In the Eye of the Beholder

In the Eye of the
Beholder
How Leaders and Intelligence
Communities Assess the
Intentions of Adversaries

Keren Yarhi-Milo

How do policymakers
infer the long-term political intentions of their states’ adversaries? This ques-
tion has important theoretical, historisch, and political signiªcance. If British
decisionmakers had understood the scope of Nazi Germany’s intentions for
Europe during the 1930s, the twentieth century might have looked very differ-
ent. More recently, a Brookings report observes that “[T]he issue of mutual dis-
trust of long-term intentions . . . has become a central concern in U.S.-China
relations.”1 Statements by U.S. and Chinese ofªcials conªrm this suspicion.
UNS. Ambassador to China Gary Locke noted “a concern, a question mark,
by people all around the world and governments all around the world as
to what China’s intentions are.”2 Chinese ofªcials, similarly, have indicated
that Beijing regards recent U.S. policies as a “sophisticated ploy to frustrate
China’s growth.”3

Current assessments of the threat posed by a rising China—or for that mat-
ter, a possibly nuclear-armed Iran, or a resurgent Russia—depend on which in-
dicators observers use to derive predictions about a potential adversary’s
intentions. Surprisingly, Jedoch, little scholarship exists to identify which in-
dicators leaders and the state’s intelligence apparatus tasked with estimating
threats use to assess intentions. Zum Beispiel, disputes among American analysts
over the military capabilities of the Soviet Union dominated debates on the
Soviet threat throughout the Cold War, yet there has been little examination of
the extent to which such calculations shaped or reºected U.S. political decision-

Keren Yarhi-Milo is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs in the Department of Politics
and the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs at Princeton University.

The author would like to thank the following individuals for their insightful comments on earlier
drafts: Richard Betts, Jonathan Caverley, Thomas Christensen, Christina Davis, Aaron Friedberg,
Charles Glaser, Michael Glosny, Avery Goldstein, Joanne Gowa, Michael Horowitz, Robert Jervis,
Robert Keohane, Jack Levy, Jonathan Mercer, Robert Pape, Kristan Seibel, Paul Staniland, Caitlin
Talmadge, Alex Weisiger, and the anonymous reviewers. Omar Bashir and Alex Lanoszka pro-
vided excellent research assistance. She is especially grateful to the Smith Richardson Foundation
and the Morris Abrams Foundation for their ªnancial support of her research.

1. Kenneth Lieberthal and Wang Jisi, “Addressing U.S.-China Strategic Distrust” (Washington,
D.C.: Brookings Institution, 2012), P. vi.
2. Gary Locke, “China Is a Country of Great Contrasts,” National Public Radio, Januar 18, 2012,
http://www.npr.org/2012/01/18/145384412/ambassador-locke-shares-his-impressions-of-china.
3. Jeffrey A. Bader, Obama and China’s Rise: An Insider’s Account of America’s Asia Strategy (Washing-
Tonne, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2012). See also Calum McLeod, “Some Cast Obama Trip as
Effort to Contain China’s Inºuence,” USA Today, November 20, 2011, http://www.usatoday.com/
news/world/story/2011-11-21/China-US-relations-Obama/51321096/1.

International Security, Bd. 38, NEIN. 1 (Sommer 2013), S. 7–51, doi:10.1162/ISEC_a_00128
© 2013 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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International Security 38:1 8

makers’ assessments of Soviet intentions. Analyzing how signals are ªltered and
interpreted by the state’s decisionmakers and its intelligence apparatus can lead
to better understanding of the types of signals that tend to prompt changes in
relations with adversaries, as well as help to develop useful advice for policy-
makers on how to deter or reassure an adversary more effectively.

In diesem Artikel, I compare two prominent rationalist approaches in interna-
tional relations theory about how observers can be expected to infer adversar-
ies’ political intentions, with a third approach that I develop and term the
“selective attention thesis.” First, the behavior thesis asserts that observers ref-
er to certain noncapability-based actions—such as the adversary’s decision to
withdraw from a foreign military intervention or join binding international
organizations—to draw conclusions regarding that adversary’s intentions.
This approach focuses on the role of costly information in inºuencing state
behavior. Actions are considered costly if they require the state to expend
signiªcant, unrecoverable resources or if they severely constrain its future
decisionmaking. The basic intuition behind this approach is that an action that
costs nothing could equally be taken by actors with benign or with malign in-
tentions, and thus it provides no credible information about the actor’s likely
plans.4 Observers should therefore ignore “cheap talk.”5 Second, the capabili-
ties thesis, drawing on insights from realism as well as costly signaling, asserts
that states should consider an adversary’s military capabilities in assessing its
intentions. Of particular importance would be signiªcant changes in arma-
ment policies, such as a unilateral reduction in military capabilities. Solch
changes reveal credible information about an adversary’s ability to engage in
warfare and thus its intention to do so.6

4. In the context of foreign policy intentions, see James D. Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Inter-
ests: Tying Hands versus Sinking Costs,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Bd. 41, NEIN. 1 (Februar
1997), S. 68–90; Andrew Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Prince-
ton University Press, 2005); and Robert F. Trager, “Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy: How Commu-
nication Matters,” American Political Science Review, Bd. 104, NEIN. 2 (Mai 2010), S. 347–368. ICH
exclude from the analysis public statements that can generate “audience costs,” because they are
typically seen as relevant in crisis situations. James D. Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and
the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Political Science Review, Bd. 88, NEIN. 3 (September-
ber 1994), S. 577–592. For an empirical analysis of audience costs, see Jack Snyder and Erica D.
Borghard, “The Cost of Empty Threats: A Penny, Not a Pound,” American Political Science Review,
Bd. 105, NEIN. 3 (November 2011), S. 437–456; and Marc Trachtenberg, “Audience Costs: An His-
torical Analysis,” Security Studies, Bd. 21, NEIN. 1 (2012), S. 3–42.
5. Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conºict (Cambridge, Masse.: Harvard University Press,
1980); and Fearon, “Signaling Foreign Policy Interests.” On when and how “cheap talk” could
matter, see Trager, “Diplomatic Calculus in Anarchy”; Vincent P. Crawford and Joel Sobel, “Strate-
gic Information Transmission,” Econometrica, Bd. 50, NEIN. 6 (November 1982), S. 1431–1451;
Joseph Farrell and Robert Gibbons, “Cheap Talk Can Matter in Bargaining,” Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftswissenschaften
Theory, Bd. 48, NEIN. 1 (Juni 1989), S. 221–237; and Anne E. Sartori, Deterrence by Diplomacy
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2005).
6. Charles L. Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics: The Logic of Competition and Cooperation
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2010).

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In the Eye of the Beholder 9

Drawing on insights from psychology, neuroscience, and organizational the-
ory, I develop a third approach, the selective attention thesis. This thesis posits
that individual perceptual biases and organizational interests and practices
inºuence which types of indicators observers regard as credible signals of the
adversary’s intentions. Daher, the thesis predicts differences between a state’s
political leaders and its intelligence community in their selection of which sig-
nals to focus on and how to interpret those signals. Insbesondere, Entscheidung-
makers often base their interpretations on their own theories, expectations,
and needs, sometimes ignoring costly signals and paying more attention to in-
formation that, though less costly, is more vivid (d.h., personalized and emo-
tionally involving). The thesis also posits that organizational afªliations and
roles matter: intelligence organizations predictably rely on different indicators
than civilian decisionmakers do to determine an adversary’s intentions. In in-
telligence organizations, the collection and analysis of data on the adversary’s
military inventory typically receive priority. Over time, intelligence organi-
zations develop substantial knowledge of these material indicators that they
then use to make predictions about an adversary’s intentions.

To test the competing theses, I examined three cases: UNS. assessments of
Soviet intentions under the administration of President Jimmy Carter (a pe-
riod when détente collapsed); UNS. assessments of Soviet intentions in the
years leading to the end of the Cold War during the second administration
of President Ronald Reagan; and British assessments of the intentions of
Nazi Germany in the period leading up to World War II. My ªndings are
based on review of more than 30,000 archival documents and intelligence re-
Häfen, as well as interviews with former decisionmakers and intelligence
ofªcials. The cases yield ªndings more consistent with the selective atten-
tion thesis than with either the behavior or capabilities thesis, as I explain in
the conclusion.

Before proceeding, it is important to note what lies outside the scope of this
Studie. Erste, I am concerned primarily with the perceptions of an adversary’s
long-term political intentions because these are most likely to affect a state’s
foreign policy and strategic choices. Zweite, I do not address whether observ-
ers correctly identiªed the intentions of their adversaries. Addressing this ques-
tion would require that we ªrst establish what the leaders of Nazi Germany and
the Soviet Union during the periods examined here genuinely believed their
own intentions to be at the time. Dritte, elsewhere I address the effects of per-
ceived intentions on the collective policies of the states.7 Rather, the focus of this

7. For the effects of perceived intentions on policies, see Keren Yarhi-Milo, Knowing Thy Adversary:
Leaders, Intelligence, and Assessments of Intentions in International Relations (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Universitätsverlag, bevorstehend).

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International Security 38:1 10

article is on the indicators that leaders and intelligence organizations tend to
privilege or ignore in their assessments of an adversary’s political intentions.

The next section of this article describes the dependent variable—perceived
political intentions—and lays out the three theses. The following section out-
lines the research design. Dann, three cases offer empirical tests of the theoreti-
cal explanations. The last section discusses the implications of my ªndings for
international relations theory and practice.

Theories of Intentions and the Problem of Attention

The three theses I outline below provide different explanations as to how ob-
servers reach their assessments about the adversary’s political intentions. Der
term “political intentions” refers to beliefs about the foreign policy plans of
the adversary with regard to the status quo.8 I divide assessments of political
intentions into three simple categories: expansionist, opportunistic, or status
quo.9 Expansionist adversaries exhibit strong determination to expand their
power and inºuence beyond their territorial boundaries. Opportunistic states
desire a favorable change in the distribution of power with either a limited or
an unlimited geographical scope, but do not actively seek change. They may
have contingent plans to seize opportunities to achieve this objective, but they
will not pursue their revisionist goals when the cost of doing so appears
high.10 Status quo powers want only to maintain their relative power position.

the selective attention thesis

Information about intentions can be complex, ambiguous, and potentially de-
ceptive, and thus requires much interpretive work. Kognitiv, affective, Und
organizational practices impede individuals’ ability to process this informa-
tion. To distinguish between signals and noise, individuals use a variety of
heuristic inference strategies.11 These simpliªed models of reality, Jedoch,

8. Intention should be distinguished from states’ motives for keeping or changing the status quo.
On motives, see Glaser, Rational Theory of International Politics, S. 38–39.
9. The scope of the revisionist intentions in expansionist and opportunistic states can be limited or
unlimited. For a similar typology, see Keith L. Shimko, Images and Arms Control: Perceptions of the
Soviet Union in the Reagan Administration (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1991).
10. Douglas Seay, “What Are the Soviets’ Objectives in Their Foreign, Military, and Arms Control
Policies?” in Lynn Eden and Steven E. Müller, Hrsg., Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic
Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989), S. 47–108;
and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
Universitätsverlag, 1976).
11. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, “Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and
Probability,” Cognitive Psychology, Bd. 5, NEIN. 2 (September 1973), S. 207–232; and Thomas
Gilovich, Dale Grifªn, and Daniel Kahneman, Hrsg., Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive
Judgment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

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In the Eye of the Beholder 11

can have the unintended effect of focusing excessive attention on certain pieces
of information and away from others. The selective attention thesis recognizes
that individual decisionmakers and bureaucratic organizations, such as an in-
telligence community, process information differently. The thesis yields two
hypotheses: the subjective credibility hypothesis explains the inference process
of decisionmakers, and the organizational expertise hypothesis describes that
of intelligence organizations.

the subjective credibility hypothesis. The subjective credibility hypoth-
esis predicts that decisionmakers will not necessarily detect or interpret costly
actions as informative signals.12 This psychology-based theory posits that both
the degree of credence given to evidence and the interpretation of evidence
deemed credible will depend on a decisionmaker’s expectations about the
links between the adversary’s behavior and its underlying characteristics; sein
or her own theories about which signals are indicative of the adversary’s type;
and the vividness of the information.13

Erste, the attention paid to costly actions hinges on observers’ expectations
about the adversary.14 Observers are likely to vary in their prior degree of dis-
trust toward an adversary and the extent to which they believe its intentions
are hostile. This variation in decisionmakers’ beliefs and expectations affects
their selection and reading of signals in predictable ways. Given cognitive as-
similation mechanisms and the human tendency to try to maintain cognitive
consistency, decisionmakers who already hold relatively more hawkish views
about the adversary’s intentions when they assume power are less likely to
perceive and categorize even costly reassuring actions as credible signals of be-
nign intent. They are likely to reason, Zum Beispiel, that the adversary’s actions
are intended to deceive observers into believing that it harbors no malign in-
tentions. Or they may believe that the adversary’s reassuring signals merely
reºect its economic or domestic political interests, and thus should not be seen
as signaling more benign foreign policy goals. Im Gegensatz, those with relatively
less hawkish views of an adversary’s intentions are more likely to interpret re-
assuring signals as conforming with their current beliefs and, daher, Sind

12. Robert Jervis, “Signaling and Perception: Drawing Inferences and Projecting Images," In
Kristen Monroe, Hrsg., Political Psychology (Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2002); and Jonathan
Mercer, “Emotional Beliefs,” International Organization, Bd. 64, NEIN. 1 (Januar 2010), S. 1–31.
13. The literature on such biases is vast. For important works and good summaries, see Jervis, Per-
ception and Misperception in International Politics; Ole Holsti, “The Belief System and National Im-
Alter: A Case Study,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Bd. 6, NEIN. 3 (September 1962), S. 244–252; Und
Philip E. Tetlock, “Social Psychology and World Politics,” in Susan T. Fiske, Daniel T. Gilbert, Und
Gardner Lindzey, Hrsg., Handbook of Social Psychology, 4th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1998), S.
868–914.
14. Robert Jervis, “Understanding Beliefs,” Political Psychology, Bd. 27, NEIN. 5 (Oktober 2006), S.
641–663.

