Surprise attack: the victim's perspective

"Ephraim Kam observes surprise attack through the eyes of its victim in order to understand the causes of the victim's failure to anticipate the coming of war. Emphasizing the psychological aspect of warfare, Kam traces the behavior of the victim at various functional levels and from several points of view in order to examine the difficulties and mistakes that permit a nation to be taken by surprise. He argues that anticipation and prediction of a coming war are more complicated than any other issue of strategic estimation, involving such interdependent factors as analytical contradictions, judgmental biases, organizational obstacles, and political as well as military constraints."--BOOK JACKET.

"Written under the auspices of the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel-Aviv University"--Half title.

1. The essence of surprise attack. Reaction to disasters and warnings -- Aspects of erroneous estimates -- The strategic warning -- Surprise and military preparedness. 2. Information and indicators. Quality of intelligence information -- Early warning indicators -- Signal and noise -- Quantity of intelligence information. 3. Intentions and capabilities. Inference and difficulties in estimating intentions -- The enemy's conceptual framework -- Risk taking by the enemy -- Estimating capabilities. 4. Conceptions and incoming information. The set of conceptions -- The persistence of conceptions -- Assimilating information -- Information and expectations -- Treating discrepant information -- Cognitive biases and overconfidence. 5. The process of analysis. Prediction and intelligence analysis -- Stages of intelligence analysis -- Approaches for generating and evaluating hypotheses -- Analogies and learning from history -- Evaluating incoming information -- Choosing among alternative hypotheses -- External obstacles to perception -- Changing a view. 6. The analyst and the small group. The other opinion -- Groupthink -- Pressures for conformity -- The leader and the expert -- Group risk t…