U.S. FOREIGN POLICY: Leveraging schizophrenia to shatter groupthink in a town hall of democracy

That the US was dead wrong in its intelligence about the existence of WMD in Iraq is an extremely worrisome thought in the mind of the American, and global, community. However, that the US has a system in place which was able to provide the public with true and honest accounting of the failures can be an inspirational thought to the American and global communities. This worry, co-existing with the inspiration, is schizophrenic for both, American, and global, citizens, as one reads and analyzes the Silberman-Robb report.

In this article, one is purely, and clinically, looking at the decision making process with respect to information and innovative capabilities of the US leadership and intelligence communities. American and global citizens have a common vested interest – that the blinding power and might of the US government should only be used for reasons which are based upon objective facts. Ironically, there is much good which can wrenched out of the report, too, as we shall see towards the end of this article, and it needs some bold imagination and a liquid foreign policy.

The facts should be indisputable. What leaders do with the facts is a different matter and something which can, and does, often cause conflicts between nations, cultures, and people. An analysis of the report throws up two stark questions – firstly, why has America’s intelligence community failed the town hall test? It seems that a mechanism for an “organizational town hall” was missing, or needs to be desperately strengthened, in the intelligence communities.

Secondly, the report also implies that junior, middle, and senior level of the intelligence community demonstrated some unstated groupthink. If President Kennedy had his Bay of Pigs fiasco due to the groupthink of his cabinet and senior advisors, is President Bush being wrongly advised due to groupthink in professionals of the intelligence community?

The burden on the intelligence communities is further exacerbated since average America has a low foreign awareness quotient, and thus depends entirely on the analysis of the intelligence communities. The answer to both above questions does not lie in the intelligence community alone, but in wider strategic communities, as well as amongst the children of America.

The Damage

Before going into the response strategies, it is necessary to examine the damage caused by the report.

 The damage to America’s image in global communities is apparent – the image of a “cowboy, who acts without thinking” is reinforced. This failure will resonate for a long time in the foreign calculus of nations.

 What is not so apparent is the damage this may cause domestically to America’s competitive, creative and innovative capacities. A simplistic interpretation of the report will mean that the remedy will be seen as “better and more ‘fact’ gathering capabilities” of the intelligence and strategic communities. This will guide strategic thinking towards quantitative thinking, and away from qualitative thinking.

A special effort towards quantitative thinking, in a period when America rather needs more qualitative thinking, will be detrimental to America’s competitive capacities. In order to not miss the woods for the trees, America needs to bolster its innovative capacities, and short changing qualitative thought at the expense of quantitative is most unwelcome.

Proactive response strategies

Creative solutions to the above two challenges will not only mitigate the damage, but will also go far in opening fresh grounds. Domestically, the report gives some answers to structural issues that can enhance innovation within America; whereas internationally, it opens an opportunity to launch a global dialogue for reducing conflict amongst nations.

 The domestic structural response requires improving the qualitative, contextual, and foreign awareness quotients of the average American, especially amongst the children. The intelligence professionals and strategic planners of tomorrow will come from this pool of today’s children. A special emphasis on qualitative capacity building in America will ensure that the professionals of tomorrow are able to better overlay qualitative assessment over the quantitative, fact based information.

A higher quotient of foreign awareness and qualitative thinking in average America will also lessen the sole burden on the intelligence communities, since the decision making will benefit from higher levels of collective national intelligence.

 Internationally, ironically, the emphasis and message should be the reverse. The US should be bold in stepping up and admitting that it had its facts wrong. Leading by example, the US should use this occasion to urge global communities to also, and urgently, examine facts around them. By coming clean in an honest manner, America can inspire and lead the world in collective soul searching. When nations and cultures look at the facts around them, they will find that the facts are simple – wars and conflicts are diverting resources away from acute human needs of a better quality of life and freedom.

Global communities should be urged to look at their quality of life indices. Improving these indices should be the mission of all revolutionaries, and the breeding grounds of present and future terrorists should be exhorted to channelize their energies into solving problems rather than adding to misery and pain.

The stakes are very high, and dangerous, for both the American and global communities, and America should urgently initiate capacity building in innovative and qualitative thinking. The “image” and “reality” of America in the coming years will be shaped by policy planners deep in Foggy Bottom and the Pentagon. Groupthink comes easy when innovation is scarce, and the good folks crafting the image and reality of America cannot afford to be encumbered by innovation-deficiency when they articulate America’s case in the global town hall.