When Max Abrams, chief of Terran Intelligence on Starkad, asks Flandry what he thinks of the Terran mission on Starkad, Flandry replies:
"'Sir, I only work here, as they say. But...'"
-Poul Anderson, Ensign Flandry IN Anderson, Young Flandry (Riverdale, NY, 2010), pp. 1-192 AT Chapter Five, p. 41.
He then goes on to formulate a question to which Abrams responds:
"'Confidentially...my main task is to find the answer to that. I haven't succeeded yet.'" (ibid.)
The question is this: the Terrans are on Starkad to contain Merseian expansionism but why are the Merseians there in the first place?
Flandry is already able to identify the key question and it is not long before Abrams suggests that he transfer to Intelligence.
3 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I remember that bit from ENSIGN FLANDRY. The young ensign repeated the Imperium's two part answer for why the Empire was on Starkak: the idealistic, the Tigeries had as much right to the sea and its resources as the Sea People; and the Imperial or pragmatic, to contain Merseian aggression and expansion wherever the Empire could.
Young as he was, Flandry already had more sense and realism about the Merseians than Lord Hauksberg. Unlike too many within the Empire blinded by wishful thinking. But the "tactical" reason for why Merseia bothered about Starkad at all was the question Abrams was trying to find the answer to, how did Starkad further the Roidhunate's STRATEGY?
Sean
Intentions are always the trickiest but among the most important things to deduce -- and this is where "projection" and "motivated reasoning" are always lying in wait to poison analysis.
During the Cold War the Soviets were very good at getting raw intelligence data from us; we were much worse at getting it from them, because of their rampant paranoia (even deliberately making their maps of their own territory inaccurate, for instance).
Both sides were prone to misinterpret the data they got by assuming the other side was more like them than they really were, but the Soviets were consistently worse at that, which counterbalanced their superiority in data collection and in planting disinformation.
Eg., analysts at the center in Moscow always assumed conspiratorial maneuvers behind any public Western statement. They couldn't help themselves; it was the way they operated at home and it felt 'natural' to them.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
In other words many Soviet analysts thought appeasers were not really trying to gratify the USSR, but were trying to deceive them. Their paranoia got the better of good sense and realism.
Sean
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