Strategic Blind Spots: Examining the Yin and Yang of US-SINO Cognitive Biases in Strategic Culture

Kyle Audette / Jacob Caine / Bruce Rishel

National Security Research Project

Harvard University Extension School

May 2022

Introduction

This paper aims to illuminate Chinese and American cognitive biases through a comparative analysis framework. We contend that a comparative analysis of American and Chinese cognitive biases, with particular reference to their manifestations in political and military strategy and decision-making (i.e. strategic culture), is not simply necessary but an absolute imperative. Just as diagnosis precedes prescription, elucidating the salient Chinese and American cognitive biases, preferences, and manifestations must precede any attempt to evaluate the dynamic interaction of their respective strategies. As Clausewitz reminds us, war is “an act of force to compel an enemy to do our will” through “the collision of two living forces” (Howard and Paret 1984, pages 75, 77, 149). Accordingly, compelling a dynamic and adaptive adversary requires a thorough understanding of that adversary, how they define and measure power, their views of strategic competition, and which specific factors they assess when determining the correlation of forces. Equally important is an unsparing and critical analysis of American cognitive biases and processes. This objective self-assessment is indispensable in judging the viability of American resources and strategic preferences in affecting and influencing, or compelling, Chinese decision-makers to bend to our will.

Our belief in the efficacy of analyzing comparative biases and cognitive processes rests on two critical analytical assumptions. First, that nation-state militaries – and their approaches to strategy, competition, and operational art – are directly tied to the societies and cultural norms from which they are born. Since military forces reflect the cultures and communities they serve, and biases and cognitive frameworks are woven into the fabric of societies, it stands to reason that these same beliefs will be equally pervasive and resonant within its military institutions and strategic cultures. Consequently, the careful study and comparative analysis of cognitive frameworks can reveal the underlying intellectual currents impelling and shaping a nation’s decisions about war and peace, grand strategy, and strategic assessment. Strategists and commentators on war have attested to this causality throughout history: from Thucydides’ astute observation, when assessing the Athenian and Spartan campaign strategies, that both Pericles and King Archidamus sought to link their military capabilities to the respective constitutions of their states, or Julian Corbett’s delineation of a German or “continental” and a British or “maritime” school of strategic thought (Mahnken 2006, page 3) Indeed, as we will illustrate, an examination of US and Chinese military history and strategy evinces recurrent and distinct institutional preferences. Second, a comparative framing of Chinese and American cognitive biases and processes is the most effective way to evaluate, with any degree of confidence, the potential results of mutual strategic interaction and the likely reactions of each actor. Developing a comprehensive understanding of both sides’ biases and modes of thinking can facilitate their incorporation into scenario development, wargaming, and the testing of operational concepts. Most importantly, it provides an opportunity to add a critical dimension of realism to American strategic assessment and attenuate the implicit assumptions of rationality and mirror-imaging, which underlie current practices.

The View from the United States of America

δυνατὰ δὲ οἱ προύχοντες πράσσουσι καὶ οἱ ἀσθενεῖς ξυγχωροῦσιν

In his history of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides describes how, during the siege of Melos, the Athenians delivered to the Melians a dour proclamation (in Greek above): “the strong do what they can, the weak suffer what they must” - and suffer the Melians did. Yet, while the overwhelming strategic might of the Athenians resulted in the brutal destruction of the Melians, by the conclusion of the Peloponnesian war, Athenian hubris had led, ultimately, to its destruction at the hands of the Spartans.

Throughout much of the last century, the United States has dominated its adversaries in the measure of military power and in the discipline of international relations (IR), just as the Athenians once dominated the Melians. Like the Athenians, however, the United States risks losing its dominant position in world affairs if it fails to recognise its strategic blind spots, ignores the cognitive biases that influence its strategic culture, and remains incapable of seeing the world as it appears from the perspective of its adversaries.

The American approach to IR could be considered fundamentally positivist, insular, ahistorical, and relies on cognitive frameworks privileging analytical over holistic thinking. These features will be expanded upon throughout this section of the paper, and while IR is in many respects an academic discipline, the analysis of the theoretical approach to IR remains particularly relevant to U.S. policy and strategic culture given the inarguable nexus between academics, policymakers and military leadership in the American system.

