There is a tendency in our planning to confuse the unfamiliar with the improbable. If Pearl Harbor was a long shot for the Japanese, so was war with the United States assuming the decision on war, the attack hardly appears reckless. (Had we not provided the target, though, the attack would have been called off.) But it was not all that improbable. A Fine Deterrent Can Make a Superb TargetĪnd it was an “improbable” choice had we escaped surprise, we might still have been mildly astonished. I can remember the afternoon of 9-11 thinking about the strange synchronicity between Clancy’s fictional scenario and the likely target of United Flight 93.
Tom Clancy’s 1994 novel “ Debt of Honor” ends with a 747 crashing into the Capitol Building during a special joint session of Congress, killing most of the senior members of the US government including the cabinet, the Senate, the House of Representatives, and the Supreme Court. The same could be set of 9-11’s foreshadowing in the earlier 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. Thomas Schelling in his forward to “ Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision” by Roberta Wohlstetter We were so busy thinking through some “obvious” Japanese moves that we neglected to hedge against the choice they actually made.” And it was not our warning that was most at fault, but our strategic analysis. Rarely has a government been more expectant. government and its far-flung military and diplomatic establishment, it is not true that we were caught napping at the time of Pearl Harbor. It was just a dramatic failure of a remarkably well-informed government to call the next enemy move in a cold-war crisis. In fact, “blunder” is too specific our stupendous unreadiness at Pearl Harbor was neither a Sunday-morning, nor a Hawaiian, phenomenon. What is disquieting is that it was a supremely ordinary blunder. “It would be reassuring to believe that Pearl Harbor was just a colossal and extraordinary blunder. What follows are some excerpts from the forward by Thomas Schelling Roberta Wohlstetter’s book “Pearl Harbor: Warning and Decision.” Thomas Schelling on Strategic Surprise Both attacks achieved strategic surprise and had substantial long-term effects. It’s been 17 years since the Sep-11-2001 attack and almost 77 years since the Dec-7-1941 Pearl Harbor attack that started World War 2.
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