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International Security 38:1 12

more likely to see such signals as benign. Hawks are likely to focus on costly
actions that indicate malign intentions, because such actions are consistent
with their existing beliefs about the adversary’s intentions.15

Zweite, decisionmakers’ interpretations are also guided by their theories
about the relationship between an adversary’s behavior and its underlying char-
acteristics. As Robert Jervis points out, different observers will interpret even
costly behavior differently, “because some of them saw a certain correlation
while others either saw none or believed that the correlation was quite differ-
ent.”16 If, zum Beispiel, a decisionmaker believes in the logic of diversionary
Krieg, he or she is likely to pay attention to indicators of an adversary state’s do-
mestic social unrest and see them as evidence that its leadership is about to em-
bark on a revisionist foreign policy. Daher, social unrest serves as an index of
intention, one that the adversary is unlikely to manipulate to project a false im-
Alter. Those within the administration who do not share this theory of diversion-
ary war will view social unrest as an unreliable indicator of future intentions.
Dritte, the subjective credibility hypothesis expects decisionmakers to focus
on information that, even if perhaps costless, is vivid. Vividness refers to the
“emotional interest of information, the concreteness and imaginability of infor-
mation, and the sensory, spatial, and temporal proximity of information.”17
One “vivid” indicator that is particularly salient to the issues studied in this ar-
ticle consists of a decisionmaker’s impressions from personal interactions with
members of the adversary’s leadership.18 Recent work in psychology and po-
litical science has shown that our emotional responses in face-to-face meetings
shape the certainty of our beliefs and preferences for certain choices.19 As

15. This hypothesis cannot indicate a priori when observers will change their assessments about
intentions, but it can predict the possibility of change in perceived intentions relative to those of
other observers on the basis of their initial beliefs about the intentions of the adversary.
16. Peer Schouten, “Theory Talk #12: Robert Jervis on Nuclear Weapons, Explaining the Non-
Realist Politics of the Bush Administration and U.S. Military Presence in Europe,” Theory Talks,
Januar 24, 2008, http://www.theory-talks.org/2008/07/theory-talk-12.html.
17. Richard E. Nisbett and Lee Ross, Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice Hall, 1980), P. 62. See also Eugene Borgida and Richard E. Nis-
bett, “The Differential Impact of Abstract vs. Concrete Information on Decisions,” Journal of Ap-
plied Social Psychology, Bd. 7, NEIN. 3 (September 1977), S. 258–271; Chaim D. Kaufmann, “Out of
the Lab and into the Archives: A Method for Testing Psychological Explanations of Political Deci-
sion Making,” International Studies Quarterly, Bd. 38, NEIN. 4 (Dezember 1994), S. 557–586; Und
Tversky and Kahneman, “Availability.”
18. On the importance of personal meetings in inferring leaders’ sincerity, see Todd Hall and
Keren Yarhi-Milo, “The Personal Touch: Leaders’ Impressions, Costly Signaling, and Assessments
of Sincerity in International Affairs,” International Studies Quarterly, Bd. 56, NEIN. 3 (September
2012), S. 560–573.
19. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Mercer, “Emotional Beliefs”; and Rose McDermott, “The Feeling of Rational-
ität: The Meaning of Neuroscientiªc Advances for Political Science,” Perspectives on Politics, Bd. 2,
NEIN. 4 (Dezember 2004), S. 691–706.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 13

Eugene Borgida and Richard Nisbett argued, „[T]here may be a kind of ‘eye-
witness’ principle of the weighing of evidence, such that ªrsthand, sense-
impression data is assigned greater validity.”20 Accordingly, information about
intentions that is vivid, personalized, and emotionally involving is more
likely to be remembered, and hence to be disproportionately available for
inºuencing inferences. Umgekehrt, decisionmakers will be reluctant to rely
onevidence that is abstract, colorless, objective, or less tangible—such as mea-
surements of the adversary’s weapon inventory or the contents of its doc-
trinal manuals—even if such evidence could be regarded as extremely reliable.
This kind of information is not nearly as engaging as the vivid, salient, Und
often emotionally laden personal responses that leaders take away from meet-
ing with their opponents.21

A few clariªcations about the selective attention thesis are in order. Erste, Die
importance of prior beliefs in assimilating new information is central to both
psychological and some rationalist approaches.22 In Bayesian learning models,
observers evaluating new evidence are not presumed to possess identical
prior beliefs. The prediction that distinguishes Bayesian models from biased-
learning models concerns whether observers with identical prior beliefs and
levels of uncertainty will be similarly affected by new information revealed by
costly signals.23 In contrast, the subjective credibility hypothesis claims that a
process of updating might not occur even in the face of costly signals, und das
vivid, noncostly actions can also be seen as informative. Weiter, the concept of
Bayesian updating suggests that disconªrming data will always lead to some
belief change, or at least to lowered conªdence. The subjective credibility hy-
pothesis, Jedoch, recognizes that some decisionmakers will not revise their
beliefs even when confronted with valuable and costly information for reasons
described above, such as a strong conªrmation bias, the colorless nature of the
Information, or incongruity with the decisionmaker’s theories. This study also

20. Borgida and Nisbett, “Differential Impact of Abstract vs. Concrete Information," P. 269.
21. Nisbett and Ross, Human Inference, S. 188–191; Fiske and Taylor, Social Cognition, S. 278–279;
Tversky and Kahneman, “Availability”; Kaufmann, “Out of the Lab and into the Archives”; Und
Rose McDermott, Jonathan Cowden, and Stephen Rosen, “The Role of Hostile Communications in
a Simulated Crisis Game,” Peace and Conºict: Journal of Peace Psychology, Bd. 14, NEIN. 2 (2008),
P. 156.
22. For a debate on the role of “common prior beliefs” in bargaining models, see Alastair Smith
and Allan Stam, “Bargaining and the Nature of War,” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Bd. 50, NEIN. 6
(Dezember 2004), S. 783–813; and Mark Fey and Kristopher W. Ramsay, “The Common Priors As-
sumption: A Comment on ‘Bargaining and the Nature of War,’” Journal of Conºict Resolution, Bd.
50, NEIN. 4 (2006), S. 607–613.
23. Alan Gerber and Donald P. Grün, “Rational Learning and Partisan Attitudes,” American Jour-
nal of Political Science, Bd. 42, NEIN. 3 (Juli 1998), S. 189–210; and Charles S. Taber and Milton
Lodge, “Motivated Skepticism in the Evaluation of Political Beliefs,” American Journal of Political
Wissenschaft, Bd. 50, NEIN. 3 (Juli 2006), S. 755–769.

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International Security 38:1 14

asks a set of questions about the importance of costly actions that Bayesian
models tend to ignore: das ist, do different observers select different kinds of
external indicators to update their beliefs?

the organizational expertise hypothesis. The bureaucratic-organizational
context in which intelligence analysts operate has speciªc effects that do not
apply to political decisionmakers. As a collective, intelligence organizations
tend to analyze their adversary’s intentions through the prism of their relative
expertise. Intelligence organizations tend to devote most of their resources to
the collection, production, and analysis of information about the military in-
ventory of the adversary, which can be known and tracked over time. As Mark
Lowenthal writes, „[T]he regularity and precision that govern each nation’s
military make it susceptible to intelligence collection.”24 Quantiªed invento-
ries can also be presented in a quasi-scientiªc way to decisionmakers.

Over time, the extensive monitoring of the adversary’s military inventory
creates a kind of narrow-mindedness that inºuences the inference process. To
use Isaiah Berlin’s metaphor, extensive monitoring creates hedgehogs: „[T]Er
intellectually aggressive hedgehogs knew one big thing and sought, unter
the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that big thing to
‘cover’ new cases.”25 This is not to argue that intelligence organizations know
only how to count an adversary’s missiles and military divisions. Eher, Die
organizational expertise hypothesis posits that, because analyzing intentions
is one central issue with which intelligence organizations are explicitly tasked,
and because there is no straightforward or easy way to predict the adversary’s
intentions, a state’s intelligence apparatus has strong incentives to use the rela-
tive expertise that it has, which emphasizes careful empirical analysis of mili-
tary capabilities. Unlike the capabilities thesis, the organizational expertise
hypothesis sees the logic of relying on capabilities as arising from bureaucratic
and practical reasons speciªc to intelligence organizations.26

24. As Mark M. Lowenthal writes, “Deployed conventional and strategic forces . . . are difªcult to
conceal, as they tend to exist in identiªable garrisons and must exercise from time to time. Sie
also tend to be garrisoned or deployed in large numbers, which makes hiding them or masking
them impractical at best.” Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy (Washington, D.C.: CQ
Drücken Sie, 2009), S. 234–235.
25. Philip E. Tetlock, Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton, N.J.:
Princeton University Press, 2005), S. 20–21.
26. For analyses of how organizations inºuence information processes, see Martha S. Feldman
and James G. Marsch, “Information in Organizations as Signal and Symbol,” Administrative Science
Quarterly, Bd. 26, NEIN. 2 (Juni 1981), S. 171–186; Yaacov Y.I. Vertzberger, The World in Their Minds:
Information Processing, Cognition, and Perception in Foreign Policy Decisionmaking (Stanford, Calif.:
Stanford University Press, 1990); and Isaiah Berlin, The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s
View of History (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1953). The organizational expertise hypothesis
does not predict the kinds of conclusions that individual intelligence agencies or analysts will
reach about the adversary’s intentions.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 15

the capabilities thesis

The capabilities thesis posits that observers should infer an adversary’s inten-
tions based on indexes of its military power. This thesis draws on several
realist theories that suggest that a state’s intentions reveal, or are at least con-
strained by, its military capabilities. Two pathways link military power and
perceived intentions.27 First, according to John Mearsheimer’s theory of offen-
sive realism, decisionmakers in an anarchic international system must “as-
sume the worst” about adversaries’ intentions.28 How aggressive a state can
(or will) be is essentially a function of its power. A second pathway relies on
the logic of costly actions, according to which the size of an incremental in-
crease or decrease in an adversary’s military capabilities, in combination with
how powerful the observing country sees it to be, can serve as a credible signal
of aggressive or benign intentions.29

Drawing on these insights, the capabilities hypothesis predicts that observ-
ers in a state will infer an adversary’s intentions from perceived trends in the
level of the adversary’s military capabilities compared with its own military
capabilities. Under conditions of uncertainty about states’ intentions, a percep-
tion that an adversary is devoting more resources to building up its military
capabilities is likely to be seen as a costly signal of hostile intentions. Als
Charles Glaser puts it, „[A] state’s military buildup can change the adversary’s
beliefs about the state’s motives, convincing the adversary that the state is in-
herently more dangerous than it had previously believed. More speciªcally,
the state’s buildup could increase the adversary’s assessment of the extent to
which it is motivated by the desire to expand for reasons other than security.”30
Umgekehrt, a perception of a freeze or a decrease in the adversary’s military ca-
pabilities or its investment in them is likely to be seen as a costly and reassuring
signal of more benign intentions. Gleichzeitig, realists have long empha-
sized that a state’s perception of security or threat depends on how its military
power compares with the power of the adversary, das ist, on the balance of mili-
tary power. Daher, in the process of discerning intentions, assessments of the bal-
ance of military capabilities are also likely to affect interpretations of benign or
hostile intent. Zum Beispiel, if the adversary already enjoys military superiority

27. A third pathway concerns the offensive or defensive nature of the military capabilities as a sig-
nal of intentions. On the little impact that such indicators had on the inference processes of
decisionmakers during these periods, see Yarhi-Milo, Knowing Thy Adversary.
28. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), P. 31.
29. Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations; and Glaser, Rational Theory of International
Politik.
30. Charles L. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited,” World Politics, Bd. 50, NEIN. 1 (Oktober
1997), P. 178.

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International Security 38:1 16

over the observer, then observers will perceive an increase in the adversary’s
military capabilities as clear evidence of hostile intentions.

the behavior thesis

The behavior thesis posits that certain kinds of noncapability-based actions are
also useful in revealing information about political intentions, because under-
taking them requires the adversary either to sink costs or to commit itself cred-
ibly by tying its own hands. I evaluate the potential causal role of three types
of such “costly” actions. The ªrst is a state’s decision to join or withdraw from
binding international institutions.31 Some institutions can impose signiªcant
costs on states, and they are thus instrumental in allowing other states to dis-
cern whether a state has benign or malign intentions.32 The structural version
of the democratic peace, zum Beispiel, posits that the creation of democratic do-
mestic institutions—because of their constraining effects, Transparenz, Und
ability to generate audience costs—should make it easier for others to recog-
nize a democratic state’s benign intentions.33

The second costly signal involves foreign interventions in the affairs of
weaker states, or withdrawals from such interventions. A state’s decision to
spill blood and treasure in an effort to change the status quo, Zum Beispiel, Ist
likely to be viewed as a costly, hence credible, signal of hostile intentions.

A third type of behavioral signal involves arms control agreements. Scholars
have pointed out that, when offensive and defensive weapons are distinguish-
able, arms control agreements—especially those that limit offensive deploy-
ment and impose effective veriªcation—provide an important and reassuring

31. On the role of institutions in signaling intentions, see Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Co-
operation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1984); G. John Ikenberry, After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order af-
ter Major Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2001); Seth Weinberger, “Institutional
Signaling and the Origins of the Cold War,” Security Studies, Bd. 12, NEIN. 4 (Sommer 2003), S. 80–
115; Songying Fang, “The Informational Role of International Institutions and Domestic Politics,”
American Journal of Political Science, Bd. 52, NEIN. 2 (April 2008), S. 304–321; and Terence L. Chap-
man, “International Security Institutions, Domestic Politics, and Institutional Legitimacy,” Journal
of Conºict Resolution, Bd. 51, NEIN. 1 (Februar 2007), S. 134–166. See also Stephen D. Krasner, Inter-
national Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983); and Andrew Kydd, “Sheep in
Sheep’s Clothing: Why Security Seekers Do Not Fight Each Other,” Security Studies, Bd. 7, NEIN. 1
(Fallen 1997), S. 114–155.
32. The usefulness of international institutions in revealing information about intentions depends
on institutional characteristics such as the nature of enforcement, the effects of veto points on state
decisionmaking, and the institution’s effects on member states’ domestic political institutions.
33. For a summary of how domestic institutions can be a signal of intentions, see Mark L. Haas,
“The United States and the End of the Cold War: Reactions to Shifts in Soviet Power, Policies, oder
Domestic Politics?” International Organization, Bd. 61, NEIN. 1 (Winter 2007), P. 152; and James D.
Fearon, “Domestic Political Audiences and the Escalation of International Disputes,” American Po-
litical Science Review, Bd. 88, NEIN. 3 (September 1994), S. 577–592.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 17

signal of benign intentions.34 Cheating or reneging on arms control agreements
would lead others to question the intentions of that state. It is important to dif-
ferentiate indicators such as the signing of arms control agreements as a be-
havioral signal of intentions from indicators associated with the capabilities
These. Although both theses ultimately deal with the relationship between a
state’s military policy and others’ assessments of its intentions, they have dif-
ferent predictions. If the capabilities thesis is correct, a change in perceived in-
tentions should occur only when the implementation of the agreement results
in an actual decrease in the adversary’s capabilities. Policymakers should refer
to the actual change in capabilities as the reason for a change in their percep-
tions of the adversary’s intentions. If the behavior thesis is correct, perceptions
of intentions should shift when the arms control agreement is signed, Und
policymakers should refer to the action of signing the agreement as a critical
factor. Evidence indicating that changes in assessments of intentions occurring
at the time of the signing of a treaty in response to expectations of future shifts
in capabilities, or reasoning pointing to both the symbolic and the actual value
of a treaty, conªrms both theses.

summary of predictions

Tisch 1 highlights the most signiªcant differences in the observable implica-
tions of the selective attention, capabilities, and behavior theses. Each of the
four questions in the table addresses how to test the predictions of the three
theories against the empirical evidence.

research design

To evaluate the selective attention, capabilities, and behavior theses, I examine,
ªrst, the perceptions of key decisionmakers and their closest senior advisers
on the foreign policy of a particular adversary and, zweite, the coordinated as-
sessments of the intelligence community.35 In addition to variation on the de-
pendent variable—perceptions of political intentions—the cases also provide
useful variation on the explanatory variables.

