THE gravest threats to national security rarely appear out of nowhere. More often, they announce themselves quietly through small, scattered and apparently unrelated developments that may remain unnoticed until they combine into something far more serious. Wars, terrorist campaigns, strategic shifts, economic crises and geopolitical surprises often seem sudden only in retrospect. There is usually a trail of warning signs that preceded them. The uncomfortable question is not always whether the information was available. It is whether we recognised what it was telling us. A crisis appears sudden only to those who were not watching closely enough.

The difficulty is that warning signals rarely look like warnings when they first appear. A development may seem routine. A political statement may attract little attention. A change in military activity may have several possible explanations. An unusual economic trend may be dismissed as temporary. Individually, these developments may mean little. But several developments moving in the same direction can tell an entirely different story. This is where strategic warning becomes difficult. Military professionals watch military developments, economists examine economic indicators, politicians look through different lenses, and security agencies concentrate on immediate threats.

Yet tomorrow’s crisis may emerge precisely where these categories intersect. A change in military posture, for example, may appear routine when examined alone. Combined with other related developments, however, it may acquire an entirely different significance. The danger is that we analyse the pieces without seeing the picture. There is also a very human........

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