Stanley Hoffmann, a renowned Harvard University political science professor, demonstrated this "interrelatedness" by identifying three institutional factors acting as multipliers of political connection between government, military and academia:

• The “in-and-outer” system of government through which academics and researchers rotate between campus life and US foreign policy policymaking apparatus.

• The network of foundations that provide international relations analysis, much of which is supported by government money and acts as a staging ground between academia and Washington.

• The flexibility, competition, and specialization of the American university system. (Hoffmann 1977).

The nexus is further tightened when one recognizes that the most powerful player in the IR arena is the United States, and the closer the scholar gets to the source of information the more her information will reflect the facts shaping foreign policy. The attraction is a magnetic one, bringing the scholar ever closer to policymaking. Therefore, to truly understand the intellectual and analytical foundations of the US policymaking process one must consider the academic traditions that support this system.

Founded by French philosopher and writer Auguste Comte, “positivism” is an ontology that views the world as existing independent of our knowledge of that world and concludes that the world can be better understood through sensory observations (i.e. a philosophy established in what can be posited, observed and interrogated through scientific means). While the definition has evolved since Comte first described it, the characteristics of positivism include stating concepts in law-like statements, empirical measurement of concepts, relating variables together empirically and “use of statistical techniques/quantitative methodology” (Gartrell, 1996, page 146). The primary concern, as positivism is related to “social phenomenon”, is provided by Professor Emeritus Bernd Baldus at the University of Toronto who states, that positivism may be “intrinsically unsuitable for the analysis of social processes whose nonlinear and chaotic nature conflicts with the assumptions for linear causality and predictability basic to positivist analysis” (Baldus 1990, page 149). Thus demonstrable problems can occur when positivism is used to replicate its success in the natural sciences by applying its methods to the social sciences in general and to international relations in particular. (Houghton 2011).

Although not alone in taking a positivist approach, 61% of IR scholars in the United States describe their research as positivist and, more strikingly, according to the 2017 Teaching Research and International Policy Project (TRIP), 90% of articles published in the twelve leading IR journals are positivist in nature. (Maliniak, et al. 2018). While the goal of positivism should be celebrated, as it seeks to generalize from specific “objects” theories that find patterns that can be applied to other situations. The risk of this approach, however, is that in over-generalizing, the positivist method fails to understand the broader context of the event in question as it removes that object of analysis from its historical and cultural context and leads to cognitive biases including illusory correlation which is the tendency to inaccurately perceive relationships between unrelated events. In this situation, the tree has essentially been removed from the forest and studied in its individualized form.

The positivist framework is not just an academic concern as we see the consequences of this “thought pattern” play out in the conception of policy and practice of strategic culture. Stephen Biddle, professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University discusses American strategic elites' reductionist and facile comparisons of America's predicament in Iraq with Vietnam: Simplistic and inaccurate lessons were drawn from Vietnam and projected as prescriptive solutions in Iraq (Biddle 2021). In Biddle's view, not only was this mistaken but dangerous. Because policymakers were drawing generalized lessons - devoid of contextual understanding - the solutions proffered were unsuited to the context of Iraq. The Maoist struggle in Vietnam was a battle between the ruling class and an oppressed public with the people seeking to overthrow a perceived illegitimate regime representing narrow elite interest often with foreign backing.

In contrast, the war in Iraq was a communal civil war with opposing subnational ethnic or sectarian groups battling a government captured by one of these groups. (Biddle March/April 2006). The former is a conflict of ideas, the latter is a battle for group survival.

Biases at play*:

• Illusory correlation: Inaccurately perceiving a relationship between unrelated events

• Congruence bias, a subset of confirmation bias which is the tendency to focus on information that confirms one's own preconceptions. Congruence bias is the tendency to test hypotheses through direct testing, instead of testing possible alternative hypotheses

• Observer bias, The tendency of different observers to assess subjective criteria differently

The consequences of overgeneralizing from past historical examples represent one blind spot; the failure to recognize historical examples is another. On the eve of America's March 1965 escalation in Vietnam, Charles de Gaulle and French General Staff provided the Pentagon with France's exhaustive lessons learned report, which documented the causes of France's failings in Indochina and attendant lessons drawn from that experience. However, the joint staff immediately sent the report to the National Defense University archives, where it sat, unread until its discovery 40-years later (W. Murray 2017). Lessons were available to policymakers, their blind spot was in failing to take heed of the advice of history. The problem repeats itself across administrations and we see the same mistakes being made deliberately in the case of the rebirth of interest in counterinsurgency training during the 1980s. In a damning indictment of the military, recent combat experience and history were blatantly overlooked. Even as its own instructors at the Special Operations School in Fort Bragg were attempting to build out their curriculum, they found that staff had been ordered to destroy their 1970s counterinsurgency files (Crane September 2002). Failing to learn the lessons of history because one didn’t know where to look is forgivable, but consciously tossing aside the lessons of past conflicts is far less so and can perhaps be explained by looking at the insular tendencies of US political thinking.

