I was reminded of this when reading the following:
"...analysts debated whether Kim Jung Un was a brilliant, strategic genius manipulating other countries, including the U.S., or an inexperienced, impulsive fool."
-Bob Woodward, Fear: Trump in the White House (London, 2018), Chapter 12, p. 97.
The psychology of a potential enemy must be the most important item of military intelligence.
7 comments:
It's also one where unconscious bias is -very- hard to guard against.
Also, human beings aren't always consistent.
Stalin was usually almost paranoid, but he refused to believe detailed, accurate warnings from his intelligence services about 'Operation Barbarossa'.
He only trusted one man in his life -- Adolf Hitler.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: The trouble with such analyses of someone as unpredictable as Kim Jong Un is that you can't be sure which side of arguments like these is correct. To say nothing, of course, as Stirling said, of problems like confirmation bias.
Mr. Stirling! Ha! I remember with what grim BLACK HUMOR and bitter satire Alexander Solzhenitsyn discussed in, I think, either THE FIRST CIRCLE or THE GULAG ARCHIPELAGO how the ONE man Stalin ever trusted was Hitler!!!!
REAL history can be more fantastic and weird than any fiction!
Ad astra! Sean
Fiction has to be realistic. Reality doesn't... 8-).
I have quoted this incident before. A hospital porter showed his colleague a tabloid headline. The colleague smiled at the story, whatever it was, then asked this crucial question:
"Wha'? In real life or int' soap?"
First he appreciated the story. Then, second stage, he checked which of the two parallel narratives it belonged to, fiction or real life. (Either way, it was on the front of a newspaper.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirlingz: And too much "realism" is a big reason why I find "mainstream" literature so often boring!
Paul: And that second porter was showing commendable caution before accepting as true whatever it was he read.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: the problem is that lit-crit types tend to interpret "realism" as "like my life". And they tend to lead very sheltered lives... 8-).
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Ha! Like ME, as far as "sheltered" goes. But I don't claim my "realism" is how everyone else should measure their lives by.
Ad astra! Sean
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