Scenario analysis is pedagogically valuable – it helps scholars avoid cognitive biases, dogmatic beliefs, and creates a nuanced understanding of complex geopolitics.

Avoiding Cognitive Biases In a methods book on scenarios, James Ogilvy discussed the inability of extremely bright people to see ahead due to cognitive biases, that is, what people found “unthinkable,” though those futures eventually came into being. In the context of discussing the future of US and USSR nuclear arsenals during a 1980s scenario exercise, Ogilvy wrote in hindsight that “two decades later we now take for granted what was then unthinkable to some very good thinkers” (Ogilvy 2002:191). This comment is very similar to an insight by Philip Tetlock that political scientists tend to view surprises as overdetermined in hindsight, but as inconceivable ahead of time (Weber 1996:281). Scenarios, whether formally written or developed for purposes of conversation, offer a powerful way for researchers to compensate for cognitive biases endemic to any kind of human research. Scenarios do this by forcing researchers to confront their most basic assumptions about how the world operates and by teasing out the logical implications of extreme values on the independent variables of interest. As Peter Schwartz put it, “[Scenario building is] all part of a process of self-reflection: understanding yourself and your biases, identifying what matters to you, and perceiving where to put your attention. It takes persistent work and honesty to penetrate our internal mental defenses. To ensure the success of our efforts, we need a clear understanding of the relationship between our own concerns and the wider world around us. To achieve that, it helps to have a constant stream of rich, diverse, and thought-provoking information” (Schwartz 1996:59). One of the most common forms of bias that scenarios help to compensate for is an anchoring bias; that is, the tendency to interpret new information in ways that conform with our preexisting beliefs (Jervis 1976:143–202). One might also think about this as a “linear projection” bias; scholars who have a view of how the world is operating in the present (theoretically informed or not) may well project this view into the future. In addition to forcing scholars to explicitly confront these beliefs, the scenario process offers a way to think about sorting new information. A completed scenario project allows a researcher to think about multiple futures (with differing plot lines for how the world arrived there) at once. Thus, new information is not automatically compared against a single linear projection into the future, but rather weighted relative to alternative futures. New information might be consistent with all hypothesized futures, in which case the new information may not lead to a new understanding. An example is the current debate regarding whether China is rising or declining relative to the United States. This literature, despite access to the same data, offers remarkably different projections regarding the future strength of each state and what this portends for the international system (Pape 2005; Layne 2009; Beckley 2011/2012; Subramanian 2011). In many cases, however, new information is likely to favor one trend line over another, thus changing how a researcher assigns probabilities to various futures. Pedagogy Scenarios offer many of the same benefits as simulations, recently a hot topic in the pedagological literature, to teaching in political science (Newkirk and Hamilton 1979; Smith and Boyer 1996; Newmann and Twigg 2000; Simpson and Kaussler 2009; Sasley 2010). Indeed, scenarios are often a key part of simulation learning. For instance, in a decision-making simulation in which students are assigned the roles of heads of state, the students are often offered a scenario vignette to respond to with policy choices. The emphasis of scenarios and simulations in pedagogy, however, is different. The literature on simulations tends to focus on experiential learning, but recent scholarship has cast some doubt on whether or not this kind of learning improves students’ knowledge of core course concepts (Raymond 2010). Scenarios offer a way to make classroom exercises more explicitly oriented toward the incorporation of theories. For instance, rather than asking students to take on the roles of the President, National Security Advisor, etc., the students may be presented with a vignette and asked to analyze the strategic implications of the scenario for the United States. Both coauthors of this article have used scenarios in classroom exercises. Tom Mahnken has taught the use of scenarios for stategic planning at the Naval War College. Tim Junio used scenario exercises at the University of Pennsylvania. Students in the class “International Security,” having been assigned Thomas Schelling’s Arms and Influence and other core readings on strategy, were asked to evaluate a scenario in which the United States had committed itself to military action, but was subsequently held hostage by a foreign power. In Junio’s scenario, a future US President was led to believe that due to an intelligence breakthrough, North Korean nuclear weapon targets were rendered vulnerable to a US first strike with conventional weapons. The United States and close allies saw this as an opportunity for regime change and pre-positioned US forces in the region. The US President then issued an ultimatum to the North Korean regime to vacate the country within 48 hours, akin to the US threat to Saddam Hussein in 2003, or face a forceful regime change at the hands of the US-led coalition. To the surprise of US leaders, North Korea’s Supreme Leader went on television to announce that an unspecified number of nuclear warheads had been smuggled into the United States as a contingency against such a situation. The Supreme Leader then declared that any act of aggression against the North Korean people would be met with retaliation against the US homeland. Students in the class were asked to first discuss the strategic situation for the United States. What mistakes had been made to get the United States into that scenario? What issues were at stake? Then, the students were asked to apply strategic concepts to discuss how the United States might seek to extricate itself from the situation. The North Korea’s blackmail scenario is an example of an extremely low-probability event that almost certainly would not justify much further analysis by the intelligence and defense policy communities, but is extremely useful for pedagogy. This kind of scenario increases student interest in the material and forces them to engage with the theories and concepts of the course. Rather than focus on policy decisions alone, as simulations are likely to do, students are forced to bring deductive logic to bear to assess the boundaries of the scenario.