(*Cognitive Biases and definitions utilized throughout the paper (“Biases at play”) sourced from: Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment. Oxford University Press, USA. Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. Cambridge University Press.List of cognitive biases, Wikipedia )

With 94% of IR scholars working in the country where they earned their PhD, the United States is exceeded in this measure of insularity only by Poland with 96%. Further indicators of insularity in US academic IR programs comes from the limited number of languages spoken by US IR scholars and estimates that US authors write 71% of assigned readings in US IR courses. While US-centric reading lists may be the product of quality and not just insularity, no other country assigned authors from its own country at anywhere near the rate of the US community (Maliniak, et al. 2018). When ideas from academia make their way into US policy, we see fewer avenues for outside-US influences to come into play than possible in a less insular system. Further, the risk of assuming that American modes of thinking apply to non-American actors traps US analysis into a cycle of policy mistakes where the wrong lessons are learned from US policy failures and those mistakes are needlessly repeated.

Biases at play:

• Common Source bias: A subset of the anchoring bias which is the tendency to rely heavily on, or anchor to, a small set of information. The common source bias is the tendency to combine or compare research studies from the same source, especially those that use the same methodologies or data

• Law of the instrument: Overreliance on the most familiar methods or tools while ignoring or underutilizing alternative approaches

Unfortunately, examples abound. Grand Joint Exercise 4, conducted on Sunday, Feb. 7th, 1932, Admiral Harry Yarnell executed a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, almost precisely the same as the one the Japanese undertook on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1941(Krepinevich 2010). Similarly, the SIGMA II wargames conducted by the Pentagon, in September 1964 involved a series of games portentous in predicting, with eerie accuracy, how North Vietnam would escalate its commitment of resources and troops to South Vietnam after a limited US bombing campaign. Further, the game ended with the US having 500,000 troops committed to defense of South Vietnam, military and political situation in a stalemate, and festering political protests and upheavals roiling the US in opposition to the war. Lastly, the Millennium Challenge 2002 wargame, here, ret. Lt. Gen. Paul Van Riper, acting as red force commander and utilizing capabilities, systems, and tactics resembling Iran, sank nearly the entire US fleet before it was committed to battle. US wargame leaders then refloated the US fleet, scripted the wargame exercise, and enacted draconian restrictions on Van Riper to ensure blue force victory. Then turned around to state that it proved the validity of current US strategic and operational planning assumptions and concepts. In these examples, there appears a tendency to ignore the lessons of history or to believe that historical examples were known to fail to apply to the scenario under analysis.

The View from China

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”

― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

When Westerners attempt to identify and interpret those characteristics paradigmatic of Chinese strategic culture there is a tendency to cognitively “knock up against” particular barriers. These barriers are, in large part, the product of the vastly different systems, East and West, in which we have learned how to think. A student of Richard Nisbett, the renowned American social psychologist, once succinctly explained these fundamental differences in the following way: “I think the world is a circle, and you think it is a line” (Nisbett 2010, page xiii). In just a few words, this simple, yet profound, statement seems to capture not just the differences in East/West “worldviews”, but the gulf that separates our strategic cultures.

This section of the paper presents an initial attempt to redress this gap, identifying the critical cognitive biases inherent in Chinese military-strategic culture, as demonstrated in the core tenets and characteristics of its stated and implied strategic cultural approaches. This section will adopt a “Chinese perspective” (at least to the best of the author’s ability), and explore the cultural context and psychology that underpins its strategic culture, singling out those cognitive biases correlated to each characteristic set.