34. Glaser, “The Security Dilemma Revisited”; and Charles L. Glaser, Analyzing Strategic Nuclear
Policy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991).
35. For the U.S. Fälle, I use the declassiªed National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) on the Soviet
Union. NIEs, which are produced by the National Intelligence Council, are the most authoritative
product of the intelligence community. The community regularly assessed Soviet intentions in the
11-4 Und 11-8 series of NIEs, supplemented by occasional Special NIEs (SNIEs). In all NIEs, I ana-
lyze only those sections that deal with the question of intentions. In the British case, the main focus
of the analysis is the coordinated Chiefs of Staff reports and memoranda, because these represent
the integrated analysis of all three military service intelligence agencies. Als solche, they provide a
useful guide to the evolution of perceptions of the German threat at the level of the British intelli-
gence community as a whole.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 19

To test the propositions offered by the selective attention thesis, I examine
how the primary decisionmakers—President Jimmy Carter, President Ronald
Reagan, and Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and their senior advisers—
varied in their initial assessments of the enemy. Auch, all three key decision-
makers were engaged in personal meetings with the adversary’s leadership,
albeit to various degrees.36

The cases also allow testing of the capabilities thesis, because both the initial
balance of capabilities and the magnitude of change in the adversary’s capabili-
ties during the period of interaction vary across the cases. Both Cold War cases
assume relative equality in military capabilities between the superpowers with a
moderate increase (the collapse of détente case) or decrease (the end of the Cold
War case) in Soviet capabilities during the interaction period. Im Gegensatz, Die
German military was vastly inferior to the British military, but an unprece-
dented increase in German military capabilities during the mid-to-late 1930s
shifted the balance of power in Germany’s favor. Daher, the interwar case
should be an easy test case for the capabilities thesis, as the dramatic increase
in German military capabilities and the shift in the balance of power during
the period should have led observers to focus on this indicator as a signal
of intentions.

The cases are also useful in testing the predictions of the behavior thesis. In
besondere, the end of the Cold War case is an easy test for the behavior thesis,
given that the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, took a series of extremely
costly actions. This should have had a signiªcant reassuring inºuence on ob-
servers’ perceptions.

In each case, I subject the evidence to two probes. Erste, I look for covariance
between changes in the independent variables cited in each thesis and changes
in the dependent variable of perceptions of intentions. A ªnding of no correla-
tion between the predictions of a thesis and the time or direction in which per-
ceptions of intentions change is evidence against that thesis. Zweite, durch
process tracing, I examine whether decisionmakers or collective intelligence
reports explicitly cited the adversary’s capabilities or its behavior, Zum Beispiel,
as relevant evidence in their assessments of the adversary’s intentions. Das
step provides a further check against mistaking correlation for causation.

36. One potential criticism is that all cases involve Western democracies’ assessments about the in-
tentions of their nondemocratic adversaries. This is primarily because the data available from
nondemocracies are not adequate to permit a reasonable understanding of what decisionmakers
and intelligence analysts in these countries discussed and thought when they inferred the inten-
tions of their adversaries. Darüber hinaus, although I show in the cases that the adversary’s ideology did
not play a direct role in the assessments of intentions, I do not systematically test the role of ideol-
ogy in this project.

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International Security 38:1 20

Dritte, in each case I test the predictions of the selective attention framework
by comparing decisionmakers’ assessments with those of the intelligence com-
munities, as well as by tracing the process by which the selective attention cri-
teria account for the variation among decisionmakers in how they categorized
credible signals, and the timing of changes in their perceived intentions.

The Collapse of Détente, 1977–80

Jimmy Carter began his presidency with great optimism about relations with
the Soviet Union. But by his last year in ofªce, the U.S.-Soviet détente had col-
lapsed: Carter did not meet with Soviet leaders; he increased the defense bud-
get; he withdrew the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II Treaty from
Senate consideration; and he announced the Carter Doctrine, which warned
against interference with U.S. interests in the Middle East. In this case, I brieºy
outline trends in Soviet military capabilities and costly actions during that pe-
riod that inform the capabilities and behavior theses, jeweils. Then I show
how the main decisionmakers in the Carter administration—President Jimmy
Fuhrmann, National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Secretary of State
Cyrus Vance37—assessed Soviet intentions in a manner that is most consistent
with the subjective credibility hypothesis of the selective attention thesis. Das
is followed by a discussion of the U.S. intelligence community’s assessments
welche, I argue, are in line with both the capabilities thesis and the selective
attention thesis’s organizational expertise hypothesis.

The U.S. consensus during this period was that the Soviet Union was build-
ing up and modernizing its military capabilities and that the correlation of mil-
itary forces was shifting in its favor.38 The Soviets were expanding their
already large conventional ground and theater air forces and introducing mod-
ern systems that were equal or superior to those of NATO.39 The deployment
of Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missiles in Europe produced a growing
concern over the potential threat of Soviet continental strategic superiority.40
While the United States maintained what it called “asymmetric equivalence”

37. On the relationship between the three decisionmakers, see Jerel A. Rosati, The Carter Adminis-
tration’s Quest for Global Community: Beliefs and Their Impact on Behavior (Columbia: Universität
South Carolina Press, 1987); and Betty Glad, An Outsider in the White House: Jimmy Carter, His Advi-
sors, and the Making of American Foreign Policy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2009).
38. Zbigniew Brzezinski, memo, “Comprehensive Net Assessment, 1978," P. 8; and Harold
Braun, “Report of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to the Congress on the FY 1979 Budget, FY
Authorization Request, and FY 1979–1983 Defense Programs,” January 23, 1978, S. 65–66.
39. Ofªce of Strategic Research, “The Development of Soviet Military Power: Trends since 1965
and Prospects for the 1980s,” SR 81-10035X (Washington, D.C.: National Foreign Research Center,
April 1981), S. xiii–xv.
40. NIE 11-6-78, S. 2-3.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 21

with the Soviet Union,41 die USA. defense establishment was especially worried
about increases in Soviet nuclear counterforce capability. The Soviets were
steadily improving the survivability and ºexibility of their strategic forces,
which had reached the potential to destroy about four-ªfths of the U.S.
Minuteman silos by 1980 oder 1981.42 In mid-1979, the National Security Council
(NSC) cautioned that the strategic nuclear balance was deteriorating faster
than the United States had expected two years earlier, and would get worse
into the early 1980s.

The Soviets took two kinds of costly actions that ªt the criteria of the behav-
ior thesis. The ªrst was signing the SALT II Treaty in June 1979, which called
for reductions in U.S. and Soviet strategic forces to 2,250 in all categories of de-
livery vehicles.43 The second was Soviet interventions in crises around the
Welt. The Soviets intervened in twenty-six conºicts during 1975–80.44 Unlike
previous interventions during that period, Jedoch, Die 1978 Soviet interven-
tion in Ethiopia was direct, not simply through Cuban proxies, and the Soviet
invasion of Afghanistan in late 1979 was a full-scale application of Soviet mili-
tary power. The United States feared that the pattern of Soviet actions would
expand beyond the “arc of crisis” to include additional regions and countries
more important to U.S. interests. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, in partic-
ular, signiªcantly intensiªed this fear, because it was the ªrst direct use of
Soviet force beyond the Warsaw Pact nations to restore a pro-Soviet regime. In
addition to these two interventions, reports in 1979 that the Soviets had placed
a combat brigade in Cuba created a sense of panic in Washington that sub-
sided only when American decisionmakers realized that the brigade had been
in Cuba since 1962.45

41. National Security Council (NSC) meeting, Juni 4, 1979, quoted in Zbigniew Brzezinski, Power
and Principle: Memoirs of the National Security Advisor, 1977–1981 (New York: Farrar, Straus and
Giroux, 1983), S. 334–336. The conventional military balance in Europe was perceived as favoring
the Warsaw Pact forces. See National Foreign Assessment Center, “The Balance of Nuclear Forces
in Central Europe,” SR 78-10004 (Washington, D.C.: CIA, Januar 1978);
and “Comprehensive Net Assessment, 1978.”
42. NIE 11-3/8-79, S. 2, 4. Soviet damage-limitation capabilities were, Jedoch, still judged to be
poor despite a large, ongoing Soviet investment. NIE 11-3/8-78, S. 5–6, 11. See also Harold
Braun, “Report of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, on the FY 1979 Budget,”S. 65–66; Und
Harold Brown, “Department of Defense Annual Report, Fiscal Year 1980,” January 25, 1979, P. 70.
43. As a result of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter decided to table SALT II. NSC Weekly
Bericht 123, Dezember 28, 1979.
44. The Soviet Union had low-level involvement in eleven crises and conducted covert or semi-
military activities in thirteen crises, in addition to using direct military force in Ethiopia and Af-
ghanistan. See International Conºict Behavior Project dataset, http://www.cidcm.umd.edu/icb/.
45. On the episode of the Soviet brigade in Cuba, see Cyrus R. Vance, Hard Choices: Critical Years in
America’s Foreign Policy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983), S. 360–361; Brzezinski, Power and
Principle, P. 347; and NSC Weekly Report 98, Mai 25, 1979; NSC Weekly Report 103, Juli 20, 1979;
NSC Weekly Report 104, Juli 27, 1979; and NSC Weekly Report 109, September 13, 1979.

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International Security 38:1 22

carter administration assessments of soviet intentions

In what follows I show that, consistent with the subjective credibility hypothesis
derived from the selective attention thesis, Carter and his advisers did not agree
on the informative value of Soviet costly actions. Eher, they debated the im-
portance of various indicators in inferring intentions, and interpreted costly
Soviet behavior markedly differently from one another. Speciªcally, their initial
beliefs and theories about the Soviet Union affected the degree of credibility that
each of the three decisionmakers attached to various Soviet actions.

Prior to becoming national security adviser, Brzezinski had held a more nega-
tive impression of the Soviet Union than either Carter or Vance.46 During their
ªrst year in ofªce, Carter and Vance perceived Soviet intentions as, at worst, op-
portunistic.47 Brzezinski’s private weekly memoranda to Carter reveal that, sogar
though he was more skeptical than the president about Soviet intentions, Er,
zu, was hopeful that the Soviets would remain relatively cooperative.48 As
conºicts in the third world grew in scope, intensity, and importance throughout
1978, Jedoch, Brzezinski concluded that the Soviet involvement in Africa was
expansionist, not merely opportunistic. Im Januar 1978, he maintained that “ei-
ther by design or simply as a response to an apparent opportunity, the Soviets
have stepped up their efforts to exploit African turbulence to their own advan-
tage.”49 Soon after, he cautioned Carter that the “Soviet leaders may be acting
merely in response to an apparent opportunity, or the Soviet actions may be part
of a wider strategic design.”50 On February 17, Brzezinski provided Carter with
a rare, explicit account of his impressions of Soviet intentions, including a table
that divided Soviet behavior into three categories: benign, neutral, and malig-
nant.51 Brzezinski described Soviet objectives as seeking “selective détente,”52
and explained that his revised assessments about Soviet intentions “emerge
from Soviet behavior and statements since the election.”53 The table is particu-
larly illuminating because it provides no mention of Soviet military capabilities,
only of Soviet behavior, although the latter was not conªned to Soviet interven-

46. Rosati, The Carter Administration’s Quest for Global Community; Melchiore Laucella, “A Cogni-
tive-Psychodynamic Perspective to Understanding Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s Worldview,”
Presidential Studies Quarterly, Bd. 34, NEIN. 2 (Juni 2004), S. 227–271; and Steven Jay Campbell,
“Brzezinski’s Image of the USSR: Inferring Foreign Policy Beliefs from Multiple Sources Over
Time,„Ph.D. dissertation, University of South Carolina, 2003, S. 74–75.
47. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Public Papers of the President of the United States [hereafter PPP] (Washington,
D.C.: Government Printing Ofªce, Juni 30, 1977), P. 1198; and PPP, Dezember 15, 1977, P. 2119.
48. NSC Weekly Report 18, Juni 24, 1977.
49. NSC Weekly Report 42, Januar 13, 1978.
50. Quoted in Brzezinski, Power and Principle, P. 181.
51. NSC Weekly Report 47, Februar 17, 1978.
52. Ebenda.
53. NSC Weekly Report 2, Februar 26, 1977.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 23

tionism or costly actions alone. During February and March, Cuban and Soviet
forces backed the government of Ethiopia in its effort to expel the defeated
Somali army; Brzezinski believed that the Soviet Union was in Ethiopia “be-
cause it has a larger design in mind.”54 He reiterated these conclusions in subse-
quent reports to the president.55

Im Gegensatz, Secretary of State Vance believed that the Soviet Union’s actions
in Africa were not “part of a grand Soviet plan, but rather attempts to exploit
targets of opportunity,”56 and that they were “within the bounds of acceptable
competition.”57 Alarmed by Carter’s growing skepticism about Soviet motiva-
tions and objectives, Vance requested a formal review of U.S.-Soviet relations
in May 1978. “Many are asking whether this Administration has decided to
make a sharp shift in its foreign policy priorities,” Vance noted, expressing
alarm about the more hawkish Brzezinski’s inºuence on the president’s view
of the Soviet Union.58 Indeed, Carter’s growing distrust of Soviet intentions,
ignited by the Soviet involvement in the Horn of Africa, had become apparent
in a series of public statements depicting the Soviets as less trustworthy and
calling for the adoption of a harsher U.S. stance.59 Yet Carter continued to see
the Soviet Union’s actions in the Horn as opportunistic.60

By mid-1978, Brzezinski and Vance found themselves in opposing camps

while Carter vacillated. Brzezinski summarized the differences:

One view . . . was that “the Soviets have stomped all over the code of détente.”
They continue to pursue a selective détente. Their action reºects growing as-
sertiveness in Soviet foreign policy generally. Brezhnev’s diminished control
permits the natural, historisch, dominating impulse of the regime to assert it-
self with less restraint.

Another view . . . was that the record of Soviet action is much more mixed and
has to be considered case-by-case. The Soviets are acting on traditional lines
and essentially reacting to U.S. steps.61

Convinced by early 1979 that the Soviets were pursuing an expansionist
“grand design,” Brzezinski continued to press Carter to act more assertively.

54. Zbigniew Brzezinski, memo for the president, “The Soviet Union and Ethiopia: Implications
for U.S. Soviet Relations," Marsch 3, 1978.
55. NSC Weekly Report 55, April 21, 1978; and NSC Weekly Report 57, Mai 5, 1978.
56. Vance, Hard Choices, P. 84.
57. Ebenda., P. 101.
58. Vance, memo to President Jimmy Carter, Mai 29, 1978. Document released to author under the
Freedom of Information Act, Juli 2007.
59. PPP, Mai 20, 1978, S. 872, 940; and PPP, Mai 25, 1978, P. 977. See also Brzezinski, Power and
Principle, S. 188–189; and Richard C. Thornton, The Carter Years: Toward a New Global Order (Neu
York: Paragon House, 1991), P. 185.
60. PPP, November 13, 1978, P. 2017.
61. NSC Weekly Report 65, Juni 30, 1978.

