{"id":40325,"date":"2018-11-09T08:41:10","date_gmt":"2018-11-09T13:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40325"},"modified":"2018-11-09T08:41:10","modified_gmt":"2018-11-09T13:41:10","slug":"psychoanalysing-nato-confirmation-bias","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=40325","title":{"rendered":"Psychoanalysing NATO: Confirmation Bias"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Psychoanalysing<\/p>\n

Psychoanalysing NATO: Confirmation Bias<\/a><\/h3>\n<\/header>\n

Earlier parts of this intermittent series discussed NATO’s\u00a0projection<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0gaslighting<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Psychology Today<\/a>\u00a0defines confirmation bias as:<\/p>\n

Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it.\u00a0Confirmation bias<\/a>\u00a0suggests that we don\u2019t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that make us feel good because they confirm our prejudices. Thus, we may become prisoners of our assumptions.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Or, closer to the topic of this essay:<\/p>\n

Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are \u2014 but this is just wrong<\/a>.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This quotation is from an\u00a0interview of George Kennan by Thomas Friedman<\/a>\u00a0published in the New York Times twenty years ago. He was speaking about what was then called “NATO expansion” (later changed to the more anodyne \u2013 and deceptive \u2013 phrase “NATO enlargement”. (I as a civil servant in the Canadian Department of National Defence used to amuse myself by seeing if I could sneak the forbidden “expansion” \u2013 an altogether more honest word \u2013 into briefing notes for the Higher Ups. As I recall, I got away with it about half the time. A trivial pleasure in the evolving disaster.)<\/p>\n

But back to Kennan, Mr X, the author of the\u00a0Long Telegram<\/a>, the founder of “containment<\/a>“, the man who actually lived long enough to see his recommendations, not only followed, but successful. He was right: in the long term, the\u00a0Soviet system was not sustainable<\/a>; it was, as Russian President Putin said: “a road to a blind alley<\/a>“.<\/p>\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Psychoanalysing NATO: Confirmation Bias Earlier parts of this intermittent series discussed NATO’s\u00a0projection\u00a0and\u00a0gaslighting. Psychology Today\u00a0defines confirmation bias as: Once we have formed a view, we embrace information that confirms that view while ignoring, or rejecting, information that casts doubt on it.\u00a0Confirmation bias\u00a0suggests that we don\u2019t perceive circumstances objectively. We pick out those bits of data that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[3252,18518,553,17074,22875,8203],"class_list":["post-40325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-confirmation-bias","tag-gaslighting","tag-nato","tag-patrick-armstrong","tag-projection","tag-strategic-culture-foundation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40325","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40325"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40325\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40326,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40325\/revisions\/40326"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}