Check out this Michael May oped in the LAT, "A clue to Washington's cluelessness."

Consider the record. Washington didn't predict the fall of the shah in Iran, or the end of the Cold War, or the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Nor did our pundits (whether left, right or center) predict the war between Vietnam and China after the U.S. lost more than 50,000 service members in the region to prevent the spread of monolithic communism, or, for that matter, China's turn toward becoming a capitalistic and trading giant. There are innumerable other examples in Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

Everything is fine as long as nothing much is happening. But when something happens, especially if it's sudden or revolutionary, we usually don't see it coming. Since World War II at least, Washington's success rate at predicting change in countries with which we have a hostile relationship is close to zero.

Why this failure when most of the events mentioned were years in the making? In part, it's that we don't look at the right things. Our intelligence apparatus is better at counting missiles than at following the intricate politics of a central committee or overhearing the street talk in Tehran — or Baghdad. But even good intelligence on those matters would have had a hard time making it into the Washington debate.

That's because Washington debates tend to be narrow; they fall within a range of acceptable conventional wisdom and close out anything that seems to go out on a limb. We wonder: Is the Soviet Union trying to build a first-strike capability or not? Is Vietnam a tool of Red Chinese expansion? Does Saddam Hussein have nukes? Intelligence is asked to cast light on just those acceptable questions. The assumptions underlying those debates are seldom challenged. They are based on politically acceptable views of the other state and, career-wise, it doesn't pay to challenge them. Indeed, movers and doers in Washington often do not even have time to challenge them. There is little or no intelligence outside the axis of debate.

As a result, any analyst who forecast that, say, the Soviet Union would for its own purposes peaceably release its European satellites, or that the heirs of Mao would turn to capitalism before his body was cold in the grave, would have been quickly marginalized. ...

Truly interesting stuff. His proscription is interesting too, and not in line with current administration thinking. "The U.S. foolishly isolates hostile countries when it should pressure them to open up to our visitors, executives, students and diplomats. Congress should pressure the administration to open embassies in Tehran, Pyongyang and Havana and staff them in part with native speakers. ..."

Posted by Laura at February 18, 2007 05:21 PM