Bolt from the Blue or Avoidable Failure? Revisiting September 11 and the Origins of Strategic Surprise

Drawing on the strategic surprise, warning-response, and foreign policy literature, this article argues that the September 11 terror attacks should be regarded as a strategic surprise and examines a number of key factors that contributed to vulnerability and inhibited vigilance. Three broad explanatory "cuts" derived from the literature—psychological, bureau-organizational, and agenda-political—are deployed to sift through the rapidly expanding empirical record in an effort to shed light on the processes and contextual factors that left the United States vulnerable to the attacks. The article aims to improve our understanding of generic processes and practices that enhance or detract from vulnerability and vigilance.     

Reviews

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Hugh Seton‐Watson, The Imperialist Revolutionaries: Trends in World Communism in the 1960s and 1970s. Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 1979. x + 157 pp. $6.95.

Egbert Jahn (ed.), Soviet Foreign Policy: Its Social and Economic Conditions. London: Allison and Busby, 1978. 160 pp. £6.50.

Stephen White, Political Culture and Soviet Politics, London: Macmillan, 1979. xi + 234 pp. £10.00 and £4.95.

Donald R. Kelley (ed.) Soviet Politics in the Brezhnev Era, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1980, vii + 269 pp. £14.25.

Morton Kaplan (ed.), The Many Faces of Communism, New York: The Free Press, 1978. x + 366 pp. $14.95.

David H. Howard, The Disequilibrium Model in a Controlled Economy, Farnborough: Lexington Books, 1980. x + 112 pp. £9.50/$20.50.

Felicity Ann O'Dell, Socialisation through children's literature: The Soviet example, Cambridge: Cambride University Press, 1978, x + 277 pp. £14.00.

Martin McCauley, Marxism‐Leninism in the German Democratic Republic. The Socialist Unity Party (SED), London: Macmillan, 1979. xix + 267 pp. £12.00.

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Jan Tomasz Gross, Polish Society under German Occupation: The General‐gouvernement, 1939–1944, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1979. xviii + 343 pp. £11.00     

基于高阶空间精度格式和嵌套网格对旋翼尾迹捕捉的改进

发展了一种基于高阶迎风格式和嵌套网格捕捉直升机悬停旋翼涡尾迹的方法.无粘通量采用Roe Reimann求解器,使用改进的5阶加权基本无振荡(WENO)格式对交界面左右状态进行高阶插值,并与MUSCL插值进行比较.为便于捕捉尾迹和实施周期性边界条件,计算采用结构嵌套网格,其中高质量的旋翼网格完全嵌套于背景网格中.当解达到近似收敛后在桨尖涡分布区域对背景网格进行加密,如此经过3次得到优化的背景网格.考虑到WENO格式插值的特点,提出了搜索3层洞边界和人工外边界的方法以便插值的直接进行.用该方法对一跨音速和一亚音速悬停旋翼粘性流场进行了数值计算.数值结果表明:所发展方法对涡尾迹具有很高的捕捉能力;与MUSCL格式相比,WENO格式具有较低的数值耗散.     

Blind spots in policy analysis: What economics doesn't say about energy use

This article describes the difficulties of reducing analysis of energy use to an application of economic theory. It shows how economic concepts of behavior direct attention selectively to some important determinants of consumer behavior and away from others; how available economic accounts of short-term change in energy use, investment in energy efficiency, and the dynamics of investment limit understanding and narrow analysts' vision; how promising policy options are overlooked as a result; and how concepts and knowledge from the noneconomic behavioral sciences can compensate. Two strategies are discussed for improving analysis. Using economic theory to guide the improvement of existing models can help, conceptual blind spots will remain. A problem-oriented approach drawing on concepts and methods from across the behavioral sciences can avoid the blind spots, but cannot be systematic. Analysis can be improved by using both approaches in concert; some implications of a combined strategy are sketched.