One might forgive German civilian leadership for failing to recognize and act on the likely result of changes in warfare since 1870-71 following such a long period of relative peace, and perhaps German military planners should have made their risk assumptions more explicit. However, Japan’s path to war with the United States illustrates how the same mechanism enabled by optimism bias can play out even in a society with military leadership integrated into the highest levels of government and significant recent experience of major war.
Japan was a rising imperial power that had fought a series of victorious wars in Asia—mostly against China and Russia—throughout the first half of the 20th century. But it was Japan’s spectacular naval victories over Russia in 1904 and 1905 that captured its national imagination. By 1941, Japan’s fear of American hegemonic designs, its inability—or unwillingness—to disentangle itself from its imperial adventure in China, and its national pride brought it to the brink of war with the United States. Neither side wanted war, but Japan couldn’t seem to find a way to avoid it. Once again, recognition that a protracted conflict would be ruinous for Japan failed to spark a renewed emphasis on diplomacy, instead driving Japan’s cabinet to accept a high-risk offensive plan in the vain hope of high-payoff success.
Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto planned the attack on Pearl Harbor as an attempt to force the United States to accept Japanese hegemony in the western Pacific as a fait accompli. He also predicted that it wouldn’t work, anticipating that even if the attack were successful, the U.S. would refuse to accept a tactical defeat as decisive and continue fighting.[6] He knew the U.S. was a very different opponent than Russia, and personally opposed the war because he considered Japan’s chances for victory slim. However, he considered it his duty to keep his reservations to himself and focus his efforts on maximizing those chances. His plan for the Pearl Harbor attack and subsequent operations was explicitly designed to recreate—against all odds—the successes of Japan’s naval victories over Russia in 1904-1905.[7]
Within the cabinet, bureaucratic politics, inter-service rivalry and unique characteristics of Japanese culture and language clouded the cabinet debate throughout 1941 and increasingly made war seem unavoidable.[8] The integration of senior military officers into the highest levels of government did not prevent optimism bias from influencing the decision-making process. Japanese leaders had been closely watching German successes in France in 1940 and against the USSR in 1941. Despite clear evidence that war with the U.S. would be ruinous for Japan, lurking always in the backs of their minds was their own unlikely success against Russia in 1905. They had done it once; perhaps they could do it again?[9] Yamamoto’s bold plan made it easier to take what seemed their only chance of success, or as wartime prime minister General Hideki Tojo put it, “to close one’s eyes, and jump.”[10]
2003: Shock and Awe after the End of History
Both Germany in 1914 and Japan in 1941 felt forced into war by circumstances, grasping at overly optimistic war plans to stave off what they considered the unacceptable consequences of other options. In both cases their attempts to recreate historical successes failed. Germany’s 1914 offensive stalled before it could achieve a meaningful tactical result. Japan’s initial attacks in 1941 were more successful, but the U.S refused to accept the fait accompli. When the U.S. invaded Iraq in 2003 for the second time in twenty years, it didn’t do so out of desperation. Yet the same optimism bias was at work. This time, instead of offering a false hope of escape from disaster, it resulted in an overconfident assumption that the U.S. could control outcomes through military force. Instead of attempting to recreate past victories, American decision makers convinced themselves that history was no longer relevant, thanks to a transformative approach to warfare developed by a cadre of pentagon military theorists—what was called at the time the Revolution in Military Affairs or RMA.
Saddam Hussein had been a thorn in America’s side since the first Gulf War. In the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, a mix of neoconservative ideology, reputational anxiety and a sense of unfinished business combined to create a strong consensus within the George W. Bush administration that Hussein had to go.[11] Donald Rumsfeld, Bush’s Secretary of Defense, was enamoured with the RMA, which relied on lighter, leaner forces employing precision weapons to achieve decisive effects through speed and maneuver. Rumsfeld saw the unconventional and unexpectedly quick victory over the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2001 as evidence that this approach represented a whole new paradigm for American military power.[12] Rumsfeld’s new paradigm promised a quick victory, and optimistic neoconservative theories about the flourishing of democracy suggested a newly liberated Iraqi society would take care of itself. Concerns about what would come after Hussein’s regime was toppled were waved away. Administration officials ignored historical lessons about the critical importance of post-war stability and reconstruction.[13]
