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CHAPTER FOURTEEN
GROUP DECISION MAKING IN CONFLICT From Groupthink to Polythink in the War in Iraq
Alex Mintz
Carly Wayne
Political leaders around the globe routinely make critical decisions concerning war and peace. As citizens, we hope and believe that these leaders are engaging in thorough, careful, systematic and thoughtful decision-making processes, rationally weighing the costs and benefits of each potential action. However, as Irving Janis demonstrated in his famed book, Victims of Groupthink: A Psychological Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes (1982), group decision-making dynamics and processes at the highest level of government are prone to suboptimal, defective decision making. Whether the extreme cohesiveness of Janis’s groupthink, or the pluralism of group members’ opinions and the rampant divisiveness of decision-making groups, a dynamic Mintz, Mishal, and Morag (2005) and Mintz and DeRouen (2010) term polythink, such “defective” processes can lead to foreign policy and national security fiascos. These fiascos can severely damage U.S. credibility, interests and security. Clearly, the divisiveness triggered by polythink or the extreme cohesive decision dynamics caused by groupthink can be costly and prevent the governmental responsiveness required to stave off or appropriately prepare for impending conflicts.
In this chapter, we analyze the implications of groupthink and polythink on war and peace decisions made by the U.S. government regarding Iraq. Specifically, we analyze the group dynamics in the Bush and Obama administrations and their effect on the decisions to initiate the war, execute a war strategy and, ultimately, withdraw from Iraq.
GROUPTHINK AND POLYTHINK
Groupthink
The well-known concept of groupthink, as described by Janis (1982), is “a mode of thinking that people engage in when they are deeply involved in a cohesive in-group, when the members’ strivings for unanimity override their motivation to realistically appraise alternative courses of action” (Janis, 1982 p. 9). At the national level, this means that cohesive policymaking groups, such as the advisors to the president, intelligence and enforcement agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, or the Joint Chiefs of Staff, often make suboptimal decisions due to their conscious or unconscious desire for uniformity over dissent. Decision-making groups ignore important limitations of chosen policies, overestimate the odds for success, and fail to consider other relevant policy options or possibilities. In this way, groupthink can lead to suboptimal decision-making processes that result in unnecessary or ill-planned conflict and resultant violence and loss of life.
According to Janis (1982, p. 10) the policy discussions of groups characterized by groupthink contain seven major defects that will have a negative impact on the decision-making process:
Limited review of alternatives. The group’s discussion will be limited to a few potential courses of action and will therefore lack a survey of the full range of alternatives.
Limited discussion of objectives. The group will not adequately answer the questions, “What are the key objectives?” and, “What values are implicated by the chosen strategy?”
Failure to examine the risks of the preferred policy. The group will consistently fail to reexamine the course of action that the majority of members initially preferred. They will thus fail to look for nonobvious risks and drawbacks that may not have been considered when a policy was originally evaluated.
Failure to reevaluate previously rejected alternatives. Group members will neglect courses of action that were initially evaluated as unsatisfactory by the majority of the group, failing to see the nonobvious benefits of these actions.
Poor information search. The members of the group will make little or no attempt to obtain information from external experts who can supply important estimates or projections of the potential gains and losses of a particular strategy.
Selective bias in information processing. Selective bias will be exhibited in the way the group reacts to factual information and relevant judgments from experts, the mass media, and outside critics. They will process only information that confirms their preexisting beliefs and ignore information that challenges those beliefs.
Failure to consider contingency plans. The group members will spend very little time deliberating about how “the best-laid plans” could be derailed. Consequently, they will fail to develop contingency plans to cope with potentially foreseeable setbacks, thereby endangering the overall success of the chosen course of action.
Since Janis introduced the concept of groupthink, much emphasis has been placed in foreign policy decision-making circles on the processes that can be used to prevent it from occurring and produce optimal decisions. However, many of the same policy prescriptions recommended by theorists and practitioners for addressing groupthink may leave decision makers at risk of swinging too far in the other direction, contributing to a very different, but no less detrimental, phenomenon, which we term polythink.
