, “Introduction,” in Quade & W.I. Boucher,
System Analysis and Policy Planning:
Applications in Defense.
___. “When Quantitative Models Are Inadequate.” 324-344.
What are the basic ideas of economics, especially price theory?
Which ideas of economics apply to aspects of decision making, and how? What, for example, is the role of scarcity?
How to apply ideas such as systems analysis, PPBS, cost-effectiveness, cost-exchange, etc. to defense decisions?
What is the role of quantification in systems analysis? What about when there are no apparent numbers?
Clayton M. Christensen and Michael Overdorf. “Meeting the Challenge of Disruptive Change.” Harvard Business Review. March-April 2000. 67-76.
Paul J.H. Schoemaker. “Scenario Planning: A tool for strategic thinking,” 36 Sloan Management Review 2 (Winter 1995), 25-39.
Francis Fukuyama and Abram N. Shulsky. “Military Organization in the Information Age: lessons From the World of Business.” RAND Corporation, 1998. (1-34) At http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1016/MR1016.chap11.pdf
James L. Morrison and Ian Wilson, “The Strategic Management Response to the Challenge of Global Change,” at http://horizon.unc.edu/courses/papers/Scenario_wksp.asp (13 pp)
On strategic management, see also http://www.allianceonline.org/faqs.html
Methods and purposes of strategic management.
Lessons for national security decision making.
Scenario construction.
Class
session 8. Run- through draft
briefings. |
[Reading on the Constitution and national security, to be determined.]
Carnes Lord. “NSC Reform for the Post Cold War Era.” Orbis. Summer 2000. 433-450.
Cambone, 32-51.
The separation of powers, key competencies of each branch, how they may overlap, role of politics and individual constituencies.
C. Kenneth Allard. Command, Control, and the Common Defense. Chapter 4, “The Quest for Unity of Command” (34 pp.) and Chapter 6, “Tactical Control of American Armed Forces” (41 pp.) At http://www.ndu.edu/inss/press/nduphp.html
Lord. “Crisis Management: A Primer.” Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies. IASPS Research Papers in Strategy. August 1998. 1-22. Retrieve at http://www.israeleconomy.org/strategic7/crisis.htm
Henry Sokolski, “Fighting Proliferation with
Intelligence.” In Henry Sokolski
(ed.) Fighting Proliferation: New
Concerns for the Nineties.
Maxwell AFB:
The functions of each of these agencies and how they work together in the decision making process.
How they illustrate the decision making models previously discussed.
The future of their DM process.
Betts, Surprise Attack. Chapter 1 (3-24), Chapters 4-5 (87-149), 10 (285-312).
On what bases do national security decision makers make decisions?
On what bases do decision makers anticipate future?
What is the impact of the importance of the decision? Of time? Of rates of change?
How can national security decision makers make decisions that contribute to their own crises? Are catastrophes, or at least major surprises, inevitable, or can we do better?
John Arquilla and David Ronfeldt (eds.), Networks and Netwars: The Future of
Terror, Crime, and Militancy,
The new threat picture.
The special role of information as weapon, as weakness, as asset.
How to modify national security decision making processes, as a result.
The role of organizational learning and knowledge preservation.
Williamson Murray. Hard Choices: Fighter Procurement in the
Next Century. Cato Policy
Analysis No. 334.
Paul K. Davis. “Strategic Planning Amidst Massive Uncertainty in Complex Adaptive Systems: The Case of Defense Planning.” RAND Corporation. (9) At http://www.rand.org/contact/personal/pdavis/davisICCS.html
Andrew F. Krepinevich. “Cavalry to Computer: The Pattern of Military Revolution.” The National Interest, Fall 1994, 30-42.
Thomas P.M. Barnett, “Life After DoDth or: How the Evernet Changes Everything.” Proceedings of The U.S. Naval Institute. May 2000. 48-53. Retrieve at http://www.geocities.com/ResearchTriangle/Thinktank/6926/LifeafterDoDth.htm
Tom Blau. “War and Technology in the Age of the Electron.” Defence & Security Review. London: 1993. 94-100.
Eric V. Larson, David T. Orletsky, Kristin Leuschner. Defense Planning in a Decade of Change: Lessons from the Base Force, Bottom-Up Review, and Quadrennial Defense Review. Santa Monica: RAND Corporation, 2001. Introduction, Summary, Chapter 5, and Appendix (At http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1387/ (45 pp)
Tom Blau. “TMD in the
How does government move beyond current paradigms of force posture, force structure and diplomacy? What justifies such movement?
Class
session 15. Present
briefings |
Exam
Date. Hand in revised
briefings in hard copy. |
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