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International Security 38:1 24

He wrote to Carter that the recent pattern in Soviet interventions revealed re-
visionist intentions.62 Although alarmed, the president continued to reject
Brzezinski’s calls to “deliberately toughen both the tone and the substance of
our foreign policy.”63 The issue of Soviet intentions resurfaced in the fall of
1979 during the uproar over the Soviet brigade in Cuba. Brzezinski saw this as
another credible indicator of Soviet expansionist intentions, but Carter and
Vance were unpersuaded.64

The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in December 1979 caused Carter to re-
evaluate his perceptions of Soviet intentions. On January 20, 1980, he declared
that it had made “a more dramatic change in my opinion of what the Soviets’
ultimate goals are than anything they’ve done in the previous time that I’ve
been in ofªce.”65 Carter now viewed the Soviet Union as expansionist, not nec-
essarily because of the ªnancial or political costs incurred by the Soviets, but be-
cause the invasion represented a qualitative shift in Soviet behavior. Explaining
this shift, Carter adopted Brzezinski’s line of reasoning, saying, „[ICH]t is obvious
that the Soviets’ actual invasion of a previously nonaligned country, an inde-
pendent, freedom-loving country, a deeply religious country, mit ihren eigenen
massive troops is a radical departure from the policy or actions that the Soviets
have pursued since the Second World War.”66 Consequently, he warned that the
invasion of Afghanistan was “an extremely serious threat to peace because of
the threat of further Soviet expansion into neighboring countries.”67

The invasion was seen as an informative indicator of intention not solely be-
cause it was a “costly” action, but also because of the emotional response it in-
voked in Carter. In der Tat, the reason he saw the invasion as indicative of Soviet
intentions can also be explained, as Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein
point out, by the “egocentric bias” that led Carter to exaggerate the extent to
die er, personally, was the target of Soviet actions.68 In particular, the inva-
sion contradicted the frank rapport and the understanding that he felt he had
achieved with Brezhnev during their meeting in June 1979 in Vienna.69 Indeed,

62. NSC Weekly Report 84, Januar 12, 1979.
63. NSC Weekly Report 109, September 13, 1979.
64. Brzezinski, Power and Principle, S. 347–351.
65. Jimmy Carter, interview, Meet the Press, Januar 20, 1980. See also Jimmy Carter, Keeping Faith:
Memoirs of a President (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1995), P. 480; “Message for
Brezhnev from Carter Regarding Afghanistan,” December 28, 1979; and Brzezinski, Power and
Principle, P. 429.
66. PPP, Januar 20, 1980, P. 11. For a similar line of reasoning, see also pp. 308, 329.
67. UNS. Department of State Bulletin (DSB), Bd. 80, NEIN. 2034 (Januar 1980).
68. Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Gross Stein, “Afghanistan, Fuhrmann, and Foreign Policy Change:
The Limits of Cognitive Models,” in Dan Caldwell and Timothy J. McKeown, Hrsg., Diplomacy,
Force, and Leadership: Essays in Honor of Alexander L. George (Felsblock, Colo.: Westview, 1993), P. 112.
69. Raymond L. Garthoff, Détente and Confrontation: American-Soviet Relations from Nixon to Reagan,
rev. Hrsg. (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1994), P. 1059.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 25

during that summit meeting, Carter spoke of “continuing cooperation and
honesty in our discussions,” and upon his return he had proudly reported to
Congress that “President Brezhnev and I developed a better sense of each
other as leaders and as men.”70 Brezhnev’s justiªcation for the invasion—
which asserted that the Soviet troops were sent in response to requests by the
Afghan government—infuriated Carter, as he interpreted it as an “insult to his
intelligence.”71 Finally, Brezhnev’s betrayal also suggested that the Soviet
leader could not be trusted to be a partner for détente. As Carter explained,
„[T]his is a deliberate aggression that calls into question détente and the way
we have been doing business with the Soviets for the past decade. It raises
grave questions about Soviet intentions and destroys any chance of getting the
SALT Treaty through the Senate. And that makes the prospects for nuclear war
even greater.”72 Carter wrote in his diary, „[T]he Soviet invasion sent a clear
indication that they were not to be trusted.”73

Vance’s reactions to and interpretation of the Soviet invasion differed dra-
matically from Carter’s. He did not see the invasion as signiªcant and costly,
and thus informative of Soviet intentions. Eher, he considered it an “aberra-
tion” from past behavior, and “largely as an expedient reaction to oppor-
tunities rather than as a manifestation of a more sustained trend.”74 Vance
understood why others might view the invasion as a signiªcant signal of ex-
pansionist intentions, but he believed that “the primary motive for the Soviet
actions was defensive, [Und] that the Soviets do not have long-term regional
ambitions beyond Afghanistan.”75 Indeed, Vance continued to view Soviet in-
tentions as opportunistic long after the invasion of Afghanistan.76

In sum, the evidence presented provides strong support for the selective at-
tention thesis. The support for the capabilities thesis is weak: the signiªcant
Soviet military buildup did not lead all U.S. observers to see Soviet intentions
as becoming more hostile throughout this period. More important, none of the
decisionmakers referred to the Soviet military buildup in explaining his as-
sessment of Soviet political intentions. Brzezinski’s writings rarely discussed
the recent Soviet military buildup, even though it would have bolstered the

70. Quoted in ibid.
71. Ebenda.
72. Hamilton Jordan, Crisis: The Last Year of the Carter Presidency (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons,
1982), P. 99.
73. Jimmy Carter, White House Diary (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), P. 383.
74. Ebenda. For a similar logic, see Marshall Shulman, memorandum for Warren Christopher, “Notes
on SU/Afghanistan,” January 22, 1980; and Vance, Hard Choices, P. 388.
75. NSC Weekly Report 134, Marsch 28, 1980.
76. See interviews with Vance and Shulman in Melchiore Laucella, “Cyrus Vance’s Worldview:
The Relevance of the Motivated Perspective,„Ph.D. dissertation, Union Institute, 1996.

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International Security 38:1 26

hawkish case.77 The evidence for the behavior thesis is moderate. Both Carter
and Brzezinski used Soviet military interventions to infer political intentions.
Yet the behavior thesis does not explain why, unlike Brzezinski, Carter and
Vance did not infer hostile or expansionist motives from Soviet involvement in
the Horn of Africa; it also does not explain why the invasion of Afghanistan
triggered such a dramatic change in Carter’s beliefs about Soviet intentions
but had no such effect on Vance. Endlich, the behavior thesis fails to account
for the differences between the decisionmakers’ inference processes—which
largely relied on assessments of Soviet actions, albeit not necessarily “costly”
ones—and the U.S. intelligence community’s inference process, welche, as de-
scribed in the next section, largely relied on assessments of Soviet capabilities.

u.s. intelligence community assessments of soviet intentions

The bulk of the integrated national intelligence estimates (NIEs) on the Soviet
Union throughout the Cold War focused on aspects of the Soviet military ar-
senal. As Raymond Garthoff stated, “Estimates of Soviet capabilities were
the predominant focus of attention and received virtually all of the intelli-
gence collection, Analyse, and estimative effort.”78 Former Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet noted that “from the mid-1960s on to the Soviet col-
lapse, we knew roughly how many combat aircraft or warheads the Soviets had,
and where. But why did they need that many or that kind? What did they plan
to do with them? To this day, Intelligence is always much better at counting
heads than divining what is going on inside them. Das ist, we are very good at
gauging the size and location of militaries and weaponry. But for obvious rea-
sons, we can never be as good at ªguring out what leaders will do with them.”79

77. In only a few statements did the decisionmakers link Soviet intentions to the buildup. Zum Beispiel-
reichlich, in a report to Carter, Brzezinski wrote: “Soviet defense programs are going beyond the
needs of legitimate deterrence and are increasingly pointing towards the acquisition of something
which might approximate a war-ªghting capability. While we do not know why the Soviets are
doing this (intentions?), we do know that their increased capabilities have consequences for our
national security.” This statement does not, Jedoch, lend support to the capabilities thesis, als
Brzezinski explicitly says that he cannot infer Soviet intentions from these indicators. Brzezinski
also addressed capabilities in other reports, but he did not link them—implicitly or explicitly—to
an assessment of Soviet political intentions. NSC Weekly Report 33, Oktober 21, 1977; and NSC
Weekly Report 108, September 6, 1979.
78. In diesem Abschnitt, I rely in part on interviews I conducted with William Odom, head of the Na-
tional Security Agency at the time, and Fritz Ermarth, Raymond Garthoff, Melvin Goodman,
and Douglas MacEachin, all former CIA analysts of the Soviet Union. Raymond L. Garthoff,
“Estimating Soviet Intentions and Capabilities,” in Gerald K. Haines and Robert E. Leggett,
Hrsg., Watching the Bear: Essays on CIA’s Analysis of the Soviet Union (Washington, D.C.: Center
for the Study of Intelligence Publications, 2003), Kerl. 5, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-
the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/watching-the-bear-essays-on-
cias-analysis-of-the-soviet-union.
79. “Speeches Delivered at the Conference,” in ibid., Kerl. 8.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 27

During the mid-to-late 1970s, various agencies within the U.S. intelligence
community held differing views about Soviet intentions. Zum Beispiel, der Staat
Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Central Intelligence
Agentur (CIA) saw the Soviets as opportunistic. The military intelligence agen-
cies and the Defense Intelligence Agency (part of the Department of Defense)
viewed Soviet intentions as expansionist. The reasoning described in the inte-
grated NIEs shows that all U.S. intelligence agencies viewed measures of
Soviet current and projected strategic power as the most important indicator
of Soviet political intentions. Zum Beispiel, NIE 11-4-78 estimated that “more
assertive Soviet international behavior” was “likely to persist as long as the
USSR perceives that Western strength is declining and its own strength is
steadily increasing.” It judged that “if the new [Sowjetisch] leaders believe the ‘cor-
relation of forces’ to be favorable, especially if they are less impressed than
Brezhnev with U.S. military might and more impressed with their own, Sie
might employ military power even more assertively in pursuit of their global
ambitions.”80 The centrality of Soviet capabilities and the balance of capabili-
ties as indicators of intentions also dominated NIE 11-3/8-79, in which Direc-
tor of Central Intelligence Stansªeld Turner asserted that “as they [the Soviets]
see this [Militär] superiority increase during the next three to ªve years, Sie
will probably attempt to secure maximum political advantage from their mili-
tary arsenal in anticipation of U.S. force modernization programs.”81 Com-
peting and minority views were also routinely registered in the NIEs. Eins
such view in this NIE claimed that Soviet perceptions of the global correlation
of forces were “providing them with the latitude to safely confront the U.S.” or
its vital interests, and that in places where the Soviets enjoyed the “advantage
of proximity” or “a preponderance of conventional forces,” the regional cor-
relation of forces made these areas more vulnerable to aggressive Soviet
behavior.82 Similarly, NIE 11-3/8-80 repeated the intelligence community’s as-
sessment that “the Soviet leadership is now conªdent that the strategic mili-
tary balance is shifting in the Kremlin’s favor and that the aggressiveness of its
foreign policy will continue to increase as the Soviet advantage grows.”83

Interagency disagreements about Soviet military strength and the evolv-
ing correlation of forces shaped readings of Soviet intentions. Agencies that
perceived the Soviet Union as highly conªdent in its power also predicted
that Soviet foreign policy would become more aggressive. Agencies that per-

80. NIE 11-4-78, P. 6.
81. NIE 11-3/8-79, P. 4.
82. Ebenda.
83. NIE 11-3/8-80, S. B17–B18.

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International Security 38:1 28

ceived Soviet capabilities as weaker also saw Soviet intentions as less aggressive
and Soviet objectives as more moderate.84 Bureaucratic interests did sometimes
inºuence interpretations of Soviet capabilities and intentions, but whatever the
parochial motives of analysts from different agencies and in spite of their dis-
agreements about Soviet intentions, all of the intelligence agencies grounded
their estimates of intentions in Soviet capabilities. Außerdem, in stark contrast
to the Carter administration’s decisionmakers, the intelligence community made
almost no references to presumably costly noncapabilities-based actions to sup-
port the inferences they were drawing about their political intentions.85

In sum, the review of the NIEs on the Soviet Union reveals that unlike
Fuhrmann, Brzezinski, and Vance, die USA. intelligence community did not assess
Soviet political intentions on the basis of behavioral or vivid indicators, Aber
rather on their reading of Soviet military capabilities. This ªnding is consistent
with both the capabilities thesis and the selective attention thesis’s organ-
izational expertise hypothesis. The marked differences between evaluations
by the civilian decisionmakers and those of the intelligence community, sowie
as the substantial number of NIEs dedicated to assessing Soviet military capa-
Fähigkeiten, provide further support for the selective attention thesis.

The End of the Cold War, 1985–88

During his ªrst term, President Ronald Reagan perceived Soviet intentions as
expansionist. His views changed dramatically, Jedoch, during his second ad-
ministration. Following the Moscow summit in May 1988, Reagan asserted
that his characterization of the Soviet Union ªve years earlier as an “evil em-
pire” belonged to “another time, another era.”86 When asked if he could de-
clare the Cold War over, the president responded, “I think right now, von
course.”87 This section explores the indicators that President Reagan, Sekretär
of State George Shultz, and Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger used to
assess Soviet political intentions during Reagan’s second term, and how the
UNS. intelligence community analyzed similar indicators to infer Gorbachev’s
intentions during the same period. The discussion that follows begins with
some background information about trends in Soviet capabilities and costly
Aktion. This is followed by an analysis of how Reagan and his advisers per-

84. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, NIE 11-4-77; NIE 11-3/8-79; and NIE 11-3/8-80.
85. NIE 11-4-78 made some references to current Soviet actions with respect to SALT and détente.
This line of reasoning, Jedoch, was rarely invoked. NIE 4-1-78, S. ix, X, 17.
86. Quoted in Raymond L. Garthoff, The Great Transition: American-Soviet Relations and the End of
the Cold War (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1994), P. 352.
87. President’s news conference, Spaso House, Moskau, DSB, Juni 1988, P. 32.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 29

ceived Soviet intentions. The ªnal section evaluates the inference process that
the coordinated assessments of the U.S. intelligence community used to judge
Soviet intentions during the same period.

Realist accounts of the end of the Cold War point to the decline in Soviet
power relative to that of the United States during the late 1980s.88 Yet archival
documents show that at this time, die USA. defense establishment estimated
that the Soviet Union’s military power was growing; that the Soviets were
modernizing their strategic force comprehensively;89 and that the Warsaw Pact
had a strong advantage over NATO in almost all categories of forces as a result
of its continuing weapons production.90 In addition, prior to the signing of the
Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the United States perceived the the-
ater nuclear balance of power as extremely threatening, given the Soviet
Union’s vigorous modernization and initial deployment of intermediate-range
ballistic missiles in Europe. Although the INF Treaty, which took effect in June
1988, substantially limited Soviet medium-range and intermediate-range bal-
listic missile forces, die USA. intelligence community believed that it did not di-
minish the Soviets’ ability to wage a nuclear war.91 Then, in December 1988,
Soviet Head of State Mikhail Gorbachev announced a unilateral and substan-
tial reduction in Soviet conventional forces in Eastern Europe. Auch so, UNS.
perceptions of the balance of capabilities did not change until late 1989, folgen-
ing initial implementation of the Soviet force reductions. The announcement
itself did not result in U.S. recognition of any signiªcant diminution of Soviet
capabilities in either size or quality.92

As for Soviet behavioral signals, Gorbachev’s proposals during 1985 Und
1986 were not sufªciently “costly.”93 During 1987 Und 1988, Jedoch, Die
Soviet Union offered additional and signiªcant reassurances to the United
Zustände. Especially costly were the Soviet acceptance of asymmetric reduc-
tions in the INF in 1987, the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Afghanistan

88. William C. Wohlforth, “Realism and the End of the Cold War,” International Security, Bd. 19,
NEIN. 3 (Winter 1994/95), S. 91–129.
89. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, NIE 11-3/8-86; NIE 11-3/8-87; and NIE 11-3/8-88.
90. Frank Carlucci, “Annual Report to the President and Congress, 1989” (Washington, D.C.:
Government Printing Ofªce, Februar 18, 1988), P. 29.
91. NIE 11-3/8-88, P. 5. The Department of Defense reached a similar conclusion. UNS. Department
of Defense, Ofªce of the Secretary of Defense, “Soviet Military Power” (Washington, D.C.: UNS. Von-
partment of Defense, 1989), P. 7; und wir. Department of Defense, Ofªce of the Secretary of Defense,
“Soviet Military Power” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofªce, 1990), S. 54–55.
92. National Intelligence Council (NIC), “Status of Soviet Unilateral Withdrawal,” M 89-10003
(Washington, D.C.: NIC, Oktober 1989).
93. Jack F. Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev: How the Cold War Ended (New York: Random House,
2004), S. 275–276; and Garthoff, The Great Transition, P. 334. For an analysis of Gorbachev’s costly
actions and their effects on perceived intentions, see Haas, “The United States and the End of the
Cold War”; and Kydd, Trust and Mistrust in International Relations.