Polythink
Polythink characterizes a decision-making unit that has a large plurality of opinions, views, and perceptions among group members. Whereas groupthink tends toward overwhelming conformity and unanimity, polythink leads to the equally problematic extreme of disagreement, myriad opinions, interpretations of reality, and policy prescriptions (Mintz and DeRouen, 2010; Mintz et al., 2005). This may lead to a situation where it becomes virtually impossible for group members to reach a common interpretation of reality and achieve common policy goals.
Polythink is essentially the opposite of grou
pthink on a continuum of decision making from “completely cohesive” (groupthink) to “completely fragmented” (polythink). Polythink can thus be seen as a mode of thinking that results from membership in a highly disjointed group rather than a highly cohesive one (Mintz et al., 2005)
Polythink is also a generic phenomenon; that is to say, it is a horizontal concept that can be applied to myriad different realms and has far-reaching implications for decision makers in the arena of foreign policy, domestic policy, business decisions, national security considerations, and any other small group decision in individuals’ daily lives.1
Not surprisingly, many of the consequences of polythink are similar to those of groupthink. However, this is the case “not because the group is thinking alike or sharing the same views but because the group is actually failing to carry out any significant collective thinking” (Mintz et al., 2005, p. 17). As is the case with groupthink, polythink is likely to lead to defective, suboptimal decisions; limited review of alternatives, objectives, and risks; and selective use of information. However, a number of important consequences are unique to polythink due to the broad cacophony of viewpoints and policy prescriptions the group espouses—for example (Mintz et al., 2005):
Greater likelihood for group conflict. Because group members have different, sometimes even opposing views of the situation and of potential solutions, there is a greater likelihood of group conflict due to polythink.
Greater likelihood for leaks. Since group members do not hold uniform views of the situation under polythink, they are more likely to leak information (e.g., to undermine positions that they oppose) than in a groupthink situation.
Less likelihood for the group to speak with one voice. Under polythink, there is a greater likelihood that group members will talk to their counterparts, constituencies, and even the media espousing different views and opinions, leading to confusion over policy direction.
More likelihood for framing effects. Under polythink, some members may frame offers, proposals, counterproposals, and even disagreements in different ways: some may give it a positive spin and others a negative spin.
Confusion and lack of communication. The myriad viewpoints and actors represented in the decision-making unit may lead to confusion over potential policy options and the failure to communicate all relevant information among the bureaucracies represented by the decision-making group. This reduces the ability of the group to make the most educated decision possible given the information available at the time.
Decision paralysis or adoption of positions with the lowest common denominator. Polythink may create decision situations in which the lowest common denominator becomes the dominant product of the group. This is the case because each member of the group needs to make concessions in his or her normative worldview and organizational and political agendas in order to reach an accommodation with other members of the group. Group divisiveness and discord may also severely limit the ability of the group to develop any policy at all. This can lead to perhaps the most destructive symptom of polythink, complete decision paralysis, which results in missed opportunities at best and catastrophic policy failures at worst.
These many symptoms of polythink are particularly detrimental to long-term policy planning, essentially forcing decision makers to make satisficing short-term compromises for which they can achieve group approval and to put off more far-reaching long-term policy plans for which it would be even more problematic to gain group consensus. Because war and peace decisions typically require long-term policy planning in order to achieve sustainability and minimize violence and bloodshed, polythink can be particularly problematic in these contexts.
The Groupthink-Polythink Continuum
Both polythink and groupthink should be considered pure types. In real-world decision-making situations, there is rarely a case of pure or extreme polythink or groupthink. It is therefore more useful to think of these two processes as extremes on a continuum in which good decision-making processes typically lie toward the middle, whereas defective decision-making processes lean closer to one of two extremes: the group conformity of groupthink or the group disunity of polythink (figure 14.1).
Figure 14.1 The Groupthink-Polythink Continuum
In this groupthink-polythink continuum, the midpoint can be viewed as a balanced group process in which neither groupthink nor polythink dominates. We call this point or area on the continuum the con-div group dynamic, the point at which convergence and divergence of group members’ viewpoints are more or less in equilibrium. In this situation, all group members do not share the same viewpoints, yet neither do they possess highly diverse or divisive opinions. In this scenario, the group is most likely to benefit from thorough yet productive decision-making processes that consider a multitude of options and are ultimately able to reach agreement and execute well-formulated policies and actions.
