How to Not Change Your Mind

Foreign Policy | Stephen M. Walt

American foreign policy analysts and decision-makers frequently reject evidence of strategic failure, perpetuating flawed national security commitments across successive presidential administrations. Commentators evaluating military operations in Iran and Iraq routinely employ cognitive defences—such as shifting war aims, blaming subordinate execution, or citing unexpected bad luck—to evade professional accountability.

Historian Barbara Tuchman conceptualised this persistent elite behaviour as a mental standstill that locks political leaders into rigid, unworkable operational frameworks. Similar rationalisations emerged following the failed April 1980 Operation Eagle Claw rescue attempt in Iran and the post-invasion insurgency after Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003. Unlike operational military units or medical teams that perform rigorous after-action reviews, institutional foreign policy organs lack formal mechanisms to penalise incorrect forecasts or reward updated assessments. Cognitive inertia routinely overrides strategic learning. Consequently, unexamined assumptions continue to dictate defence doctrine and diplomatic commitments long after initial premises prove catastrophically false.

Comment

The failure to institutionalise post-operational learning across the Office of the Secretary of Defense undermines doctrine creation before military deployment occurs. When military planners at US Central Command draft contingency options, unexamined assumptions regarding adversary resilience distort initial force requirements and target selection. Operation Eagle Claw at Desert One in April 1980 demonstrated how uncorrected planning assumptions directly collapse complex multi-platform missions during execution.

Downstream, this doctrinal insulation shifts operational failure from national strategic architects onto field-level components like Joint Special Operations Command. Consequently, subsequent joint doctrines—such as Joint Publication 3-05 for special operations—risk encoding political risk-aversion into tactical rules of engagement rather than addressing structural planning defects.

Strategic Question for Discussion

If decision-makers routinely insulate strategic assumptions from post-operational feedback, which component suffers greater long-term erosion—the command credibility of US Central Command or the tactical flexibility granted under Joint Publication 3-05?

The available evidence points toward tactical flexibility suffering the primary erosion. When institutional learning is suppressed at the executive level, joint commanders inevitably respond by imposing restrictive rules of engagement within Joint Publication 3-05 to mitigate political fallout. This administrative defence mechanism constrains tactical initiative at US Central Command far more directly than it alters high-level strategic posture.

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