For the purposes of this section, “strategic culture”, unless otherwise noted, will refer explicitly to military-strategic culture and will adopt a definition of “two sets of interconnected assumptions about the nature of war in human affairs and how to conduct warfare” (Ghiselli 2018, page 167). We have assumed strategic culture is intrinsically motivational and inherently possesses certain cognitive biases and conceptions. As noted by Alastair Johnston in his article Thinking About Strategic Culture, nation-states tend to clothe “these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the strategic preferences seem uniquely realistic and efficacious”(Johnston 1995, page 46). Hence, a nation’s strategic culture holds a potentially outsized influence in the conception and implementation of military strategies.

A Preoccupation with the Ancient

Many contemporary Chinese military leaders believe that ancient Chinese values and warfighting principles retain their usefulness and relevance for the modern strategic environment. Ancient Chinese philosophical texts and military treatises such as The Art of War and literary classics like Journey to the West are essentially sine qua non to the identity of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). As Thomas G. Mahnken observes in his research paper Secrecy & Stratagem: Understanding Chinese Strategic Culture: “PLA military handbooks routinely refer to battles fought 4,000 years ago as object lessons, and PLA leaders seek guidance from 2,500-year-old writings for modern Operations” (Mahnken 2011, page 3). The Pentagon, too, has recognized the Chinese preoccupation with the past, observing in a 2014 report prepared for its Office of Net Assessment that since 1989, China has held an annual international “Art of War” symposium. These international symposiums, in turn, have led to the establishment of the China Research Society of Sun Tzu’s Art of War. The intellectual debate from this forum appears to have stirred a reinvigoration of the ubiquity of “Art of War principles” as evidenced by its ample citation in modern Chinese military texts such as The Science of Military Strategy, and frequent references in dissertations, military-strategic essays, and analysis by senior PLA figures (Redacted 2014)*.

*(For instance, retired PLA Lieutenant General Li Jijun stated in 2006 that the "twin peaks of China's military strategic thinking are Sun Tzu's Art of War and Mao Zedong's military thinking." - Li Jijun, “Military Strategic Thinking and Scientific Decision-making,” China Military Science, No. 1 2006, pp. 28-38.

Chai Yuqiu, from the Nanjing Army Command Academy noted rather than receding in importance, the proliferation and dissemination of information increased the salience of Sun Tzu's strategic wisdom; particularly, his injunction that the wise general wins without fighting. In his analysis, Chai identified information as the new force multiplier, facilitating "informationized reconnaissance" and the comprehensive understanding of one's adversary that would allow a general to "break an enemy's resistance without fighting." Chai Yuqiu, “Sun Tzu’s Strategic Thought and its Inspiration for Informationized Warfare,” - Dissertation from the Sixth International Seminar on Sun Tzu’s Art of War,November 2004, Shenzhen, China.Quoted in China: Military Strategy and Basic Concepts, 2014

In the words of Major General Wang Pufeng, former Director of the Strategy Department at Beijing's Academy of Military Science, Sun Tzu's Art of War constituted the "Gem of Chinese Strategic Culture." - China: Military Strategy and Basic Concepts, 2014, 66.)

Biases at play:

• Confirmation bias: Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, focus on and remember information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions

• Semmelweis reflex: the tendency to reject new evidence that contradicts a paradigm

• Anchoring bias: The anchoring bias, or focalism, is the tendency to rely too heavily—to "anchor"—on one trait or piece of information when making decisions (usually the first piece of information acquired on that subject)

• Functional fixedness: a tendency limiting a person to using an object only in the way it is traditionally used

The Collective Over the Individual

While the idea of personal agency has dominated the evolution of Western civilization, Chinese culture has preferred to emphasize reciprocal social obligation and collective agency. Collective agency is seen to be a vehicle for “harmony”, and harmony an analogue for unity. As Richard Nisbett notes in The Geography of Thought, “Every Chinese was first and foremost a member of… several collectives - the clan, the village, and especially the family” (Nisbett 2010, page 5). By putting “the collective” at the pointy end of the pyramid, ostensibly reordering Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, the Chinese expectation was that internal unity would produce stability. Despite this, however, in more than 4,000 years of dynastic rule almost all of the 4,000 wars (approx.) China fought were either civil wars or wars attempting to unify the country (Mahnken 2011). Until more recently, “stability” has proven elusive, and despite recent successes, the threat of disunity still weighs heavily on the Chinese government’s psyche. To them, domestic threats are as dangerous, if not more so, than foreign. The PLA, it should be remembered, is the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) army, not the Chinese state’s army, and “unlike a national army dedicated to the defense of a state and its people, the Chinese military’s purpose is to create political power for the party” (Mattis 2018).

