Pearl Harbor Attack Case Study

Abdullatif Alasfour/@01396922

Professor John Rogers

POL 1013-007

Phase Three Essay Exam

12-11-2015

Foreign Policy and Intelligence Failures during the Pearl Harbour Attack

The Pearl Harbour attack is among the most famous disasters relating to

American foreign policy and military history. The December 7th, 1941 attack sunk a fleet of ships including eighteen operations warships, one hundred and eighty-eight aircraft, four battleships and more than twenty-four hundred Americans died in the attack.

Although the Japanese attained two surprises attacks, they did not destroy everything in the Pearl Harbour. The Japanese task force leader Admiral Chuichui Nagumo declined to sanction a third attack that would have destroyed the port and decimated the counteroffensive power of

The information counters the notion that the Roosevelt administration had failed to act on intelligence and essentially let the attack happen.

The sum of all the information available demonstrates several critical issues related to the management of intelligence, the institutional and political failures, and the overall communication in the context of foreign policy interest. An important element that comes out of the discussion is that the attack was avoidable. Washington provided the navy and army generals with insufficient information, which led to their ill- preparedness. Further, it was the result of Roosevelt 's blunder of underestimating the power and resolve of the Japanese in undertaking the attack to retaliate against economic warfare began by the US.

One crucial lesson that the US intelligence community should have drawn from the attack was the need to involve all relevant parties. The fact that the Generals were unaware of the intensifying relationships between Washington and Japan meant that