Introduction

What can we realistically expect from estimative intelligence and anticipatory foreign policy? What are appropriate yardsticks to use when retrospectively assessing the performance of governmental and external analysts, policy planners and decision-makers? To what extent and when is being surprised to be expected and excused? When do performance shortcomings point to underlying issues that might be avoided or addressed through learning the right lessons without creating great problems elsewhere? And how can obstacles to lesson learning and remembering in intelligence and foreign policy be overcome? This chapter will try to engage with these questions as it sets out a common conceptual and theoretical framework for the post-mortems analysis and identification of lessons to be learned in this volume.

Even though the intelligence studies literature has engaged with some of these questions, there is no suitable framework to take off the shelf that provides a persuasive normative grounding and one that works for the three European polities at the heart of our study – rather than the frequently studied US context. This chapter draws not only on the relevant literature in the core areas of strategic surprise and post-mortems in intelligence studies and foreign policy, but also considers insights from foresight and forecasting studies, crisis, risks and emergency management, and public administration about the role of experts, expertise and learning. We first develop a normative model of evidence-sensitive anticipatory foreign policy within which we situate intelligence and political receptivity to it. A second section looks at the specific challenges for estimative intelligence when seeking to minimise surprise in foreign affairs. We provide a taxonomy of different degrees and types of surprise and discuss when being surprised might be condonable or expected. Thirdly, we investigate how to identify the most important causes of any performance problems in intelligence-policy nexus. Finally, we look at the specific challenge of identifying and learning the right lessons and how to prioritise among recommendations for change and reform.

Normative Expectations towards Intelligence in Anticipatory Foreign Policy

It is helpful to reflect on whether and to what extent we can learn from the role of experts and expertise in fields beyond foreign policy, such as migration policy or public health.