Another critical element of the Chinese “collective” cultural tradition is the notion of holism. Holism seeks to understand and interpret events through analysis of the entirety of a system, rather than its component parts. The Chinese possess systems of thought that are explicitly informed by a holistic cultural tradition, paying “attention to a wide range of events; they search for relationships between things; and they think you can’t understand the part without understanding the whole” (Nisbett 2010, page xiii). As a result, the Chinese tend to assume situational inconsistency and are significantly less likely than Westerners to experience surprise (Masuda and Nisbett 2001; Choi and Nisbett 1998)).

The late American admiral and strategist J.C. Wylie illustrated an example of these concepts in practice, in the military-strategic context, when juxtaposing sequential and cumulative strategies. Sequential strategies consist of "a planned sequence of events where each event is dependent upon the success of the preceding event" (i.e. the US’ Central Pacific campaign in WWII) (Wylie and Jr 2014, page 22). Cumulative strategies are "a collection of small, disconnected actions that, when taken together, have a significant impact" (i.e. US submarine campaign against Japanese merchant shipping, blockades, insurgencies) (Wylie and Jr 2014, page 23)*. The Chinese appear inclined toward cumulative strategies, wherein they gradually accrete their relative position of power over time, with the goal of overturning a position of relative inferiority in the current balance of power. Once sufficient power has been accrued during this “cumulative process”, China's strategic position will thus offer a chance to obtain its objectives without fighting, or at least facilitate the undertaking of sequential operations from a position of strategic parity or even superiority….China thinks the world is a circle; the US thinks it is a line.

*(To expound on the US submarine campaign in the Pacific; this campaign was an example of cumulative strategy because it produced strategic effects through gradually reducing Japan's capacity to resist America's sequential strategies (series of sequenced amphibious landing operations). It was cumulative since there wasn't any clear and explicit phasing of submarine operations - rather, the cumulative effects of sinking Japanese merchant ships - cargo ships, oil tankers, troop transports - once reaching a critical mass, meant that Japan could not reinforce its far-flung island defenses. It could no longer project power in a meaningful way, and since Japan's campaign strategy rested on an integrated network of island defenses, it rendered this system ineffective. The US was thus able to neutralize the most formidable island defenses (i.e. Rabaul) and attack lightly defended islands. Bypassed islands could be left to wither on the vine, since Japan could not reinforce or resupply. However, there is no single - sequential or sequence of operations that can be pinpointed as explaining this campaign's success, since it was the result of cumulative and disconnected actions - not a single or combination of decisive military engagements. A more recent example is the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan. No one decisive operation or combination of decisive actions led to their victory. Rather, it was the cumulative pressure, exerted over time, that wore down the government's capacity and legitimacy, and undermined US will to sustain their efforts.)

Biases at play:

• Framing effect - The framing effect is the tendency to draw different conclusions from the same information, depending on how that information is presented

• Information Bias - The tendency to seek information even when it cannot affect action

• Group attribution error - the tendency to assume that group decision outcomes reflect the preferences of group members, even when information is available that clearly suggests otherwise.

• Group Think - the psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome.

• Courtesy bias- the tendency to give an opinion that is more socially correct than one's true opinion, to avoid offending anyone.

Know Your Enemy, Know Yourself: Calculation & Hubris

Throughout much of its history, China believed itself to be the heart not only of a hierarchical international system, surrounded by tributary states but at the physical center of the earth - it was “The Middle Kingdom (Zhongguo) both geographically and culturally. The Middle Kingdom ideology was characterized by an assumed perception of boundless cultural superiority, in other words, a conviction that China was civilized and that states beyond its borders were “barbarians”. This concept was reinforced by an isolationist Chinese reluctance, or perhaps disinterest, in exploring beyond its natural land borders, paired with a fabricated narrative about the inevitable arrival of explorers and emissaries from foreign lands seeking an audience with the emperor. The narrative, which was fed to the population, described foreign diplomats and military leaders kowtowing and paying tribute to the Chinese rulers, even when the opposite was reality (as it was for the European states) (Mahnken 2011).