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International Security 38:1 30

announced publicly in February 1988,94 and a series of other actions that
Gorbachev undertook throughout 1988 aimed at restructuring the political
system in the Soviet Union.95

second reagan administration’s assessments of soviet intentions

A review of the historical record shows that Reagan, Shultz, and Weinberger
disagreed on which Soviet actions they categorized as costly. Their interpreta-
tion of signals was shaped by their expectations, theories, and vivid, cost-
less information.

Um sicher zu sein, all three decisionmakers shared similar hawkish views of the
Soviet Union, but they exhibited important differences in outlook. Weinberger
held much more hawkish views than Reagan and Shultz at the start of
Reagan’s second administration.96 Shultz was far less hawkish and did not be-
lieve, prior to 1985, that the Soviet Union desired global domination. Reagan’s
views were closer to those of Weinberger than Shultz. During his ªrst term,
Reagan had repeatedly referred to the Soviet Union as an ideologically moti-
vated power bent on global hegemony.97 Until mid-1987, Reagan continued to
view Soviet intentions as expansionist. Im Dezember 1985, Reagan stated both
in public and in private his belief that Gorbachev was still dedicated to tradi-
tional Soviet goals and that he had yet to see a break from past Soviet behav-
ior.98 In 1986, although Reagan had begun to view Gorbachev’s policies as
signaling a positive change in attitude, he still asserted that he “had no illu-
sions about the Soviets or their ultimate intentions.”99

Reagan and Shultz began to gradually reevaluate their perceptions of

94. Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze informed Shultz of the decision to withdraw
from Afghanistan in September 1987. Gorbachev publicly conªrmed this decision in February
1988.
95. Some decisionmakers in the United States did recognize the signiªcance of Gorbachev’s efforts
to institute glasnost (openness, or transparency) within the Soviet Union during 1987. It was only
from mid-1988, Jedoch, that his actions seemed aimed at fundamental institutional change. Beide
Shultz and Matlock argue that Gorbachev’s actions had not, as of the end of 1987, signiªed funda-
mental reforms. George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York:
Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1993), P. 1081; and Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, S. 295–296. By mid-
1988, Jedoch, Reagan had begun to praise Gorbachev for initiating true “democratic reform.” He
said that Gorbachev’s efforts were “cause for shaking the head in wonder,” leading him to view
Gorbachev as “a serious man seeking serious reform.” DSB, Bd. 2137 (1988), S. 37–38.
96. In his comprehensive study on perceptions of the Soviet Union during the Reagan administra-
tion, Keith Shimko noted that “Weinberger’s views of the Soviet Union were about as hard-line as
one could get.” Shimko, Images and Arms Control, P. 233.
97. Ebenda., S. 235–237. According to Shimko, Jedoch, Reagan exhibited a rather superªcial un-
derstanding of the Soviet Union, and his beliefs about the Soviet Union may not have formed a co-
herent image.
98. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, DSB, November 1985, P. 11; and PPP, 1985, P. 415.
99. PPP, 1986, P. 1369.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 31

Gorbachev’s intentions during 1987. The Soviet leader’s acceptance of the U.S.
proposal on INF was a major contributing factor. In 1987 Reagan reºected on
his evolving characterization of the Soviet Union: “With regard to the evil em-
pire. I meant it when I said it [In 1983], because under previous leaders they
have made it evident that . . . their program was based on expansionism.”100
Trotzdem, neither Reagan nor Shultz expected Gorbachev to signal a genuine
change in Soviet foreign policy objectives. Reagan wrote, „[ICH]n the spring of
1987 we were still facing a lot of uncertainty regarding the Soviets. . . . It was
evident something was up in the Soviet Union, but we still didn’t know what
it was.”101

Two events in the spring of 1988 persuaded Reagan and Shultz of a change in
Soviet intentions. Erste, the initial Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan in April
symbolized to both that the Brezhnev Doctrine was dead.102 Shultz explained
that the dominant perception in the administration was that “if the Soviets
left Afghanistan, the Brezhnev Doctrine would be breached, and the principle
of ‘never letting go’ would be violated.”103 In a private conversation with
Gorbachev, Reagan acknowledged that the withdrawal “was a tangible step in
the right direction,” and took note of Gorbachev’s statement that “the settlement
could serve as a model for ending other regional conºict.”104 The second event
occurred during the 19th Communist Party Conference, at which Gorbachev
proposed major domestic reforms such as the establishment of competitive
elections with secret ballots; term limits for elected ofªcials; separation of pow-
ers with an independent judiciary; and provisions for freedom of speech, als-
Montage, conscience, and the press. The proposals signaled to many in the
Reagan administration that Gorbachev’s domestic reforms were meant to
make revolutionary and irreversible changes. Ambassador Jack Matlock de-
scribed these proposals as “nothing short of revolutionary in the Soviet
Kontext,” adding that they “provided evidence that Gorbachev was ªnally pre-
pared to cross the Rubicon and discard the Marxist ideology that had deªned
and justiªed the Communist Party dictatorship in the Soviet Union.”105

Reagan also paid signiªcant attention to some “costless” actions and viewed

100. PPP, 1987, S. 1508–1509.
101. Ronald Reagan, An American Life (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1990), P. 683.
102. The Brezhnev Doctrine, announced in 1968, asserted the Soviet Union’s right to use Warsaw
Pact forces to intervene in any Eastern bloc nation that was seen as compromising communist rule
and Soviet domination, either by trying to leave the Soviet sphere of inºuence or even by attempt-
ing to moderate Moscow’s policies.
103. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, P. 1086.
104. Transcripts of the Washington Summit, Juni 1, 1988, 10:05 a.m.–11:20 Bin.; and PPP, 1988,
S. 632, 726.
105. Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, S. 295–296.

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International Security 38:1 32

them as credible signals of changed intentions given their vividness. Reagan
repeatedly cited his positive impressions of Gorbachev from their private in-
teractions in four summit meetings as persuading him that Gorbachev was
genuinely seeking to reduce U.S.-Soviet tensions.106 Emphasizing his growing
conviction of Gorbachev’s trustworthiness,107 Reagan began increasingly to
refer to Gorbachev as a friend who was “very sincere about the progressive
ideas that he is introducing there [in the Soviet Union] and the changes that he
thinks should be made.”108 He had come to respect and admire the Soviet pre-
mier, and in private writings and public statements, Reagan was explicit in
attributing his assessments of Soviet intentions to these feelings.109 The presi-
dent wrote, “It’s clear that there was a chemistry between Gorbachev and me
that produced something very close to a friendship. He was a tough, hard bar-
gainer. . . . I liked Gorbachev even though he was a dedicated Communist.”110
Toward the end of his second term, Reagan was asked whether he considered
Gorbachev a “real friend.” The president responded, “Well, I can’t help but say
yes to that.”111

Other members of Reagan’s administration noticed the importance of vivid
information in shaping his views. Matlock thus notes, “Once he [Reagan] Und
Shultz started meeting with Gorbachev they relied on their personal impres-
sions and personal instincts.” This should not come as a surprise, Matlock
fügt hinzu, “If a person reaches a top political system in a country they know
how decisions are made even in a foreign country.” Reagan’s personality—
speciªcally his openness to contradictory information, his belief in his power
of persuasion, and his emotional intelligence112—allowed him to rely heavily
on his personal impressions of Gorbachev. As Barbara Farnham puts it, für
Reagan, „[P]ersonal experience counted for everything.”113 Reagan’s conª-

106. Reagan and Gorbachev interacted during four summit meetings: the Geneva Summit (NEIN-
vember 1985), the Reykjavik Summit (Oktober 1986), the Washington Summit (Dezember 1987),
and the Moscow Summit (Mai 1988). During these summits, the two held long, private meetings,
as a result of which Reagan gained a positive impression of the Soviet leader. Yarhi-Milo, Knowing
Thy Adversary.
107. PPP, Juni 1, 1987, S. 594–595; PPP, Juni 11, 1987, P. 624; PPP, Juni 12, 1987, S. 635–636; PPP,
August 29, 1987, P. 988; and PPP, September 16, 1987, P. 1038.
108. PPP, Mai 24, 1988, P. 649 .
109. For a fuller account of the role that vividness played in Reagan’s case, see Hall and Yarhi-
Milo, “The Personal Touch.”
110. Reagan, An American Life, P. 707.
111. PPP, 1988, S. 708–709.
112. For an excellent analysis of Reagan’s personality traits that allowed him to revise his beliefs
about the Soviet threat, see Barbara Farnham, “Reagan and the Gorbachev Revolution: Perceiving
the End of Threat,” Political Science Quarterly, Bd. 116, NEIN. 2 (Sommer 2001), S. 225–252; and Fred
ICH. Greenstein, “Ronald Reagan, Mikhail Gorbachev, and the End of the Cold War: What Difference
Did They Make?” in William C. Wolforth, Hrsg., Witnesses to the End of the Cold War (Baltimore, Md.:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996).
113. Farnham, “Reagan and the Gorbachev Revolution," P. 248.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 33

dants have pointed to his tendency to reduce issues to personalities: “If he
liked and trusted someone, he was more prone to give credence to the policies
they espoused.”114

Trust also came to characterize Shultz’s relationship with the Soviet min-
ister of foreign affairs, Eduard Shevardnadze. Zum Beispiel, Shultz trusted
Shevardnadze’s private advance assurances in September 1987 that the Soviets
would withdraw from Afghanistan within a year.115 Secretary of Defense
Frank Carlucci similarly observed that “the personal bonds that began to de-
velop between the president and Gorbachev, between George [Shultz] Und
Shevardnadze,” led to “the gradual building of trust.”116 Shultz said of Reagan
and Gorbachev, “One reason they respected each other was that they both
could see that the other guy was saying what he thought. Maybe you did not
agree with him and maybe you did. But there it was. It wasn’t maneuvering
and manipulating and trying to make some obscure point. It was right there. Es
was real. What you saw was what you got.”117

Another example of vivid and credible, though costless, signaling was
Gorbachev’s responsiveness to some of Reagan’s requests, both public and pri-
vate. Beginning in 1987, Reagan announced certain actions that he asked
Gorbachev to take to signal a change in Soviet intentions. Interessant, stattdessen
of demanding a reduction in Soviet military capabilities, Reagan called for
changes in Soviet behavior, including a withdrawal of Soviet troops from
Afghanistan, changes in Soviet policies on immigration and freedom of reli-
gion, release of certain dissidents, and greater transparency in Soviet security
policy.118 Although some of these actions meet the deªnition of a costly sig-
nal, others do not. Regardless, Reagan interpreted Gorbachev’s actions that
appeared to be responsive to his personal requests as signiªcant signals of
reassurance.119 For example, Reagan wrote that by late 1987, „[T]here were ten-
tative indications that ‘quiet diplomacy’ was working with Gorbachev: Al-
though neither he nor I discussed it publicly, some of the people whose names
were on the lists I’d given him of people who we knew wanted to leave the
Soviet Union began receiving exit permits.” Impressed by this gesture, Reagan

114. “Leadership and the End of the Cold War,” in Richard K. Herrmann and Richard Ned Lebow,
Hrsg., Ending the Cold War: Interpretations, Causation, and the Study of International Relations (Basing-
stoke, VEREINIGTES KÖNIGREICH.: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), P. 183.
115. Reagan, An American Life, P. 691.
116. Quoted in Wohlforth, Witnesses to the End of the Cold War, P. 46.
117. Quoted in ibid., P. 105.
118. See Matlock, Reagan and Gorbachev, S. 295–296; and PPP, Juni 1, 1987, S. 594–595; PPP,
Juni 11, 1987, P. 624; PPP, Juni 12, 1987, S. 635–636; PPP, August 29, 1987, P. 988; and PPP, Sep-
tember 16, 1987, P. 1038.
119. During the Washington Summit, Reagan was satisªed by Gorbachev’s (private) promise that
he would end the shipment of Soviet military weapons to Nicaragua. Reagan, An American Life,
P. 701.

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International Security 38:1 34

says, “Although Soviet troops were still ªghting in Afghanistan and the Soviets
were still supporting guerillas in Central America and elsewhere, we were at
least seeing real deeds from Moscow.”120 As a result, Reagan concluded his sec-
ond term with far warmer views about the Soviet Union and its intentions.

Unlike Reagan and Shultz, Secretary of Defense Weinberger did not regard
any of Gorbachev’s actions—costly or cheap—as credibly signaling reassur-
ance.121 As he put it in 1990, “Not only did Gorbachev give up all of the Soviet
‘non-negotiable’ demands [regarding the INF Treaty], but he gave us precisely
the kind of treaty that the President had sought for seven years. That act of
course does not mean—any more than does the Soviet withdrawal from
Afghanistan—that the USSR has given up its long-term aggressive designs.”122
There are several potential explanations why Weinberger’s beliefs about Soviet
intentions did not change. My argument here, Jedoch, is that the actions that
scholars would consider to be especially costly actions of reassurance were re-
garded by Weinberger as irrelevant to his assessment of Soviet intentions.123
As for the role of Soviet capabilities, both Reagan and Shultz saw a connec-
tion between the Soviet Union’s capabilities, its actions, and its political inten-
tionen. In their eyes, Soviet expansionist conduct during the 1970s occurred at
a time when the United States had lost its superiority over the Soviet Union in
strategic nuclear weapons.124 They made it clear, Jedoch, that it was Soviet
behavior during that period, rather than the Soviet military buildup, that was
the decisive evidence of Soviet aggressive intentions. Tatsächlich, one of Reagan’s
favorite quotations was that “nations do not mistrust each other because they
are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other.”125 Reagan simi-

120. Ebenda., S. 686–687.
121. Weinberger’s collection of private papers is still classiªed, and most of his public statements
do not contain explicit references to Soviet intentions. Daher, I rely on his memoirs and interviews
during and after his tenure as secretary of defense.
122. Caspar W. Weinberger, Fighting for Peace: Seven Critical Years in the Pentagon (New York:
Warner, 1990), S. 348–349.
123. Trotzdem, the question remains: Why did Weinberger not change his views about Soviet inten-
tionen? One interpretation is that the principle of cognitive consistency prevented him from consid-
ering information that contradicted his beliefs about the Soviet Union to be at all informative.
Others point to Weinberger’s lack of vivid information, because the secretary of defense did not
interact with Gorbachev, Shevardnadze, or Soviet Defense Minister Sergei Sokolov to the same ex-
tent as Reagan or Shultz. Endlich, Weinberger’s statements in the aftermath of the Cold War reveal
that he considered Gorbachev’s commitment to communism the most important indicator of the
Soviet leader’s intentions. Even as late as 2002, Weinberger asserted that “Gorbachev to this day is
a committed Communist and still believes that what is necessary is to strengthen communism.”
Ronald Reagan Oral History Project, “Interview with Caspar Weinberger,” November 19, 2002,
S. 28–29, http://web1.millercenter.org/poh/transcripts/ohp_2002_1119_weinberger.pdf.
124. PPP, 1985, S. 650, 1287–1288.
125. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Ronald Reagan, speech given at Moscow State University, Mai 31, 1988;
and DSB, August 1988.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 35

larly acknowledged that the adversary’s capabilities by themselves are not
good indicators of its intentions; instead they are a by-product of how each
state perceives the other’s intentions.

