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Strategic Warning: The Problem of Timing
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| and actually was increasing. Logistic activity was continuing at a high level-the USSR did not announce until 10 August the conclusion of its so-called rear services "exercise" which served as the cover story for the mobilization and forward deployment of the invasion forces. Moreover, substantial additional forces from the Baltic and Belorussian Military Districts were continuing to deploy into Poland in the first half of August. So long as this buildup continued, or was being maintained, the possibility of course was in no way reduced that the USSR sooner or later would exercise its military capability. Nonetheless, the psychological peak of our readiness for the invasion had passed well before it occurred. Since there was very little last-minute warning (such indications as there were mostly reached us too late), the USSR achieved effective tactical surprise against both the Czechoslovaks and ourselves. |
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| The Czechoslovak case provides an outstanding illustration of the critical importance for warning of the judgment of probability of attack and of the lesser likelihood that intelligence will be able to assess the timing or imminence of attack. US intelligence in this instance, as in others, placed too great weight on short-term or tactical warning, and too little on the excellent strategic intelligence which it already had. Moreover, many persons (including some at the policy level who were aggrieved that they had not been more specifically warned) tended to place the blame on the collection system which in fact had performed outstandingly in reporting a truly impressive amount of military and political evidence, much of it of high quality and validity, bearing on the Soviet intention. The intelligence community, while clearly reporting the USSR's capability to invade, deferred a judgment of whether or not it would invade in seeming expectation that some more specific or unequivocal evidence would be received if invasion was imminent. On the basis of historical precedent and the experience derived from numerous warning problems, this was a doubtful expectation; an invasion remained a grave danger, if not probable, so long as the military deployments were maintained, while the timing was far less predictable. The history of warfare, and of warning, demonstrates that tactical evidence of impending attack is dubious at best, that we cannot have confidence that we will receive such evidence, and that judgments of the probable course of enemy action must be. made prior to this or it may be too late to make them at all. |
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| North Vietnamese Attacks in Laos and South Vietnam, 1969-70, 1971-72 |
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| As a final example of problems in timing, three instances of North Vietnamese attacks in Laos and South Vietnam provide quite striking |
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Posted: May 08, 2007 08:33 AM
Last Updated: May 08, 2007 08:33 AM
Last Reviewed: May 08, 2007 08:33 AM