There is a tendency in certain cultures for ethnocentrism to occur when, as William Graham Sumner noted, “one’s own group is the center of everything, and all others are scaled and rated with reference to it.”(Thomas and Sumner 1907, page 13). While certainly not a characteristic unique to China, ethnocentrism is intrinsically part of its strategic culture. As Mahnken describes in The Geography of Thought and Scoblic and Tetlock expand:

“The Chinese believe that they possess special gifts when it comes to the art and practice of statecraft. Similarly, the PLA teaches its officers that longstanding Chinese ethical and military traditions are morally and strategically superior to those of the West and that Chinese cleverness is more than a match for material strength”(Mahnken 2011, page 10; Peter Scoblic and Tetlock 2020, page 5)

Ethnocentric cultures are prone to emphasize the positive aspects of their behavior and exaggerate the negative elements of others. Hostility, real or manufactured (see “Wolf Warrior'' diplomacy), magnifies ethnocentrism, increasing cohesion within a group (i.e. Han Chinese) and sharpening stereotypes of outsiders (i.e. Uyghurs/Westerners) (Mahnken 2011)). States possessing a highly ethnocentric strategic culture also tend to overestimate their capabilities relative to those of potential adversaries. As the 2010 Joint Operating Environment explains: “For millennia, China has held a position of cultural and political dominance over the lands and people on its frontiers that has been true of no other civilization.”...but those continuities and the cultural power of China’s civilization have also provided a negative side: to a considerable extent they have also isolated China from currents and developments in the external world.” United States Joint Forces Command 2010, pages 26-27)

Chinese strategic culture strongly emphasizes the importance of adversary analysis as a precondition for success. While Western culture is less “risk-averse”, even celebratory of the bravery of risk-takers, in the Chinese tradition taking risks is considered negligent. As Sun Tzu asserts, “Strategic thinking without certainty is not strategic thinking in the real sense and could not follow the correct way to direct war.”(Griffith 1963). Three sixty degree adversary analysis remains a hallmark of Chinese strategic thinking and is utilized creatively and diversely. In the year 2000, for instance, the PLA had more students enrolled in American graduate schools than the United States military ((United States Joint Forces Command 2010). Yet “certainty” in strategic thinking, which Sun Tzu suggests is essential to success, is far from a fait accompli for the Chinese, despite their massive investments in adversary analysis.

Biases at play:

Egocentric bias - with a subset of biases:

• Illusion of asymmetric insight: people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them

• False uniqueness bias: the tendency of people to see their projects and themselves as more singular than they actually are

• Illusion of control: the tendency to overestimate one's degree of influence over other external events

• Overconfidence effect: a tendency to have excessive confidence in one's own answers to questions.

Deception

Classical Chinese writings on warfare and military strategy emphasize the role of deception in this arena, and as demonstrated previously, classical Chinese writings continue to play an outsized role in Chinese strategic culture. Sun Tzu went so far as to claim “all warfare is based on deception” (Griffith 1963). However, it seems likely that the Chinese fascination with trickery is an outgrowth of a strategic culture that compelled China to rely on sophisticated asymmetric strategies and tactics to compensate for its inferior weapons and equipment (Mahnken 2011). Deception is also a concept intrinsically linked to the Chinese notion of stratagem (mou, ji, ce), which, with “strategic certainty”, forms a holy trinity within its strategic culture. This tripartite is perfectly captured in Deng Xiaoping’s twenty-four-character strategy, which came to characterize the post-Mao period: “to watch and observe calmly, secure our own position, behave with confidence and patience, hide our capacities and bide our time, be good at keeping a low profile, never play the leader”(Gopal Gopal and Mancheri 2012). The Shashoujian (assassin's mace) becomes the weapon that embodies these three prongs. A Shashoujian’s true capacity is opaque, to be effective, the weapon must remain hidden from the adversary. The threat is perceived, and imagination delivers a terrifying effect, and this is its true destructive capability - the uncertainty of its nature. Until recently, Chinese military funding was constrained, and technological forces were limited. In this context, China focused on the development of shashoujian weapons. A recent example is the DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile. “According to the best public knowledge, the DF-21D was never tested against a moving target similar to an aircraft carrier at sea. Yet, when the PLA in 2011 placed the missile in the field in Guangdong Province, it created a new reality to which others had to adjust” (Mattis 2018).

Biases at play:

• Law of the instrument: an over-reliance on a familiar tool or methods, ignoring or under-valuing alternative approaches.