Some scholars have pointed to ideological changes within the Soviet Union
when explaining Reagan’s changing perceptions. Reagan viewed Leninist-
Marxist ideology as the root cause of Soviet expansionist behavior: “Marxist-
Leninist regimes tend to wage wars readily against their neighbors as they
routinely do against their own people.”126 It is difªcult, if not impossible, Wie-
immer, to disentangle changes in Soviet ideology and identity from changes in
Soviet domestic institutions during this period. These changes occurred simul-
taneously, und wir. references to Soviet ideology were almost always accompa-
nied by discussions of the observable implications of these ideological changes
on Soviet domestic institutions. In a sense, ideology played an intermediate
variable that linked changes in the Soviet Union’s behavior with others’
perceptions of its intentions. Mark Haas, who has examined how these two
factors shifted Reagan’s beliefs about Soviet intentions, reaches similar conclu-
sionen, Angabe, “Gorbachev needed to propose major democratic institutional
changes before most U.S. leaders believed his commitment to liberalism was
genuine. Greater tolerance and respect for basic human rights were insufªcient
to arrive at this conclusion.”127

Abschließend, the series of Gorbachev’s costly actions should make this an
easy case for the behavior thesis, yet, the empirical evidence lends only moder-
ate support. While Reagan and Shultz relied on costly behavior signals to infer
intentions, they also focused signiªcantly on behavioral actions such as their
own personal impressions of Gorbachev. Weiter, the behavior thesis fails to
explain Weinberger’s inference process: the secretary of defense stated explic-
itly that he did not regard any of Gorbachev’s costly actions as credible
reassuring indicators of intentions. Infolge, his assessments of Soviet inten-
tions did not change at all, even after leaving ofªce. These aspects in the infer-
ence processes underscore the subjective nature of credibility. The support for
the capabilities thesis is weak. Given the perceived trends in Soviet capabilities
described at the beginning of this section, one would have expected the per-
ceived intentions of the Soviet Union to have remained hostile until mid-1988.
This thesis, daher, cannot explain the radical change in Reagan’s and
Shultz’s perceptions, and why the president and his secretary of state rarely fo-
cused on the Soviet military arsenal as an indicator that shaped their assess-
ments of Soviet political intentions during the period under examination.

126. PPP, September 22, 1986, S. 1230–1231; and PPP, Oktober 4, 1986, P. 1323.
127. Haas, “The United States and the End of the Cold War," P. 175. See also PPP, Februar 7, 1986.

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International Security 38:1 36

u.s. intelligence community’s assessment of soviet intentions

The U.S. intelligence community’s National Intelligence Estimates focused on
markedly different indicators of Soviet intentions from 1985 Zu 1988 than did
Reagan, Shultz, and Weinberger.128 It gave greatest weight to the Soviet Union’s
military capabilities in judging Soviet political intentions. The U.S. intelligence
Gemeinschaft, as is now known, overestimated Soviet strategic forces and defense
spending during the 1980s; this overestimation was an important contributing
factor to the community’s tendency to overstate Soviet hostility.129

Intelligence estimates from 1985 Zu 1987 concluded that Gorbachev was seek-
ing détente with the West to reduce U.S. challenges to Soviet interests and to de-
crease U.S. defense efforts. His long-term goal was said to be to “preserve and
advance the USSR’s international inºuence and its relative military power.”130
Recognition by the Soviet leadership that the correlation of forces would soon
shift against the Soviet Union and a relative decline in Soviet economic power
were offered as the leading explanations for Gorbachev’s cooperative initia-
tives.131 A 1985 NIE stated, “Moscow has long believed that arms control must
ªrst and foremost protect the capabilities of Soviet military forces relative to
their opponents. The Soviets seek to limit U.S. force modernization through
both the arms control process and any resulting agreements.”132 A Special NIE
In 1986 pointed to Soviet concerns about the Reagan administration’s Strategic
Defense Initiative as the primary motive behind Gorbachev’s pursuit of a
détente-like policy vis-à-vis the West. The NIEs portrayed Gorbachev’s arms
control initiatives as propaganda aimed at bolstering his campaign of decep-
tion.133 The intelligence community’s working assumption was that, despite
serious economic problems since the mid-1970s, Soviet objectives remained
unchanged.134

By mid-1988, Reagan’s and Shultz’s assessments of Soviet intentions had un-
dergone a fundamental change, but the available NIEs indicate that the U.S. In-
telligence community did not revise its estimates of Soviet objectives until
mid-1989.135 Throughout 1987 Und 1988, the community continued to hold that
Gorbachev’s foreign policy initiatives were merely tactical, and that no sig-

128. In addition to NIEs, I relied on the interviews that I conducted with Ermath, Garthoff, Good-
man, MacEachin, and Odom.
129. The CIA’s Ofªce of Soviet Analysis had become increasingly concerned that estimates of pro-
jected Soviet strategic weapons systems were inºated. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, MacEachin, memoran-
dum to deputy director for intelligence, “Force Projections,” NIE 11-3/8, April 22, 1986.
130. SNIE 11-9-86, P. 4; and NIE 11-18-87, S. 3–4.
131. NIE 11-3/8-86; NIE 11-8-87; SNIE 11-16-88; and NIE 11-3/8-88.
132. NIE 11-3/8-85, P. 18. This line of reasoning is repeated in NIE 11-16-85, S. 3–9.
133. See NIE 11-16-85, P. 13; and SNIE 11-8-86, S. 15–17.
134. NIE 11-3/8-86, S. 2, 18.
135. In an estimate published ªve days after the fall of the Berlin Wall, the intelligence community

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In the Eye of the Beholder 37

niªcant discontinuity in Soviet traditional goals and expectations could be
anticipated.136 For instance, in describing Gorbachev’s “ultimate goal[S],” a
late-1987 NIE repeated earlier assertions that Gorbachev was pursuing a clever
plan to pursue communism, not through the use of blunt force, but through a
deceiving posture of accommodation with the West that was intended to win
more friends in the underdeveloped world.137 Soviet modernization efforts to-
ward greater “war-ªghting” capabilities, coupled with calculations as to how
economic difªculties would affect the strategic balance of power, were said to
provide the most reliable guides to Soviet objectives.138

Abschließend, consistent with the expectations of the selective attention
thesis’s organizational expertise hypothesis, as well as with those of the capa-
bilities thesis, the intelligence community’s NIEs inferred Soviet political in-
tentions primarily from its military capabilities. Throughout this period, Die
community did not update its assessments in response to Gorbachev’s costly
actions of reassurance, and it rarely used costly Soviet behavior to draw infer-
ences about Soviet foreign policy goals. It saw Gorbachev’s policies on arms
Einschränkungen, Zum Beispiel, as rooted in the need to increase Soviet relative eco-
nomic capabilities, a task that could be accomplished only by reducing pres-
sure to allocate more resources to defense. Engaging NATO in arms control
agreements was merely a ploy to undercut support in the West for NATO’s
weapons modernization efforts.139 Thus, the support for the behavior thesis
is weak.

still viewed Warsaw Pact intentions as hostile, and warned of the possibility of an unprovoked at-
tack on Western Europe. NIE 11-14-89, P. iii.
136. “NIE 11-18-87; SNIE, “Soviet Policy during the Next Phase of Arms Control in Europe”;
Robert Gates, memorandum, “Gorbachev’s Gameplan: The Long View,” November 24, 1987; Und
NIE 11-3-8-88.
137. These goals were thought to include, ªrst, constraining the growth of defense spending in or-
der to rebuild Soviet economic strength so that in the long run Gorbachev could fulªll Soviet mili-
tary requirements; zweite, pursuing diplomatic efforts to restrict the U.S. military buildup,
speciªcally the Strategic Defense Initiative; dritte, moving beyond former Soviet positions on arms
control to achieve domestic and foreign goals; Und, ªnally, exploiting the new “favorable image”
of the Soviet Union to reduce others’ threat perceptions and to advance Soviet inºuence abroad
through political means. The Defense Intelligence Agency disagreed, claiming that Gorbachev
would “not be in a position to make an overall reduction in defense spending during the period of
the Estimate.” See NIE 11-18-87, S. 3–4.
138. NIE 11-3/8-88.
139. Ebenda. On the INF Treaty, see ibid., P. 6. The CIA did not foresee Gorbachev’s announcements
of unilateral cuts in conventional forces or the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Robert Gates,
From the Shadows: The Ultimate Insider’s Story of Five Presidents and How They Won the Cold War (Neu
York: Simon and Schuster, 1996), S. 428–433; and “Nomination of Robert M. Gates,” Hearings be-
fore the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Bd. 2, September 24 und Oktober 1, 2, 1991”
(Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Ofªce, 1992), S. 520–521. Some NIEs did refer to recent
Soviet behavior in analyzing speciªc issues—for example, Gorbachev’s behavior in the ongoing
arms control negotiations—but they did not use these indicators to reach conclusions about his
larger foreign policy goals.

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International Security 38:1 38

Interessant, the intelligence community’s reluctance to revise its estimates
of Soviet intentions led to repeated clashes between Director of Central
Intelligence Robert Gates and Secretary of State Shultz, the latter saying later
that he had little conªdence in the community’s intelligence reports on the
Soviet Union.140 Nevertheless, intelligence assessments had only limited im-
pact on Reagan and Shultz, who drew conclusions about Soviet intentions
largely from their personal impressions and insights from meetings with
Gorbachev. As Matlock explains, “They are very experienced people and expe-
rienced politicians and it meant much more to them what they were experienc-
ing.”141 Paul Pillar contends that Reagan and his advisers, apart from Shultz,
“brushed aside as irrelevant any careful analysis of Soviet intentions, just as
Carter and Brzezinski had brushed aside the question of the Soviets’ reason for
intervening in Afghanistan.”142

The Interwar Period, 1934–39

The inference process identiªed above is not unique to the nuclear era, Die
Kalter Krieg, or American observers. An analysis of how British decisionmakers
and the British intelligence community assessed the political intentions of
Germany in the years leading to World War II reveals similar patterns and
strong support in favor of the selective attention thesis. In what follows, ICH
describe the evolution in the assessments of Germany’s intentions by several
senior members of the British government. I then discuss the British intelli-
gence’s coordinated assessments during the same time period.

british decisionmakers’ perceptions of nazi germany’s intentions

Aus 1933 until 1935, British observers generally viewed the military buildup
in Germany as defensive in nature and moderate in pace, and the balance
of power “was expected to show comfortable margins of superiority for the
Allies in all three dimensions of all warfare—air, Land, and sea.”143 Germany’s

140. Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph, P. 864. See also “Nomination of Robert M. Gates," P. 481.
141. Author phone interview with Jack Matlock.
142. Paul Pillar, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy: Irak, 9/11, and Misguided Reform (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2011), P. 116.
143. Sehen, Zum Beispiel, Joint Intelligence Subcommittee, “Foreign Armament,” CAB 56/2, Januar
22, 1937; Chiefs of Staff Committee, “Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with That of Cer-
tain Other Nations as of May 1937,” CAB 24/41, Februar 9, 1937; Chiefs of Staff Committee,
“Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with That of Certain Other Nations as of January
1938,” CAB 24/296, November 12, 1937; Ministerial Subcommittee, “Report of the Ministerial Sub-
committee on German Rearmament,” CAB 24/268, November 23, 1934; Minutes of the 283rd
Meeting of the CID,CAB 2/6, Oktober 29, 1936, P. 176; “Estimated Scale of Air Attacks on England
in the Event of War with Germany,” Committee of Imperial Defence memo; Chiefs of Staff Com-
mittee, “The German Army—Its Present Strength and Possible Rate of Expansion in Peace and

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In the Eye of the Beholder 39

Rückzug
from the League of Nations and from the Disarmament
Committee in 1933, Jedoch, led many British decisionmakers to conclude
that Germany intended to revise the status quo by seeking limited territorial
adjustments in Central-Eastern Europe and the return of some of Germany’s
colonies. Most decisionmakers still believed that Germany’s intentions were
opportunistic and limited. They accepted Hitler’s assurances that he had no
territorial ambitions in the West apart from the Rhineland.

Sir Robert Vansittart, the permanent undersecretary at the British Foreign
Ofªce, held a more hawkish view of Germany in 1933.144 He was also among
the ªrst to see Germany’s behavior as indicating expansionist intentions,
although limited ones. Germany’s past actions, Hitler’s own writings and
statements, “a continuous and daily stream of German oration, broadcast, zündete-
erature, and teaching,”145 and Hitler’s efforts to militarize German society
led Vansittart to conclude by mid-1934 that Hitler was determined to revise
the status quo in Eastern Europe, and soon. Im April 1934, daher, Vansittart
urged British decisionmakers to “listen to the Germans themselves—beginning
with the ofªcial ones,” who, according to Vansittart, were “giving us more
speciªc warnings than ever we had before 1914.”146

By the fall of 1936, British intelligence and military establishments had be-
gun to revise their assessments about Germany’s capabilities and to regard its
military arsenal as superior to Britain’s. They based these changes on the accu-
mulation of new information, including the start of military conscription, ein-
nounced in March 1935. Dann, in March 1936, German troops remilitarized the
Rhineland. Arguably a breach of the Treaty of Versailles, it represented Nazi
Germany’s ªrst use of military force outside the boundaries of the Reich.
Anthony Eden, Britain’s foreign affairs secretary, along with Vansittart and
other Foreign Ofªce ofªcials, saw the remilitarization of the Rhineland as
a credible signal of a German determination to revise the status quo, and con-
cluded that Germany could no longer be trusted to respect its international
commitments. Eden commented, “Herr Hitler’s action is alarming because of
the fresh conªrmation which it affords of the scant respect paid by German
Governments to the sanctity of treaties.”147 In contrast, other members of

Krieg,” CAB 24/276, April 28, 1938; and Chiefs of Staff Committee, “Appreciation of the Situation in
the Event of War against Germany in 1939 by the Joint Planning Subcommittee,” CAB 53/29, Octo-
ber 26, 1936.
144. Michael Lawrence Roi, Alternative to Appeasement: Sir Robert Vansittart and Alliance Diplomacy,
1934–1937 (Westport, Conn.: Präger, 1997).
145. Vansittart, memo, “The Future of Germany,” April 7, 1934, Documents on British Foreign Pol-
icy (DBFP) II, VI, app. 2.
146. Ebenda.
147. Anthony Eden, memo, “Germany and the Locarno Treaty,” CAB 24/261, Marsch 8, 1936; Und
Minutes by Vansittart, DBFP II, XVI, NEIN. 121, Marsch 17, 1936.

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International Security 38:1 40

the Cabinet, including Neville Chamberlain, did not view these arguably
“costly” actions as reºecting German intentions. They continued to attribute to
Germany opportunistic (and limited) intentions.

