PREVIOUS ARTICLE ALL CONTENTS Next ARTICLE

Strategic Warning Intelligence: History, Challenges, and Prospects, John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon

Reviewed by Uri Bar-Joseph

BUY

 

In 2018, as John A. Gentry and Joseph S. Gordon were finishing their book, they estimated that U.S. strategic warning and counterdeception efforts were at one of their lowest points (p. 88). When we hear this sober assessment against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s constant demand for intelligence to please, Dan Coats’s resignation as director of national intelligence (and the futile attempt to replace him with a typical Trump loyalist), and the escalating challenges to American global interests, we are forced to conclude that the next strategic warning failure is only a matter of time. In this sense, Gentry and Gordon’s book publication is certainly timely.

The book does not offer a new theory. It is mainly a practical guide that outlines the chief problems involved in alerting policymakers to future developments that may demand their response while also offering suggestions as to how these problems might be met and overcome. This format suggests that, like Cynthia Grabo’s Anticipating Surprise: Analysis for Strategic Warning (2004), Strategic Warning Intelligence is targeted primarily at practicing members of the intelligence community. But, given that the record of U.S. strategic intelligence warnings is the main topic of the book, it is unclear why Willard Matthias’s American Strategic Blunders (2001) about intelligenc

To continue reading, see options above.

More by This Author

Conscious Action and Intelligence Failure, Uri Bar-Joseph and Jack S. Levy

About PSQ's Editor

ROBERT Y. SHAPIRO

Full Access

Join the Academy of Political Science and automatically receive Political Science Quarterly.

CONFERENCES & EVENTS

Academy Forum | Latino Voters, Demographic Determinism, and the Myth of an Inevitable Democratic Party Majority
October 9, 2024
4:00 p.m.–5:00 p.m. ET
WEBINAR

MORE ABOUT THIS EVENT VIEW ALL EVENTS

Editor’s spotlight

Virtual Issue

Introduction: Black Power and the Civil Rights Agendas of Charles V. Hamilton
Marylena Mantas and Robert Y. Shapiro

MORE ABOUT THIS TOPIC

Search the Archives

Publishing since 1886, PSQ is the most widely read and accessible scholarly journal with distinguished contributors such as: Lisa Anderson, Robert A. Dahl, Samuel P. Huntington, Robert Jervis, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Theda Skocpol, Woodrow Wilson

view additional issues

Most read

Articles | Book reviews

Understanding the Bush Doctrine
Robert Jervis

The Study of Administration
Woodrow Wilson

Notes on Roosevelt's "Quarantine" Speech
Dorothy Borg

view all

New APS Book

Political Conflict in American Politics   POLITICAL CONFLICT IN AMERICAN POLITICS

About US

Academy of Political Science

The Academy of Political Science, promotes objective, scholarly analyses of political, social, and economic issues. Through its conferences and publications APS provides analysis and insight into both domestic and foreign policy issues.

Political Science Quarterly

With neither an ideological nor a partisan bias, PSQ looks at facts and analyzes data objectively to help readers understand what is really going on in national and world affairs.

Stay Connected

newsstand locator
About APS