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Articles by J. Peter Scoblic
Prospectiva estratégica: diseñar escenarios múltiples para visualizar un futuro incierto
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Fumbling the Crystal Ball
Sign in and save to read later Print this article Share on Twitter Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn Get a link Page url Request Reprint Permissions In recent months, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s nuclear saber rattling has forced observers and policymakers to try to figure out how seriously to take his threats. Unfortunately, few of the countless analyses published thus far have assessed the probability that Putin will use nuclear weapons in Ukraine in specific, quantitative terms.
The Russian nuclear threat: What weapons Putin might use, what he’s thinking, how the US might react
Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images Last week, Russian President Vladimir Putin escalated his war against Ukraine by illegally annexing four Ukrainian regions — and, in a belligerent speech, raised the specter of using nuclear weapons, ominously noting that the United States had set a precedent when it dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Opinión | ¿Cómo evaluar el riesgo de una guerra nuclear sin asustarse?
Nota del editor: J. Peter Scoblic es miembro principal del Programa de Seguridad Internacional de New America y autor de "US vs. Them", una historia de la estrategia nuclear estadounidense. David R. Mandel es un psicólogo cognitivo afiliado al Departamento de Psicología de la Universidad de York. Las opiniones expresadas en este comentario son propias. Lee más artículos de opinión en CNNEE.
Opinion: How to assess the risk of nuclear war without freaking out Original
J. Peter Scoblic is a senior fellow in the International Security Program at New America and the author of "U.S. vs. Them," a history of American nuclear strategy. David R. Mandel is a cognitive psychologist affiliated with the Department of Psychology at York University. The views expressed in this commentary are their own. View more opinion on CNN.
Did Sino-U.S. Relations Have to Deteriorate?
American analysts and policymakers agree that something did.
Did Sino-American Relations Have to Deteriorate? A Better Way of Doing Counterfactual Thought Experiments
What went wrong with Sino-American relations? American analysts and policymakers agree that something did.
Perspective | We can’t prevent tomorrow’s catastrophes unless we imagine them today
The Trump administration may be gone, but Trumpian chaos persists.
How Policymakers Can Improve Crisis Planning
Every policy is a prediction. Tax cuts will boost the economy. Sanctions will slow Iran’s nuclear program. Travel bans will limit the spread of COVID-19. These claims all posit a causal relationship between means and ends. Regardless of party, ideology, or motive, no policymaker wants his or her recommended course of action to produce unanticipated consequences. This makes every policymaker a forecaster.
Able Archer almost started a nuclear war with Russia in 1983.
By Nate Jones and J. Peter Scoblic In 1983, the U.S. simulated a nuclear war with Russia—and narrowly avoided starting a real one. We might not be so lucky next time. April 13, 2017 Cover Story One of the Cold War’s great mysteries is how the world survived the second week of November 1983. That it did is in large part thanks to the actions—or, more accurately, the inaction—of an Air Force officer named Leonard Perroots, who died this January.
Emerging from the Crisis
July–August 2020 Issue The pandemic has dramatically changed the world we know. Here’s how leaders can chart a course for their organizations and guide their teams through tumultuous times. SAVE SHARE BUY COPIES Executive Summary One night some time ago I was in a movie theater in Los Angeles when an earthquake struck. It was a rather long one, with several aftershocks.
The Week the World Almost Ended
One of the Cold War’s great mysteries is how the world survived the second week of November 1983. That it did is in large part thanks to the actions—or, more accurately, the inaction—of an Air Force officer named Leonard Perroots, who died in 2017. That it almost did not was a function of Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical and military bellicosity, the Soviets’ fear of that aggressiveness, and a tragicomic degree of misperception.
Strategic Foresight as Dynamic Capability: A New Lens on Knightian Uncertainty
Author Abstract This paper proposes to treat strategic foresight as a dynamic capability, providing a new theoretical lens on managerial judgment. Formulating strategy under uncertainty is a central challenge facing the modern firm. Analogy is thought to help managers make sense of novel situations through comparison to past experience. However, from a Knightian perspective, uncertainty precludes analogy because such situations are unique.
Perspective | How the U.S.-China trade war makes clear the folly of arms races
A handout photo made available by the U.S. Department of Defense shows a test of a conventionally configured cruise missile at San Nicolas Island, California, on August 18. That type of missile was banned for more than 30 years by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. (Scott Howe/Us Department Of Defense Handout/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock) J. Peter Scoblic, a fellow in the international security program at New America, is the author of “U.S. vs.