The March 1938 Anschluss with Austria did not lead Chamberlain, Jetzt
prime minister, to change his views about Germany’s intentions. He stated
that “the seizure of the whole of Czechoslovakia could not be in accordance
with Herr Hitler’s policy, which was to include all Germans in the Reich but
not to include other nationalities.”148 Both Chamberlain and his foreign secre-
tary, Lord Halifax, viewed the Anschluss as indicating only opportunistic and
limited aims; they believed Hitler preferred not to use military force to reach
his objectives, and desired to avoid antagonizing Britain.149

Britain’s newly appointed ambassador to Berlin, Nevile Henderson, held
very dovish views of Germany. Henderson reassured Chamberlin throughout
this period that Germany had benign intentions toward Britain.150 In July,
Henderson declared that he was “disinclined to believe in the reality of
Germany’s aggressive intentions against Great Britain unless and until she
goes back on the [1935] Naval Agreement,” which regulated the size of the
German Navy in relation to the British Royal Navy. If it did, Henderson con-
tinued, this would make it “quite certain what her [Germany’s] ultimate inten-
tionen sind. Ansonsten, risk though there be, it has got to be faced, and we have
got to trust her.”151 Inºuenced by Henderson’s assessment, Chamberlain cau-
tioned members of the Cabinet not to give “too much credence to unchecked
reports from non-ofªcial sources. He himself had seen His Majesty’s ambassa-
dor to Berlin, who gave an account of the attitude of the Nazi government that
was not discouraging.”152

The Sudetenland crisis in the summer and fall of 1938 was seen as an in-
formative signal of German intentions by some decisionmakers, einschließlich
Halifax. He “could not rid his mind of the fact that Herr Hitler had given us

148. Minutes of the Committee on Foreign Policy (hereafter MCM), CAB 27/623, Marsch 21, 1938,
app. 1.
149. MCM, CAB 27/623, Marsch 18, 1938; Halifax believed that if Germany were to take action be-
yond the Sudeten territories, it would be for defensive reasons, given Germany’s worries about
Czechoslovakia’s relationships with the Soviet Union and France. Memo by Halifax, “Possibility
of Modifying Czechoslovakia’s Treaties of Mutual Assistance with France and Russia,” CAB 27/
627, Juni 14, 1938.
150. Henderson had been very critical of French attempts to contain Germany after World War I.
He accepted the territorial claims the Nazis made in 1930s, partly because he believed that Britain
should take the role of independent arbitrator in European affairs. His public speeches similarly
have a pro-Nazi overtone. Aaron L. Goldman, “Two Views of Germany: Nevile Henderson vs.
Vansittart and the Foreign Ofªce, 1937–1939,” British Journal of International Studies, Bd. 6, NEIN. 3
(Oktober 1980), S. 247–277.
151. Letter from Nevile Henderson to Anthony Eden, Juli 1, 1937, DBFP II, XIX, NEIN. 10.
152. MCM, CAB 23/94, Juli 13, 1938.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 41

nothing and that he was dictating terms, just as though he had won a war but
without having to ªght.”153 Halifax’s reaction surprised Chamberlain, WHO
remarked: “Your complete change of view since I saw you last night is a hor-
rible blow to me.”154 Indeed, during that time, Chamberlain relied heavily
on private assurances and personal impressions to interpret Hitler’s inten-
tionen, especially from three personal interactions with the German leader. Das
information was far from “costly,” yet Chamberlain gave it credence as an in-
dicator of Hitler’s political intentions during this critical moment. He genu-
inely believed that he had established a rapport with Hitler, and trusted
Hitler’s personal assurances that he had no intention of occupying the rest of
Czechoslovakia if an agreement could be reached over the Sudeten territories.
As he wrote in September 1938, “I had established a certain conªdence which
was my aim and on my side and in spite of the hardness & ruthlessness I
thought I saw in his face I got the impression that here was a man who could
be relied upon when he had given his word.”155

Chamberlain declared to the Cabinet that he had established “some degree of
personal inºuence over Herr Hitler” and “was satisªed that Herr Hitler would
not go back on his word once he had given it” to Chamberlain. The “crucial
question was whether Herr Hitler was speaking the truth when he said that he
regarded the Sudeten question as a racial question which must be satisªed
and that the object of his policy was racial unity and not the domination of
Europe.”156 Chamberlain’s strong belief in his ability to read Hitler’s inten-
tions was received with skepticism by Cabinet members who saw Hitler’s past
record of breaking promises as more credible evidence of his intentions.157
Chamberlain was not alone in relying on his personal impressions and private
assurances during that period, nor was he the only one who gave credence to
“cheap talk.” Eden, Halifax, and Henderson, Zum Beispiel, drew important infer-
ences from their interactions with German ofªcials on numerous occasions.158
Ab November 1938 to March 1939, Jedoch, British decisionmakers’ as-

153. MCM, CAB 23/95, September 25, 1938.
154. Quoted in Adam Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Biography of Lord Halifax (London: Weidenfeld and
Nicolson, 1991), S. 117–118.
155. Chamberlain’s private letter to his sister, dated September 19, 1938, quoted in Robert Self, Der
Neville Chamberlain Diary, Letters, Bd. 4: The Downing Street Years, 1934–1940 (London: Ashgate,
2005), P. 348.
156. “Meeting of Ministers on ‘The Situation in Czechoslovakia,’” CAB 27/646, September 16,
1938.
157. Letter from Secretary of the Board of Trade to Chamberlain, PREM 1/266A, Oktober 3, 1938.
158. After meeting with a number of top German ofªcials in November 1937, Halifax said that his
“impressions” of his three-hour meeting with Hitler led him to conclude that “[T]he Germans had
no policy of immediate adventure.” MCM, CAB 23/90, November 24, 1937; and Roberts, The Holy
Fuchs, S. 72–75.

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International Security 38:1 42

sessments about Germany’s intentions changed dramatically. Der Fremde
Ofªce concluded that now “unmistakably . . . in the eyes of Herr Hitler and of
the majority of the Nazi Party . . . Great Britain is Enemy No. 1.”159 This shift in
perceptions occurred in two stages. Erste, intelligence reports indicated that
Hitler was seriously contemplating an attack on the West and was no longer
interested in maintaining good relations with Britain. This war scare led most
Cabinet members to question their beliefs that Hitler’s plans were limited.
There was “one general tendency . . . running through all the reports,” said
Halifax, that made it “impossible to ignore them.”160 Chamberlain, Jedoch,
questioned the validity of these reports, relying instead on Henderson’s op-
timistic claims that “Herr Hitler does not contemplate any adventures at
the moment and that all stories and rumors to the contrary are completely
without real foundation.”161 His judgments were based on personal assurances
from Hitler. As late as March 9, 1939, Henderson believed that, “as an individ-
ual,” Hitler “would be as likely to keep it [his word] as any other foreign
statesman.”162 Chamberlain shared this optimism right up to the eve of the
German invasion of Czechoslovakia, relying largely on Henderson’s reports.
This contributed to a growing split with Halifax, who had come to the conclu-
sion shortly after Munich that Hitler was able and willing to use force against
Britain and its allies in the coming months.163

The German invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939 debunked the no-
tion that Germany had limited intentions. A Foreign Ofªce memo dated
Marsch 29 thus reasoned, “The absorption of Czecho-Slovakia has clearly re-
vealed Germany’s intentions.” Halifax saw this as an indication that the
Germans were “seeking to establish a position in which they could by force
dominate Europe and if possible the world.”164 It was a “signiªcant” signal be-
cause “this was the ªrst occasion on which Germany had applied her shock
tactics to the domination of non-Germans.”165 The newly appointed perma-
nent undersecretary at the Foreign Ofªce, Alexander Cadogan conceded that
the invasion had conªrmed Vansittart’s alarming views, saying, „[ICH]t is turning
out—at present—as Van predicted and as I never believed it would.” He said
that Henderson had been “completely bewitched by his German friends.”166

159. “Germany: Factors, Aims, Methoden, etc.,” FO (Foreign Ofªce) 1093/86, Dezember 20, 1938.
160. Memo by Halifax to Mr. Mallet, DBFP III, IV, NEIN. 5.
161. Memo by Henderson to Halifax, Februar 18, 1939, DBFP II, XV, NEIN. 118.
162. Memo by Henderson to Halifax, Marsch 9, 1939, DBFP III, IV, NEIN. 195.
163. Roberts, The Holy Fox, P. 141.
164. DBFP III, VII, 270–272.
165. MCM, CAB 23/98, Marsch 15, 1939.
166. David Dilks, Hrsg., The Diaries of Sir Alexander Cadogan, O.M., 1938–1945 (London: Cassell,
1971), S. 163, 151.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 43

The informative value of the German invasion did not stem only from its be-
ing a “costly” signal. From the perspective of Chamberlain and Henderson, Es
was both vivid and emotionally signiªcant because, by invading, Hitler had
explicitly reneged on his personal assurances to each of them. He had humili-
ated the prime minister and cast doubt on his judgment. Chamberlain wrote to
his sister, “as soon as I had time to think, I saw that it was impossible to deal
with Hitler, after he had thrown all of his assurances to the wind.”167 Fearing
what Hitler’s next move would be, Chamberlain confessed, „[ICH]t all sounds
fantastic and melodramatic . . . but I cannot feel safe with Hitler.”168 Ofªcially,
Chamberlain voiced similar views:

The Prime Minister said [to the Cabinet] that up till a week ago we had
proceeded on the assumption that we should be able to continue our policy
of getting on to better terms with the Dictator Powers, and that although
. On the previous
those powers had aims, those aims were limited.
Wednesday, German actions in Czechoslovakia had only just taken place. Er
[Chamberlain] had now come deªnitely to the conclusion that Herr Hitler’s at-
titude made it impossible to continue to negotiate on the old basis with the
Nazi regime. . . . No reliance could be placed on any of the assurances given by
the Nazi leaders.169

In Cabinet discussions, both Halifax and Chamberlain—who would become
known to history as the architects of appeasement—now conceded that
Germany’s actions demonstrated that its aims and methods were extremely
hostile and would require England to “take steps to stop her by attacking on
two fronts.”170 Halifax likewise argued that “the real issue was Germany’s
attempt to obtain world domination,” and that it was “in the interest of all
countries to resist . . . [oder] we might see one country after another absorbed by
Germany.”171

To summarize, certain costly German actions were judged as much more
credible signals about intentions than were German military capabilities. Das
support for the behavior thesis is manifested most clearly in the inferences
that some British decisionmakers drew from Germany’s withdrawal from the
League of Nations and the Disarmament Conference in 1934 and its ac-
tions in a series of crises over the Rhineland, Österreich, the Sudetenland, Und
Czechoslovakia. Trotzdem, the historical evidence is not entirely consistent

167. Letter to Hilda, Marsch 19, 1939, in Self, The Neville Chamberlain Diary Letters, P. 393.
168. Letter to Ida, Marsch 26, 1939, in ibid., P. 395.
169. MCM, CAB 23/98, Marsch 18, 1939.
170. MCM, CAB 23/98, Marsch 20, 1939.
171. MCM, CAB 23/98, Marsch 18, 1939. On the impact perceptions of intentions had on British
foreign policy at the time see Yarhi-Milo, Knowing Thy Adversary.

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International Security 38:1 44

with the logic and mechanism of the behavior thesis. British decisionmakers
signiªcantly disagreed about how to categorize Hitler’s supposedly costly
actions and drew different inferences from the same behavior. Consistent
with the expectations of the subjective credibility hypothesis of the selec-
tive attention thesis, Vansittart—who from the beginning of the period had
held the most hawkish views of Germany’s intentions—categorized many of
Germany’s actions from 1934 Zu 1939 as credibly indicating hostile intentions.
Henderson, who had held mostly dovish views of Germany, discounted many
of Germany’s “costly” actions. Außerdem, the documentary evidence indi-
cates that in several important instances British decisionmakers ignored the his-
tory of Germany’s costly actions and relied more signiªcantly on personal
insights from their interactions with Hitler and his advisers, as well as Hitler’s
personal verbal assurances. Such inference highlights the importance of vivid
information and also challenges the logic of the behavior thesis. Endlich, the sup-
port for the capabilities thesis is weak. Germany’s rearmament program played
an important role in alerting British decisionmakers to the rising threat and in
dictating the menu of policy options available. As in the Cold War cases, Wie-
immer, trends in Germany’s military buildup were not used as the primary indica-
tor from which British decisionmakers inferred Germany’s political intentions.

british military intelligence and perceptions of german intentions

The collective assessments of the Annual and Strategic Reviews of the British
Chiefs of Staff (COS) rarely discussed the issue of German political intentions
and concentrated on collecting and analyzing information about changes in
German military production. In part, this was because the Foreign Ofªce was
responsible for providing political intelligence. Noch, throughout this period,
whenever the COS did discuss Germany’s intentions, it drew its conclusions
repeatedly and explicitly from calculations about the rate of its military re-
armament and from the estimates about the military balance in Europe.

Während 1934, British intelligence community assessments ranked Germany
as militarily weaker than Britain. While the moderate buildup of German ca-
pabilities indicated to the COS Germany’s clear desire to eventually change
the status quo in Eastern Europe—if possible by nonmilitary means—it esti-
mated that Germany would not launch an attack that would risk British in-
volvement as long as the balance of military power was not in its favor. Sogar
following Germany’s claims that it had achieved parity in the air, the COS did
not spend much time trying to gauge Germany’s intentions. Stattdessen, it contin-
ued to see the likelihood of war through calculations of military capabilities,
welche, at the time, still indicated Allied superiority. The COS estimated that,
given its slow progress in rearming, Germany would be unlikely to defeat

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In the Eye of the Beholder 45

Britain militarily in 1939, and therefore the COS estimated that Germany was
unlikely to risk war.172

During the fall of 1936, Jedoch, assessments of Germany’s capabilities and
intentions changed with the growing recognition that the German buildup was
aimed at achieving not just parity but superiority. Folglich, British intelli-
gence saw Germany’s intentions as more hostile. The COS still believed, Wie-
immer, that a German decision to engage in armed conºict with Britain would be
based on calculations of German military readiness. Entsprechend, the report con-
eingeschlossen, “As Germany’s rearmament progresses and she becomes more ready for
Krieg, the danger of conºict increases.173 By May 1937, the COS had become ex-
tremely alarmed about the rate of Germany’s military buildup, yet it still did not
consider war against Britain likely, because it believed Germany was not yet
ready militarily. A late 1937 COS report concluded, “The German General Staff
are unlikely to consider that the strength of the German Army is sufªcient to
justify the prosecution of a land offensive before 1939–40.”174

During the Sudetenland crisis, the COS conceded that Britain was in no po-
sition to defend Czechoslovakia militarily. It still believed that Germany did
not seek greater objectives such as the total occupation of Czechoslovakia. Wenn
war came about, Jedoch, the COS concluded that Germany would be plan-
ning eventually to win a quick offensive war, including an aerial knockout
blow, against Britain. The timing of such a war was hard to predict, in part be-
cause of changing estimates about when the German military would have
sufªcient advantage over the Allies in terms of numbers and efªciency, sowie
as the domestic balance between Nazi moderates and extremists. Im April
1938, the COS estimated that even given a steady rate of expansion, Deutschland
would not be prepared for war before January 1942.175 Im November 1938,
Jedoch, the British military attaché in Berlin reported that Germany was
likely to go to war in the autumn of 1939, because by then it would reach “the
peak of its efªciency.176

In early 1939, a British military intelligence report on the future strategic
balance expressed more optimism about Britain’s ability to ªght Germany
(despite the worsening of the balance of military power), based on qualita-

172. CAB 53/25, COS 401 (JP), “Defence Plans for the Event of War against Germany.”
173. Joint Planning Subcommittee of the COSC, “Strategic Review,” CAB 53/28, Juli 3, 1936.
174. “Comparison of the Strength of Great Britain with That of Certain Other Nations as of Janu-
ary 1938,” CAB 24/296, November 12, 1937. For similar reasoning, see J.R. Ferris, “Indulged in All
Too Little? Vansittart, Intelligence, and Appeasement,” Diplomacy & Statecraft, Bd. 6, NEIN. 1 (1995),
S. 122–175.
175. “The German Army: Its Present Strength and Possible Rate of Expansion in Peace and War,”
CAB 24/276, April 22, 1938.
176. Mason-Macfarlane, memo, November 30, 1938. DBFP, III, III, NEIN. 389.