In many ways, the con-div group dynamic can be thought of as a type of group-based integrative complexity that results in a more nuanced understanding of policy issues and can therefore promote balanced and successful policymaking.2 Thus while traditional literature on integrative complexity focuses on the degree of integration of multiple perspectives and possibilities at the individual level, integrative complexity may also function at the group level (Erisen and Erisen, 2012; Conway et al., 2012; Suedfeld, Cross, and Brcic, 2011).
In this chapter, the groupthink, polythink, and con-div dynamics are applied to the realm of U.S. national security decision making on Iraq, demonstrating how the detrimental consequences of defective group decision-making processes can be particularly problematic and destructive in the context of conflict, war, and peace.
THE IRAQ WAR—FROM GROUPTHINK TO POLYTHINK
On December 18, 2011, all U.S. combat troops officially left Iraq. After almost nine years of war, the American combat role in Iraq had come to a close. However, the full legacy of what many label a mismanaged decision-making process in a “war of choice” has yet to be fully determined.
As this chapter demonstrates, after a near universally criticized groupthink decision-making dynamic regarding the entrance to the war, the successful decision-making surrounding the surge orchestrated by General David Petraeus was characterized by a more balanced con-div decision-group dynamic. In 2008, the new administration of Barack Obama, a staunch critic of the war, exhibited polythink as competing voices within the administration diverged on the wisdom, pace, and number of troop drawdown levels in Iraq.
By contrasting the early groupthink decision-making processes regarding the entrance to the war with the later con-div decision-making processes over the surge and then with the polythink that characterized the withdrawal, we demonstrate the detrimental effects of extreme groupthink or polythink in the U.S. national security apparatus. These three decisions—the groupthink decision to invade, the con-div balanced surge, and the managed polythink decision to withdraw—also demonstrate the ways in which decision-making processes can be placed at different points on the groupthink-polythink continuum and applied to decisions regarding war and peace.
The Decision to Invade Iraq in 2003: A Classic Groupthink Dynamic
In the months leading to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, the small group of decision makers in the administration of George W. Bush exhibited a pattern of groupthink (Badie, 2010; Schafer and Crichlow, 2010; Cairo, 2009; Scheeringa, 2010; Houghton, 2008). There was a consensus within the decision-making unit that American forces would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people. Though the backgrounds, worldviews, beliefs, and mind-sets of members of the group could clearly be divided in three distinct categories—assertive nationalists (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld), neoconservatives (neo-con; Paul Wolfowitz, John Bolton, Richard Perle), and pragmatic internationalists (Colin Powell, Richard Haass)—pragmatic internationalists quickly found themselves frozen out of most foreign policy discussions as the like-minded nationalists and neoconservatives dominated the cabinet debate (Daalder and Lindsay, 2005, cited in Caldwell,
2011). The universal opinion of the so-called neoconservatives in the post-9/11 environment with respect to removing Saddam Hussein from power represents a typical groupthink syndrome in which “the decision processes and norms within that structure (or lack of structure) worked to reinforce existing biases and stereotypes more than to raise questions about how workable the strategies and tactics stemming from those stereotypes really were” (Schafer and Crichlow, 2010, p. 235).
Other symptoms of groupthink were also evident in this phase; for example, the administration often focused on the short-term results of the military campaign while ignoring the longer-term problems of insurgency and political violence in Iraq (Mintz and DeRouen, 2010). Whereas the Shock and Awe air campaign at the start of the war was well planned and successful, the occupation of Iraq was a nightmare, leading to 4,485 Americans killed and tens of thousands of Iraqi casualties over the course of the war (News Research Center Iraq War Casualties Database, 2009). Just as in the classic groupthink syndrome, group members:
Locked in on their preferred alternative course of action, ignoring the risks of this chosen policy and failing to focus on what could go wrong in Iraq, only on what could go right (Hersh, 2004)
Did not seriously evaluate different alternatives or contingency plans for dealing with Iraq (Yetiv, 2004) and failed to reevaluate policy options that had previously been rejected
Engaged in biased, selective information processing, ignoring critical information that contradicted their views and preferences
Engaged in poor information search, overestimating the group’s ability to correctly estimate their rival’s capabilities on weapons of mass destruction and failing to trust or seek out external counsel or intelligence
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