Beacon and Warning: Sherman Kent, Scientific Hubris, and the CIA’s Office of National Estimates
Bobby Inman Award Winner The Bobby R. Inman Award is a competitive annual prize given by the Intelligence Studies Project, a joint program of the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law and the Clements Center for National Security. It recognizes more than six decades of distinguished public service by Adm. Bobby R. Inman, U.S. Navy (ret.). Adm. Inman served in multiple leadership positions in the U.S. military, intelligence community, private industry, and at the University of Texas.
The Russian Menace in the American Imagination
Donald Trump’s views on US-Russia relations bring to mind something that Shakespeare points out in King Lear—that sometimes the court fool is the only person telling the truth. Washington’s foreign policy establishment is an imperial court of a particularly Byzantine kind, and when it comes to Russia and certain other areas of policy, the court’s insular, conformist, and bipartisan consensus has so crushed free discussion, essential critiques have been banished to the fringes.
Perspective | Seeing so much of the present through Watergate makes it harder to see the future
J. Peter Scoblic is a fellow with the international security program at New America and the author of “U.S. vs. Them: Conservatism in the Age of Nuclear Terror.” October 6, 2017 How can we reconcile the conviction that Donald Trump's presidency is a singular abomination with the sense that we've seen all this play out before?
Sacred versus Pseudo-sacred Values: How People Cope with Taboo Trade-Offs
Citation Tetlock, Philip E., Barbara A. Mellers, and J. Peter Scoblic. 2017. "Sacred versus Pseudo-sacred Values: How People Cope with Taboo Trade-Offs." American Economic Review, 107(5): 96-99. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171110
Perspective: How we nearly stumbled into to nuclear war in 1983 and the Reagan-era lessons that Trump should heed
Perspective: How we nearly stumbled into to nuclear war in 1983 and the Reagan-era lessons that Trump should heed One of the Cold War's great mysteries is how the world survived the second week of November 1983, when the Soviets mistook a NATO war game for the prelude to an actual nuclear attack. For decades, the U.S. government kept whole chapters of this near-catastrophe secret, but the lessons of that fraught autumn are finally coming into focus.
Able Archer almost started a nuclear war with Russia in 1983.
Few would mistake Donald Trump for Ronald Reagan, yet the parallels to the early 1980s are striking. With contradictory statements about both expanding and reducing U.S. nuclear forces, Trump has sown strategic uncertainty among friends and foes alike at a moment when the United States and Russia are modernizing their nuclear arsenals.
Able Archer almost started a nuclear war with Russia in 1983.
One of the Cold War’s great mysteries is how the world survived the second week of November 1983. That it did is in large part thanks to the actions—or, more accurately, the inaction—of an Air Force officer named Leonard Perroots, who died this January. That it almost did not was a function of Ronald Reagan’s rhetorical and military bellicosity, the Soviets’ fear of that aggressiveness, and a tragicomic degree of misperception.
Bringing probability judgments into policy debates via forecasting tournaments
Political debates often suffer from vague-verbiage predictions that make it difficult to assess accuracy and improve policy. A tournament sponsored by the U.S. intelligence community revealed ways in which forecasters can better use probability estimates to make predictions—even for seemingly “unique” events—and showed that tournaments are a useful tool for generating knowledge.
Presidents need to be able to do nothing. Donald Trump can’t do it.
Donald Trump is many things, but most of all he is a doer. He builds buildings, he starts businesses, he does deals.
We didn’t see Donald Trump coming. But we could have.
It’s rare for an election to raise a metaphysical question — and even rarer for Donald Trump to do so. But that is exactly what he has done by repeatedly confounding expectations of his electoral demise: He has rattled our conception of how knowable the future is. Pundit predictions are notoriously poor, but last fall, there was near-unanimity among political analysts that Trump would fail, and fast.
Perspective: Politicians would be more careful if they had to make measurable predictions
Is there a solution to this country's polarized politics? Consider the debate over the now-in-effect nuclear deal with Iran, which was one of the nastiest foreign policy fights in recent memory. There was apocalyptic rhetoric, multimillion-dollar lobbying on both sides and a near-party-line Senate vote. But in another respect, the dispute was hardly unique: Like all policy debates, it was, at its core, a contest between competing predictions.
Opinion | The Power of Precise Predictions
Gray Matter By Philip E. Tetlock and J. Peter Scoblic Oct. 2, 2015 IS there a solution to this country’s polarized politics? Consider the debate over the nuclear deal with Iran, which was one of the nastiest foreign policy fights in recent memory. There was apocalyptic rhetoric, multimillion-dollar lobbying on both sides and a near-party-line Senate vote. But in another respect, the dispute was hardly unique: Like all policy debates, it was, at its core, a contest between competing predictions.
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