• Illusion of asymmetric insight: people perceive their knowledge of their peers to surpass their peers' knowledge of them

• Zero-sum bias: a situation is incorrectly perceived to be like a zero-sum game (i.e., one person gains at the expense of another)

Analysis & Conclusion

For the purposes of our analysis, the ongoing conflict in Ukraine provides an ideal analytical lens through which to identify and evaluate relative Sino-American biases. First, Ukraine lends a solid empirical foundation to support our postulation of cultural and cognitive biases as key determinants in, and perhaps predictors of, Chinese and American strategic culture and behaviors. Further, it does so in real-time and involves a complex case where each competitor is motivated by a version of strategic duality. The strategic calculations underlying Chinese and American responses to events in Ukraine extend beyond the unfolding situation in that theater and are equally driven by their larger geostrategic competition. Second, both Chinese and American strategists will study the political, military, and strategic lessons of Ukraine in meticulous detail. Since the evolving Sino-American great power competition is still in its nascent stages, this lesson learning process will be determinative in shaping their defense postures, force structures, and larger strategic concepts. What is of most significant interest in our case is how certain American and Chinese cognitive and strategic biases may be affected by the immediate lessons being revealed in Ukraine.

China

China has adopted a cautious and relatively muted approach to events in Ukraine. Chinese policy vis-à-vis Ukraine is probative in that it evinces the overriding nature of particular cultural and cognitive biases in producing Chinese strategic policy. In the context of its response to Ukraine, Chinese circumspection is not a function of bemusement or apathy to the situation on the ground in that country; rather, it is a manifestation of cultural and cognitive frames that have been socialized and embedded into Chinese strategic thinking. The indecision and seeming obtuseness of Chinese policymakers in failing to clearly stake out a position relative to developments in Ukraine is likely an indication of inherent contradictions in several cultural and cognitive elements underlying Chinese strategic thought, as well as the polarity between these elements. For example, Chinese passivity and lethargy in Ukraine is most certainly correlated with Chinese conceptions of strategy and strategic interaction. Specifically, under the hyper-rationalistic Chinese views of strategy, strategy is understood as a process and phenomenon amenable to scientific study. Further, implicit in these sanguinary assumptions is the underlying belief that deliberative study and the power of reason can pierce the innate complexity and chaos of warfare. In this framework, comprehensive understanding is not just possible but a predicate to undertaking the decision for strategic engagement. An immutable injunction in Chinese strategic culture, ancient and contemporary, is the admonishment to thoroughly understand the relative correlation of forces between oneself and a potential adversary; Chinese strategists have belabored this point in classical texts through the ages. However, as we see in Ukraine, Chinese inertia and vacillation have led the nation to adopt policy positions that have, to date, been irrelevant to the course of events while simultaneously projecting an ineffectual image in the eyes of allies, competitors, and neutrals alike.

China will be impelled to recalibrate its quixotic quest for strategic certainty and a holistic understanding of the competitive environment. As the highly dynamic and ever-shifting political and military vagaries of Ukraine should make clear, even if the fanciful vision of strategic certainty were achieved, it would confer, at best, a transitory and limited strategic advantage. This is because the combustible and volatile situation would almost immediately evolve to produce a new reality on the ground, thus necessitating a new dynamic to which policy and strategy must readjust. In such situations, the cumbersome Chinese approach to assessment will struggle to keep pace with rapidly shifting tactical and operational interactions that combine to shape strategic environments. Further, as it falls further behind, with each successive strategic/political iteration, not only does the range of available options become increasingly narrow, but the attendant strategic risks that would accompany any Chinese policy intervention would increase commensurately, possibly to prohibitive levels. Chinese strategic culture places great emphasis on the judicious weighing of risk as a precondition to action; a practice which, on its face, would be a touchstone to prudent statecraft. However, it is a fine line that separates prudential calculations of risk from excessive caution. Indeed, overcaution which leads to the requirement of satisfying exceedingly arbitrary or prohibitive preconditions for strategic action can themselves increase, rather than attenuate, strategic and operational risk. In conflict and strategic competition the element of time often acts as the final arbiter of fortune and misfortune.

