War and Chance

Over the past two decades, the most serious problems with U.S. foreign policy have revolved around the challenge of assessing uncertainty. Past experiences have shown that there is an urgent need to find ways of improving the ways in which foreign policy analysts assess uncertainty, and the ways in which foreign policy decision makers account for risk when evaluating high-stakes choices. This book shows shows how foreign policy analysts can assess uncertainty in a manner that is theoretically coherent, empirically meaningful, politically defensible, practically useful, and sometimes logically necessary for making sound choices.