| Summary/Abstract |
The rapid fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban almost immediately led US policymakers to cast blame on the intelligence community for a failure to warn of the Afghan Army’s imminent collapse. Yet an examination of historical case studies from Vietnam and Iraq, and emerging evidence regarding Afghanistan, suggests that the real failure lies in the intelligence–policy relationship. In these three cases spanning 60 years, US policymakers consistently lacked receptivity to objective intelligence assessments that were critical of military missions to train and equip foreign armies facing insurgencies. Rethinking the intelligence–policy relationship to rely more heavily on working-level officials’ perspectives, demonstrate openness to bad news and integrate alternative intelligence analysis into the policymaking process would increase the likelihood that viable military policies will succeed in the future, as well as the likelihood that futile policies will be abandoned.
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