As this paper previously elucidated, underlying Chinese strategy is an implicit cultural and historical chauvinism that undoubtedly colors and biases its approach to strategic decision-making. The Chinese conception of Jong Guo – or Middle Kingdom – is a keystone tenet in the nation’s strategic edifice. This notion breeds aggrandized self-conceptions of Chinese ethnocentrism, ideology, and capabilities. In terms of practical policy, China believes that it possesses the material capacity and superiority of understanding to chart its own course of action. China is a unitary strategic actor and, as such, can take actions that are largely self-referential. This vision risks alienating China from the larger strategic context within which it is merely one – among many – strategic actors. In Ukraine, these myopic beliefs have manifested themselves in China’s contradictory stance of proclaiming the inviolability of sovereignty while simultaneously offering tepid support to Russian claims. The effect is that its policy position has been less than satisfying to everyone alike. Ukraine, the United States, and the Western world have taken such Chinese equivocations and double-speak as justification to eschew its relevance to the strategic situation, while Russia has surely been disquieted by its ally’s indifference and fence-sitting.

United States

Close examination of the evolving U.S. policies in the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict bears witness to several distinct American cultural and cognitive biases that are the mainstay features of its strategic policy. First and most salient is the marked American bias for action. U.S. policy vis-à-vis Ukraine has been expeditious and responsive to the conflict’s constantly shifting vicissitudes. Unlike the certainty bias that is such a pervasive constraint to Chinese action, the United States’ ability to act is unencumbered by the necessity of first meeting the exacting – and unrealistic – standards of obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the totality of a situation. It is fruitful to juxtapose Sino-American biases in this regard, between the decided American bias for action and China’s reflective circumspection, as this asymmetry clearly played a role in shaping their highly divergent policies toward the Ukrainian conflict.

Moreover, the root of this disparity is likely a product of culturally determined factors; namely, the disparate intellectual and theoretical streams which underlay the American approach to strategic assessment. In contrast to the scientific rationalist outlook which is implicit in Sun Tzu and, by extension, underlies the Chinese approach to strategic analysis, American approaches to this issue are largely informed by the strategic logic of Clausewitz and Thucydides. Thus, Americans are less sanguine about the capacity to effect, much less dissipate, the inherent confusion, chaos, and fog that encompasses war and strategic competition. In the American view, complete situational awareness/understanding can never be attained and is, therefore not an adequate justification to preclude acting. Concomitantly, Americans are more comfortable acting in opaque environments, under conditions of incomplete, fragmentary, and contradictory information.

A welcome development revealed in American policy toward the Ukrainian conflict has been its unique wielding of intelligence information as a coercive element and strategic tool, of its approach. This seems to indicate a possible shift in two individual biases that have at times, and to various degrees, been noted features in U.S. policy and strategy: ahistoricism and compartmentalization. The deft employment of current U.S. intelligence to systematically undermine and preempt Russian attempts at obfuscation and maskirovka was unprecedented. Seemingly, the United States anticipated the operational military sequencing of Putin’s moves and the strategic deception and narratives that would precede them. Timely and precise American intelligence was disseminated preemptively to expose Russian mendacity and make clear their nefarious intentions with each successive attempt. This development may indicate that U.S. policy is transitioning from a compartmentalization bias that has limited its outlook on specific tools of statecraft, particularly with respect to intelligence. Traditionally, U.S. policy has suffered from a restrictive view of intelligence, conflating it strictly with information. In Ukraine, the adept American policy has transcended the traditional strictures placed upon intelligence, expanding it beyond the purely descriptive/diagnostic realm of information, and wielding it as a prescriptive tool of U.S. coercive statecraft. Similarly, this is anomalous to another bias that has long vitiated U.S. strategic performance – ahistoricism. The fact that the United States was able to achieve this degree of success in the competitive employment of intelligence to stymie Russian strategy is likely the result of exhaustive efforts to assiduously study the Russian way of war and strategy, since its 2008 campaign in Georgia. That U.S. policy was capable of successfully anticipating Russian moves bears the fruit of these efforts; moreover, the ability of American policy to manipulate and control the informational realm through employing intelligence as a weapon would seem to indicate that the United States has elicited and incorporated the germane lessons of Russian military campaigns into its doctrine.

Developments in strategic culture of this type demonstrate the U.S.’ genuine capacity to adapt and learn, recognizing its blindspots and mitigating the negative implications of its cognitive biases. Further consideration of the analysis contained within this paper, could provide greater opportunity for American military strategic decision-makers to meet the challenges posed by its adversaries in the complex twenty-first-century conflict space.

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