Bluffing with a Pair of Deuces: The Downside of Successful Deception

摘要

Recent changes in warfare have placed a heavy reliance on the ability of a military or state to be able to control all aspects of the information battlespace. It is critical to emphasize the continuing importance of deception on warfare in the Information Age by analyzing past deception campaigns to determine what lessons might be learned. The rearmament of Interwar Germany and Saddam's Iraq provide two examples of modern strategic deception campaigns. Interwar Germany (1919-1939) conducted a campaign of rearmament in violation of the Versailles Treaty. This campaign allowed Germany to convince the rest of the world throughout the 1930s that they had created an unstoppable army. Ultimately, however, they did not possess the resource capacity to produce the outcome they envisioned. The deception campaign ended in 1939 with the onset of hostilities; however, failure to terminate the campaign largely contributed to ultimate strategic failure. The deception campaign surrounding Iraqi weapons programs (1980-2003) involved subverting the control measures implemented by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and avoiding United Nations mandates following Desert Storm. The latter part of the campaign proved less successful than the first, culminating in a full declaration of their weapons capabilities in 1996. However, at best, the failure of the regime to terminate its deception efforts led the United Nations to be wary of Iraq's compliance. At worst, willingly continuing the deception campaign proved detrimental to the Iraqi regime. Either scenario resulted in continued sanctions, inspection efforts, and regime overthrow in 2003. The author analyzes these two examples of deception campaigns to find out whether they successfully met the overall national strategic goals of each nation. The case studies under review were selected because they are examples of successful deception that led to ultimate strategic disaster.