Customer Reviews

Risk Taking and Decisionmaking: Foreign Military Intervention Decisions

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I don't always use superlatives and am not given to handing out five star recommendations liberally, as some reviewers are, but this gem of insight, prose and scholarship deserves both.

Although this book is ostensibly about the risks of foreign intervention (more about that in a minute) this book is actually two books in one. The first part, which runs 168 lucid, pithy pages, provides one of the most concise and cogent descriptions of risk management that I have seen anywhere. The first two chapters are pure theory; the latter two apply the theory to foreign intervention decisions in general. Vertzberger breaks with the prevailing dogma in risk management (rational choice theory) and instead pursuasively advances an alternative approach - the socio-cognitive model. Good for him - having been in the operational risk management business for a decade, I think his view holds a lot of sway. The author manages to pack so much information into this part that it could easily stand on its own - all of it written in crisp fluid prose, and masterfully referenced, indexed and endnoted, with a very thorough bibliography.

The second part of the book (which runs another 200 pages) applies the theory in Part One to five case studies (Grenada, Panama and Czechoslovakia - all deemed low to moderate risk)and Vietnam and Lebanon (both deemed to be high risk)

This is capped off and tied together by conclusions and implications that address the military, economic and political consequences, especially as they play out over time (usually for the worse).

Vertzberger drills deep and wide into many rich veins of understanding and his material is extremely relevent to the world situation today. It was a delight to read in 1998 when this book was first published, and just as much a delight, albeit hauntingly so, when I pulled it out, post Iraq-II, and wondered how many of Vertzberger's wise cautions had been considered by those responsible for the now current adventure there.

If I have one regret about this book, it is not writing this review back in 1998 when I first read the book. Who knows if that would have made any difference, but if reading this book, or writing this review, could save even one life, it would be worth it. If you are a risk manager, a foreign service officer, a military official, active in the political sphere or just a concerned citizen, you ignore this book at the peril, not just of the reader, but in the case of foreign military interventions, of many.

First, know that this is NOT a political book. It's a piece of academic research that explores, in depth, the sociocognitive process of situation awareness, risk assessment, decision making, and learning/adjustment. This general process is generic and ubiquitous--essentially the same for businesses, emergency responders, the press, even doctors in addition to this domain of international relations in dealing with complex, changing, often critical situations. Doubtful? Read this along with Jerome Groopman's book How Doctors Think--it addresses the same basic challenges and behaviors only in a different domain (even leveraging some of the same sources, like the classic Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases by Kahneman, Slovic, & Tversky). It describes, merely from a different perspective, the same cognitive blinders/bounded awareness also written about by Max Bazerman of Harvard Business School.

This book forensically investigates five international case studies: US interventions in Grenada (1981), Panama (1989), and Vietnam (1964-68); Soviet intervention in Czechoslovakia (1968); and Israel's intervention in Lebanon (1982-83).

What is shocking is that most of the book ends up also being an amazingly detailed postmortem description of the run up to the decision to intervene in Iraq and the decisions and actions that have followed so far.

This book is densely written--it's not popular press. Not something you'd take to the "rose room" for quick-read snippets. But it clearly illuminates issues that are CRITICAL today: habits of ignorance, bias, and hubris, and patterns of inattention, misperception, cognitive error, unwise actions & missed opportunities, and unintended consequences that have repeated in history, are repeating in Iraq, and will repeat in the future if not consciously avoided. It deserves a yellow highlighter and concerted critical thinking. I consider it REQUIRED READING for all citizens and media as well as congress, the DoD, and this administration.

This is not on the best-seller list, but it SHOULD be. If you only read one book this year, this should be it. It provides a template for understanding today's situation and guidance for learning how to deal with analogous circumstances in the future.