Comparing rival weapons head-to-head obscured whether each force could actually do its job

Evidence

The same pattern was apparent during the Cold War. Heavy reliance was placed on “static indicators”—numbers of missiles and warheads, the amount of throw-weight, and the extent of the damage that each side could do to the other. (The indicators of latter capability were themselves derived from highly oversimplified calculations.) Although there was some discussion of “counter-balancing asymmetries,” arguments often were couched in terms of which side was ahead on any of these dimensions. For example, in the fall of 1981 many officials in the United States were disturbed by reports that Soviet missiles had become more accurate than American missiles, just as in other periods there was fear that the Soviets were developing better bombers than the United States possessed. Calculations are facilitated by such comparison, but this conservation of cognitive resources is purchased at the price of answering questions that make no sense. The accuracy of each side’s missiles or the quality of its bombers were significant, but the direct comparison of these factors was not. Each weapons system should have been evaluated in terms of its ability to carry out its mission; an increase in, say, the quality of Soviet bombers may have had important implications for U.S. air defense, but it said nothing about the utility of American bombers. There may have been reasons to be disturbed if Soviet missiles were extremely accurate, but comparison with the accuracy of American missiles says nothing about the ability of either side’s forces to carry out useful missions. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 2602

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader literature on cognitive biases in national-security decision-making (Jervis, Kahneman’s fast-and-frugal heuristics), and to common critiques of metrics-driven management that mistake measurable proxies for mission-readiness. — connects to: Military format constrains which class can dominate a regime — Charles Tilly, Regimes and Repertoires, 81