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 plane's 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 arenas — affecting the economy; individualfreedoms 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 America's interests and security. The central goal of this book is to address this troubling paradox — how 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 teams — including foreign policy and national security experts — made 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 Groupthink or of the dynamic we call Polythink?

As we will demonstrate, the group dynamic of a decision-making unit is indeed a vital variable that should be examined in order to understand how policies are ultimately formulated and executed (or fail to be executed at all).Indeed, "foreign-policy making is not simply a matter of a rationalist calculus, which merely requires realist inputs about power and interests to determine choices and outcomes ... Instead we must think of the decision process as a fundamentally human one ... To understand how a state arrives at a decision, we must carefully examine the human processes behind that decision" (Schafer and Crichlow 2010, 8).

In The Polythink Syndrome, we focus on the Polythink group dynamic, a phenomenon that can cause otherwise rational decision makers to engage in flawed decision-making processes that deeply affect the security and welfare of a country. Polythink is a group dynamic whereby different members in a decision-making unit espouse a plurality of opinions and offer divergent policy prescriptions, and even dissent, which can result in intragroup conflict and a fragmented, disjointed decision-making process. Members of a Polythink decision-making unit, by virtue of their disparate worldviews, institutional and political affiliations, and decision-making styles, typically have deep disagreements over the same decision problem. Consequently, members of Polythink-type groups will often be unable to appreciate or accept the perspectives of other group members, and thus will fail to benefit from the consideration of various viewpoints.

This book will analyze eleven key national security and foreign policy decisions: (1) the national security policy designed prior to the terrorist attacks of 9/11; (2) the decision to enter into Afghanistan; (3) the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan; (4) the Iraq War entry decision; (5) the decision on the Surge in Iraq; (6) the decision to withdraw from Iraq; (7) and (8) the crisis over the Iranian nuclear program (analyzed from both the American and the Israeli perspectives); (9) the 2012 UN Security Council decision on the Syrian Civil War; (10) the 2013–14 Kerry peace negotiations between the Israelis and Palestinians; and (11) the 2014 decision by the U.S. to engage in targeted strikes against the emergent ISIS threat. Through our analysis of these decisions, we conclude that many of these national security and foreign policy decisions of the U.S. indeed exhibited key symptoms of the Polythink syndrome.

Polythink vs. Groupthink

The surprise attack on the Pearl Harbor base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, has been...