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Wars of Ignorance

Robert Schub

Published 2025 in Unknown venue

ABSTRACT

Wars of Ignorance explores the puzzling divergence between what leaders seemingly ought to believe on the cusp of war and what they do believe. War is famously associated with uncertainty. Leaders, however, frequently plunge into war with great certainty about how conflict will unfold. To understand this discrepancy, the book highlights a recurring flaw in the process by which leaders acquire information from advisers. Leaders often sideline the bureaucracy that conducts international diplomacy, thereby silencing advisers who possess substantive expertise on an adversary’s political, as opposed to military, attributes. Adviser marginalization produces informational blind spots on political traits which are subject to tremendous uncertainty. Blind spots breed misplaced certainty. Ignorant yet certain, leaders blunder into war. Qualitative studies of the Bay of Pigs and Iraq War illustrate the dangers of stunted advisory processes while a study of policy toward Laos shows how inclusive advisory processes allow informed leaders to navigate crises. Broadening the scope, Wars of Ignorance employs a novel strategy that transforms declassified documents from dozens of crises into measures of advisory input. Analyses show that bureaucratic role affects the information advisers provide, not the policies they endorse. Diplomats thus foster peace not because they are doves but because they provide information that leaders need in order to grasp the foreign policy challenges they confront. Wars of Ignorance offers important lessons on the enduring worth of competently staffed national security bureaucracies and the value of diligent and curious world leaders who solicit the information that advisers have to offer.

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