A successful surprise attack is a costly event for the victim, and so avoiding it is the optimum outcome. But sometimes failures happen. Uri Bar-Joseph and Rose McDermott’s Intelligence Success and Failure takes the victim’s perspective in surprise attacks and explains why failure occurs, as well as how some governments and leaders are able to learn from that failure and respond more successfully later in the conflict. The authors incorporate two key elements that are infrequently addressed in studies of surprise attacks: the role of intelligence and the role of individual leaders. For the would-be defender, the role of intelligence in the decision-making process is to provide leaders with indicators warning that an attack either may be or is imminent, in order to allow for an action to be taken. How that intelligence is compiled, assessed, communicated, and responded to can have an effect on the relative success or failure of the surprise attack.

Bar-Joseph and McDermott evaluate these issues in three case studies of surprise attacks: the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941 (Barbarossa), the North Korean attack on the United States in 1950, and the Arab attack on Israel in 1973 (Yom Kippur War). Each case is analyzed as a paired dyad with a later key incident in the conflict in order to explain whether and how the attacked country was able to recover from its initial failure, learn from its experience, and succeed. In all three cases, the analytic focus is on the role of the individual in contributing to either success or failure. The authors find that in all cases, “the primary explanation for the failure to accurately estimate a strategic threat resides mostly at the individual level, with a central figure in the intelligence-making or decision-making group” (p. 235). They also identify key individuals and actions responsible for the later successes in two of the cases. This analysis adds significantly to the understanding of surprise attacks by shedding light on two understudied factors that materially affect outcomes.

Unfortunately, the title of the book is misleading because it is not about intelligence success and failure. Instead, it is about surprise military attacks and the relative success or failure of outcomes, with intelligence taken into account. The failures in the case studies are frequently the failures of decision makers in not responding soon enough to the warnings provided by intelligence (pp. 235–36). For example, the authors note that on receiving intelligence warning of the impending attack on Israel in 1973, the Israelis had time to—and actually considered—initiating a preemptive attack but chose not to do so (p. 200). If this is a failure, then it is one of decision making rather than intelligence. Similarly, successes are often the positive outcomes arising from the correct decision made at the right time, relying upon accurate intelligence. As a result, while the analysis takes intelligence into account, the emphasis is more about the success or failure outcomes than it is intelligence success and failure.

In addition, greater reliance on the intelligence studies literature could have provided greater depth to the evaluation of the relative success or failure of intelligence performance. The authors say (p. 27) that there are few theories of intelligence success, but then do not reference the ones that do exist. Some examples of intelligence theories include Jennifer Sims’s “decision advantage” and Michael Warner’s “risk shifting” (see Jennifer Sims, “Defending Adaptive Realism: Intelligence Theory Comes of Age,” and Michael Warner, “Intelligence as Risk Shifting,” in Peter Gil, Stephen Marrin, and Mark Phythian, eds., Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates, 2009). These intelligence theories—as well as others—could have been used to create criteria to evaluate intelligence success, with the achievement of intelligence purpose defined as an intelligence success, regardless of the relative success or failure of the policy or outcome. This could have provided the authors with a mechanism for evaluating the intelligence success and failure part of the surprise attacks and later response.

Also, the authors’ use of success and failure as evaluative frames in the context of surprise attacks and military engagements overly simplifies the evaluation of the cases and could be further developed. Success and failure dichotomizes outcomes, but both of those constructs can involve a scale that includes incomplete success and mitigated failure. For example, as Richard Betts has argued, there is frequently “surprise despite warning” (“Surprise Despite Warning: Why Sudden Attacks Succeed,” Political Science Quarterly, 95(1), 1980). In the context of a complex decision-making process with many factors contributing to the relative success or failure of outcomes, using the success or failure framework overly simplifies the evaluation of what happens in each of the cases.

For future research, the authors could consider aggregate power as the independent variable that explains success or failure of outcomes. If the theory of surprise is accurate, then the weaker forces will be those that will try to use strategic surprise as a force multiplier earlier in the conflict (see James J. Wirtz, “Theory of Surprise,” in Gill, Marrin, and Phythian, eds., Intelligence Theory, 2008). In those cases, the stronger country had not fully engaged with all of their power because the threshold for full mobilization and application of power had not yet been crossed, which explains the initial failure. But once the attack happens, the threshold is crossed, and then power is mobilized and employed. In that context, success is more likely. Also, the two cases of learning and subsequent success (i.e., Soviet Union and Israel) were of countries that eventually overcame the surprise attack and won the conflict. Perhaps their learning and later success were a by-product of power mobilization, rather than the way in which that manifested at the individual level. A future case study of complete failure, where the victim of the military surprise attack was the weaker side and lost the war, such as the 1962 Sino-Indian war or the 1967 Six Day War, would provide an opportunity to broaden the cases examined and enrich the subsequent analysis.

Finally, the findings in the conclusion of the book are quite limited (pp. 237–40), and the policy recommendations—which are oriented to improvements in U.S. intelligence community capabilities (pp. 240–44)—are not directly linked to either the argument or the findings, and are thus outside the scope of the resulting analysis. This is a missed opportunity to address the implications for future incidents of surprise attacks, and in particular the degree to which the individual decision maker takes intelligence into account in the decision-making process. Also, the authors suggest that it is possible to under-learn and repeat failure. But it may also be possible to over-learn and produce new failures. For example, the reaction of the United States to the terrorist attacks of 2001 was to decrease the threshold of response, which in part led to the 2003 Iraq War. So how much learning is just the right amount after a surprise attack?