Bush's vision: The prehistory

In my first "Bush's vision" post, I talked about the Team B group, the collection of intelligence hardliners encouraged by Old Man Bush when he was head of the CIA in the 1970s.  It was formed during the Ford administration.

This article gives some detailed background of the Team B project:  Team B: The trillion-dollar experiment by Anne Hessing Cahn Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists April 2003.  (Via Mary at The Left Coaster).  Cahn describes the domestic and intra-Republican Party politics dynamics at the time of the group's creation.  And she describes their "the sky is falling" metholodogy:

Today, the Team B reports recall the stridency and militancy of the conservatives in the 1970s. Team B accused the CIA of consistently underestimating the "intensity, scope, and implicit threat" posed by the Soviet Union by relying on technical or "hard" data rather than "contemplat[ing] Soviet strategic objectives in terms of the Soviet conception of 'strategy' as well as in light of Soviet history, the structure of Soviet society, and the pronouncements of Soviet leaders."

And when Team B looked at "hard" data, everywhere it saw the worst case. It reported, for instance, that the Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers, with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." (In fact, the Soviets had 235 in 1984.) Team B also regarded Soviet defenses with alarm. "Mobile ABM [anti-ballistic missiles] system components combined with the deployed SAM [surface-to-air missile] system could produce a significant ABM capability." But that never occurred.

This observation illustrates how the style of Team B and the Committee on the Present Danger, which shared a number of members and a general style and outlook with Team B, could have well provided inspiration for today's Iraq hawks and Iran hawks:

Team B's failure to find a Soviet non-acoustic anti-submarine system was evidence that there could wellbe one. "The implication could be that the Soviets have, in fact, deployed some operational non-acoustic systems and will deploy more in the next few years." It wasn't a question of if the Russians were coming. They were here. (And probably working at the CIA!) [my emphasis]

Team B slanted evidence to support that conclusions and denirated the more cautious analyses of the CIA.  And though the Reagan administration never embraced the Team B approach to the extent that the current Bush administration has, their alarmist estimates of the Soviet threat were certainly congenial to the Reaganauts.  Cahn argues:

For more than a third of a century, perceptions about U.S. national security were colored by the view that the Soviet Union was on the road to military superiority over the United States. Neither Team B nor the multibillion dollar intelligence agencies could see that the Soviet Union was dissolving from within.

For more than a third of a century, assertions of Soviet superiority created calls for the United States to "rearm." In the 1980s, the call was heeded so thoroughly that the United States embarked on a trillion-dollar defense buildup. As a result, the country neglected its schools, cities, roads and bridges, and health care system. From the world's greatest creditor nation, the United States became the world's greatest debtor--in order to pay for arms to counter the threat of a nation that was collapsing.

Tags: bush doctrine