The One Percent Doctrine

Ron Suskind bases his book The One Percent Doctrine The One Percent Doctrine on a quote from
Vice President Cheney. In this case context is everything and we can only guess at the context. Here is an extract from Barton Gellman’s review

Cheney, by Suskind's account, had been grappling with how to think about "a low-probability, high-impact event." By the time the briefing was over, he had his answer: "If there's a one percent chance that Pakistani scientists are helping al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response."

Cheney’s position is, in itself, sensible. High impact threats demand a response. Some context giving what Cheney might have meant by a response would have helped – or might undercut Suskind’s unfavorable depiction of Cheney. While a response is required, some responses are unjustified. Careful analysis must precede a response and it must be proportionate to the threat.

In the case of Iraq, our political leaders, both in the Administration and the Senate, failed to use even the inadequate analysis that they had. As Alan Reynolds has shown, a careful reading of the October 2002 NIE should have convinced the leadership that the case for WMD’s in Iraq was not sound. In re-reading the October 2002 NIE I have an intuition that analysts put in carefully couched language. Maybe they were covering their ____. Maybe they were trying to communicate their doubts to the leadership. If so, they were wrong.

It seems to be an ideal opportunity for some just war ethicists to stand up and talk about decision making under uncertainty.

Maybe I had better read Suskind.

The One Percent Doctrine

Comments

[Herb Ely]

Jon, I don't think that the 1% was meant to be a literal number. The point was, I think, that we have to respond to an improbable but highly dangerous threat. The question is: What is a proportionate response? During the Cold War the US and the Soviet Union were willing to risk bankrupting themselves to defend against an unlikely nuclear attack. Many people argued that this was an over-response on both sides.

While I agree with Cheney on this point (not that he cares), I think that he overestimated the threat and launched a disproportionate response.

[Alan Reynolds]

I greatly appreciate the plug. Nobody has yet suggested that I made any big mistakes about this, and it is not that I don't get criticism.