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International Security 38:1 46

tive factors such as population attitudes, air defense, latent economic power,
and weaknesses in German morale and economic vulnerability. Darüber hinaus,
while Germany had achieved military superiority, the pace of its rearmament
had exceeded the capacity of the German economy to sustain it.177 Never-
theless, Die 1939 Strategic Appreciation “still showed a strong tendency to
count numbers.”178

In sum, the structure of the British intelligence community during the inter-
war period, which placed the Foreign Ofªce as the principal provider of
political intelligence, prevents any deªnite conclusions about sources of the in-
ferences made by the COS about Hitler’s long-term intentions. The available
evidence suggests, Jedoch, that throughout the 1930s, the coordinated intelli-
gence estimates by the COS carefully tracked quantitative trends in Germany’s
military arsenal, repeatedly using this indicator to draw inferences about
Germany’s intentions. This practice is consistent with the predictions of the ca-
pabilities thesis and the selective attention’s organizational expertise hypothe-
Schwester. British decisionmakers, Jedoch, did not adopt a similar inference process,
a distinction that is consistent with the predictions of the organizational exper-
tise hypothesis alone.

Abschluss

The selective attention framework ªlls important gaps in scholars’ under-
standing of the effectiveness of signals. This approach sees the interaction of
signals with perceptual and organizational ªlters as central. Insbesondere, sev-
eral patterns emerge from the analysis. Erste, the subjective credibility hypoth-
esis of the selective attention thesis receives strong support in all three cases
examined in this study. At the heart of this hypothesis lies the idea that “credi-
bility depends on how observers assess evidence and on what evidence they
decide to assess.”179 Decisionmakers’ own explicit or implicit theories or be-
liefs about how the world operates and their expectations signiªcantly affect
this selection and interpretation of signals. Decisionmakers in the British
Cabinet, the Carter administration, and the second Reagan administration
debated what to make of different indicators of intentions. To a large extent,

177. Paul Kennedy, “British ‘Net Assessment’ and the Coming of the Second World War,” in Wil-
liamson Murray and Allan Millett, Hrsg., Calculations: Net Assessment and the Coming of World War II
(New York: Free Press, 1992), S. 19–59; Wesley Wark, The Ultimate Enemy: British Intelligence and
Nazi Germany, 1933–1939 (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1985), S. 211–216; and F.H.
Hinsley, British Intelligence in the Second World War, abridged ver. (New York: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1993).
178. Kennedy, “British ‘Net Assessment’ and the Coming of the Second World War," P. 30.
179. Mercer, “Emotional Beliefs," P. 14.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 47

their reading of signals was inºuenced by what they expected to see. Diese
decisionmakers with relatively hawkish views, such as Robert Vansittart and
Zbigniew Brzezinski, were quicker to read early Nazi German and Soviet ac-
tionen, jeweils, as evidence of malign intentions. Some clung to their origi-
nal beliefs and interpreted all incoming information through the prism of
those beliefs. Daher, Caspar Weinberger did not revise his beliefs about the ex-
pansionist nature of Soviet intentions even when faced with costly reassuring
Aktionen. Ähnlich, Cyrus Vance interpreted Soviet actions in the Horn and
in Afghanistan consistently with his existing belief that the Soviets were
merely opportunistic.

Zweite, consistent with the selective attention thesis, British and American
decisionmakers repeatedly and explicitly relied on their personal insights to
derive conclusions about their adversary’s intentions. They monitored and re-
sponded not only to what the adversary’s leader promised or threatened be-
hind closed doors, but also to how he delivered the message: tone of voice,
mannerisms, and mood were critical pieces of intelligence in their eyes. Sogar
though this method of inference is extremely risky, Anthony Eden, Lord
Halifax, Neville Chamberlain, and Nevile Henderson relied on their personal
impressions to derive their conclusions, and used these impressions to con-
vince other members of the Cabinet of their perspectives, thereby explicitly
risking their own reputations. Personal impressions gleaned from private meet-
ings with Mikhail Gorbachev similarly played a critical role in transforming
President Ronald Reagan’s assessments of Soviet intentions. In sum, personal
diplomatic communication may leave strong emotional impressions (positive or
negative) on leaders, who then use these impressions as evidence of intentions.
This inference process is, in some sense, rational, but it may cause leaders to act
in ways that do not serve their best interests. Rather than debate the concept of
rationality in a vacuum, scholars need to understand that vividness, or an affect
heuristics, more generally, is essential for rationality.180

At times, vividness and costly signaling jointly produced a drastic change
in decisionmakers’ beliefs. The analysis has shown that vivid information
provided the context for understanding Gorbachev’s costly signals, führen-
ing to a transformation in Reagan’s views. Ähnlich, the Soviet invasion of
Afghanistan, because of its magnitude, its salience, and the emotional toll it ex-
erted on President Carter, induced a drastic change in his beliefs. One can de-
bate what to make of Chamberlain’s change in beliefs, but here too one notes

180. Paul Slovic, Melissa Finucane, Ellen Peters, and Donald G. MacGregor, “The Affect Heuris-
tic,” in Gilovich, Grifªn, and Kahneman, Heuristics and Biases, S. 397–420; and A.R. Damasio, Des-
cartes’ Error: Emotion, Grund, and the Human Brain (New York: Avon, 1994).

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International Security 38:1 48

that expectations, vividness, and certain costly actions were responsible for
nuanced changes in his beliefs during the 1930s.

A third point has to do with the second hypothesis of the selective attention
thesis pertaining to the ªlters that intelligence organizations use in estimating
intentions. Collective intelligence assessments in the United States and Britain
were consistent in their preference for military indicators over other types
of indicators in their analysis of intentions. During the interwar period, British
intelligence reports substantially focused on bean-counting practices regard-
ing the military arsenal of Germany. Folglich, they derived conclusions
about Germany’s intentions in large part by referring to these military indica-
tors. NIEs on the Soviet Union also carefully tracked changes in Soviet military
inventories and future capabilities. They did not always recognize the tauto-
logical logic they were using: das ist, in estimating capabilities, these coordi-
nated intelligence reports used certain assumptions about Soviet intentions
while the resulting estimates of Soviet capabilities were used to infer future
political intentions.

These divergent uses of information point to a weakness in the relation-
ship between decisionmakers and intelligence organizations.181 For example,
according to Brzezinski, intelligence assessments of the Soviet Union were
“weak on the level of ‘politology,’ and thus “did not provide much help to the
President . . . in determining what the Soviets, in general, were trying to
do.”182 Intelligence analysts were painfully aware of this criticism, and saw
the task of analyzing Soviet intentions as the “biggest single trap.”183 Director
of Intelligence Stansªeld Turner explained that, “sometimes they [Entscheidung-
makers] have better information than you do. I mean, whenever I briefed
President Carter, I always had to keep in the back of my mind that ‘he
met with Brezhnev last week.’ I’d never met with Brezhnev, so if he in-
terpreted what Brezhnev was going to do tomorrow differently than we inter-
preted what Brezhnev might do tomorrow, I had to give him credit that
maybe he understood Brezhnev better than we.”184 Similarly, commenting on

181. The evidence I have presented suggests that in neither of the Cold War episodes did U.S.
decisionmakers use the NIEs to derive conclusions about their adversary’s intentions. Während der
interwar period, British decisionmakers appear to have relied on human intelligence reports of
the Secret Intelligence Services, but much less on the COS strategic reports, to reach conclusions
about Germany’s political intentions. Future studies should disaggregate the intelligence commu-
nity and look beyond the coordinated reports in order to examine which and when individual in-
telligence agencies (or ofªcials) tend to have a stronger inºuence on decisionmakers’ assessments
of the intentions of their state’s adversary.
182. Quoted in Haines and Leggett, Watching the Bear, Kerl. 8.
183. Robert Gates, “The CIA and Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Bd. 66, NEIN. 2 (Winter 1987/88),
S. 225–226.
184. Interview with Turner, “Episode 21: Spione,” National Security Archive, Dezember 18, 1997,
http://www.gwu.edu/(cid:2)nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/turner1.html.

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In the Eye of the Beholder 49

British intelligence reports on Germany, Vansittart once remarked: “Prophecy
is largely a matter of insight. I do not think the Service Departments have
enough. On the other hand they might say that I have too much. The answer is
that I know the Germans better.”185

Of the alternative theses, the capabilities thesis has its greatest support
in describing the practice of a state’s intelligence organization. The Soviet
Union’s nuclear buildup and modernization efforts served as the main indica-
tor the U.S. intelligence community used to estimate Soviet intentions during
the 1970s, as well as the 1980s. British intelligence monitored trends in the
German military to infer Germany’s plans of where and when it would seek to
expand. The capabilities thesis does a poorer job, Jedoch, at explaining how
civilian decisionmakers read and interpret intentions. Um sicher zu sein, Rüstung
efforts also had important “framing effects,” because they forced decision-
makers to raise questions about the adversary’s long-term objectives. Never-
theless, in none of the three episodes were these indicators regarded by the
state’s civilian leadership as primary evidence of the adversary’s long-term in-
tentions. This inference process implies that decisionmakers do not always as-
sume the worst about intentions, as offensive realists would say that they
should. More consistent with defensive realism, decisionmakers see estimating
intentions as a central task of statecraft, and they attempt to detect important
Signale, which may reduce or exacerbate the security dilemma. What the real-
ist logic neglects, Jedoch, is that decisionmakers’ beliefs about the adver-
sary’s intentions are not necessarily driven by changes in the adversary’s
military forces. Daher, the policy prescription of rationalist security-dilemma
scholars who identify changes in armament policies as a way of signaling in-
tentions may not be effective.

The behavior thesis performs better than the capabilities thesis in explaining
how decisionmakers gauge intentions. In der Tat, for some British and U.S.
decisionmakers, contemporary costly actions such as the German invasion of
Czechoslovakia and observed shifts in Soviet behavior induced changes in be-
liefs about the adversary’s intentions. Trotzdem, the empirical analysis provides many
examples that contradict the causal mechanisms and underlying logic of the be-
havior thesis. Signiªcantly, decisionmakers rarely agreed on what constituted a
truly “credible” signal even when it was “costly.” For example, British decision-
makers debated the meaning of Germany’s remilitarization of the Rhineland, al-
though the use of military force outside the Reich constituted a clear violation of

185. Quoted in Donald C. Watt, “British Intelligence and the Coming of the Second World War in
Europa,” in Ernest May, Hrsg., Knowing One’s Enemies: Intelligence Assessment before the Two World
Wars (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984), P. 268.

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International Security 38:1 50

the Treaty of Versailles. Members of the Carter administration disagreed on the
signiªcance of Soviet military involvement in the Horn of Africa. Some ofªcials,
such as Vance, did not treat the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as a diagnostic
indicator of Soviet expansionist intentions, despite its considerable scale and
cost. Even at the end of the Cold War, a relatively easy test of the behavior thesis,
one ªnds that some Reagan ofªcials, including Weinberger, did not regard
Gorbachev’s costly actions as informative signals of reassurance. In der Tat, neither
Weinberger nor Vance updated his beliefs during his time in ofªce, even when
faced with hostile signals that would otherwise be categorized as “costly.”186

Darüber hinaus, the assumption that the informational value of “costless” (Und
even private) communication will be discounted does not withstand empiri-
cal scrutiny.187 Leaders explicitly drew on their personal insights about the
sincerity and intentions of adversarial leaders. Chamberlain and other British
decisionmakers repeatedly referred to Hitler’s private verbal assurances, writ-
ings, and other types of costless action to infer his future policy goals. Endlich,
the behavior thesis does not explain why intelligence organizations ignored or
dismissed those costly noncapabilities-based actions that civilian decision-
makers relied upon, a practice especially pronounced in the collective NIEs
during the 1980s. These ªndings appear to challenge the empirical validity of
the behavior thesis, but they do not negate the logic of costly signaling, als
there is some evidence that certain “costly” behavioral signals were seen as in-
formative in the eyes of some decisionmakers.

Taken together, the logic of the costly signaling approach deserves more
scrutiny. Although certain costly actions do receive more attention than others,
decisionmakers’ inference processes diverge signiªcantly from those predicted
by that approach. dennoch, this study should not be seen as dismissing the
costly signaling concept entirely. Eher, it reveals signiªcant shortcomings

186. I also do not ªnd support for the proposition that these decisionmakers’ assessments of inten-
tions were epiphenomenal to the interests of the bureaucracies they headed at the time. Beide
Weinberger and Vance continued to defend their assessments of Soviet intentions long after leav-
ing ofªce. There is no indication in their memoirs or in later statements that their perceptions had
changed after leaving their posts. Darüber hinaus, the Foreign Ofªce was taking the lead in voicing
more alarmist views of Germany’s intentions, even relative to those of the COS. British foreign
ministers did not always share the views of the Foreign Ofªce on Germany’s intentions. Weiter
work is needed, Jedoch, to investigate the inºuence of bureaucratic roles on the perceptions of
the individuals who run these bureaucracies. Graham T. Allison, Essence of Decision: Explaining the
Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Braun, 1971). For critiques, see Stephen D. Krasner, “Are Bu-
reaucracies Important? (Or Allison Wonderland),” Foreign Policy, Bd. 7 (1972), S. 159–179; Robert
J. Kunst, “Bureaucratic Politics and American Foreign Policy: A Critique,” Policy Sciences, Bd. 4, NEIN. 4
(1973), S. 467–490; and Jonathan Bendor and Thomas H. Hammond, “Rethinking Allison’s
Models,” American Political Science Review, Bd. 86, NEIN. 2 (1992), S. 301–322.
187. On the credibility of secret assurances, see Keren Yarhi-Milo, “Tying Hands behind Closed
Doors: The Logic and Practice of Secret Reassurance,” Security Studies, Bd. 22, NEIN. 3 (2013).

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In the Eye of the Beholder 51

and ambiguities in how one should translate this concept of a costly signal
from economic theory, where it originated, into a testable proposition in inter-
national politics. The literature should be clearer about the inferences that ob-
servers are expected to draw from a costly action. Endlich, decisionmakers
often must interpret multiple signals, some of which may suggest that the
adversary’s intentions are becoming more benign, whereas others may sug-
gest the opposite. Rationalist accounts are silent as to which costly signals
perceivers are likely to notice and which they are likely to ignore.

In sum, the ªndings imply that any study on the efªcacy of signals that fails
to consider how signals are perceived and interpreted may be of little use to
policymakers seeking to deter or reassure an adversary. They also suggest that
policymakers should not assume that their costly signals will be understood
clearly by their state’s adversaries. They should not fear that others are neces-
sarily making worst-case assumptions about their intentions on the basis of
their military capabilities, but they should be aware that the adversary’s intel-
ligence apparatus is likely to view such an indicator as a credible signal of in-
tentions. Decisionmakers’ inclination to rely on their own judgments and
subjective reading of signals to infer political intentions is pervasive and uni-
versal, but these individuals should be wary: getting inside the mind of the
adversary is perhaps one of the most difªcult tasks facing intelligence organi-
zations, and perhaps most susceptible to bias and bureaucratic interests. As a
Ergebnis, it is hard to imagine how decisionmakers might become more attuned
to intelligence assessments on these important issues of assessing the adver-
sary’s political intentions.

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