Graham Allison

December 21, 1980

An Intelligence Agenda

Op-Ed, New York Times

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

The central test of a national intelligence service is how well its analyses and estimates inform policy-makers of probable developments abroad. More than any other, it is this test that the United States intelligence community is failing today.

Consider the case of Iran. Through l978 and 1979, American intelligence profoundly misassessed the revolutionary forces opposing the Shah. For example, in August l978, a Central Intelligence Agency estimate concluded: 'Iran is not in a revolutionary or even prerevolutionary situation.' The intelligence community's failure to illuminate these events exasperated President Carter, provoking him to send a memorandum to the C.I.A. declaring: 'I am not satisfied with the quality of political intelligence.'

Beneath the surface of this case, one finds characteristic failings of the current community in the three key elements of performance: collection, analysis, and service to policy-makers.

March 1974

Cold Dawn and the Mind of Kissinger

Journal Article, The Washington Monthly

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

On Kissinger's secretiveness as Special Assistant for National Security Affairs.

1973

Military Capabilities and American Foreign Policy

Journal Article, The Annals of the American Academy of Political Science and Social Science, issue 1, volume 406

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Can the availability of a rapid response capability lead the United States to intervene militarily in situations where, without those ready forces, the U.S. government would decide that military intervention was not required? Secretary of Defense McNamara said no; Senator Richard Russell said yes. After examining the basic approaches to weapons selection that led McNamara and Russell to opposite conclusions, this article reviews recent instances—Dienbien— phu, Laos, Korea, the Bay of Pigs, and Vietnam—in which the presence or absence of a ready military option may have affected decisions about the use of force. A conclusion about who had the better part of the argument provides a base for drawing some implications concerning the full costs and benefits of military capabilities and the responsibilities of the secretary of defense.

Should the West Keep the Soviet Economy From Toppling?The West Won't Be Wasting Its Money, Say the Reform-for-Aid Plan's Authors

Op-Ed, Washington Post

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

THE DEEPENING economic crisis in the Soviet Union has brought Soviet and Western leaders to a historic fork in the road: Reform the Soviet system or watch it collapse into chaos.

Before The Morning After

Journal Article, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

In April of 1995, home-grown American terrorists parked a rented Ryder truck packed with fertilizer-based explosives outside the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City.1 As noted at trial, their objective was to deliver the weapons during a period in which they might get a high body-count.2 They succeeded in killing 168 American men, women and children.3 Two years earlier, Sheik Rahman, an Egyptian Islamic cleric, and his collaborators rented a minivan, packed it with fertilizer-based explosives and parked it in the basement of the World Trade Center.4 They anticipated that the resulting blast would cause one World Trade Center tower to fall on the other.5 The trial revealed that their ultimate targets were not just the World Trade Center, but also the United Nations building, the Federal Office Building in lower Manhattan, the George Washington Bridge and the Lincoln and Holland [*pg 8] tunnels.6 They hoped to kill a large number of Americans. If they had parked their minivan in the right place, they could have killed forty thousand people.

Beyond the Cold War: Conceptual Challenges for US foreign Policy in the 1990s

Journal Article, American Review, volume vol. 10

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

A look at the challenges of U.S. foreign policy in the 1990s and how it has been influenced by the Cold War and how foreign policy strategies have changed since.

2006

Making America Safer from Nuclear Terrorism

Book Chapter

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

Chap. 1 in How to Make America Safe.  Cambridge, MA: Tobin Project,  2006.