ACH The United States and the Soviet Union participated in a unique standoff that sought to achieve dominance through the use of technological weaponry and the ideas of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The intelligence community during this time was often caught up in ways to truly understand the enemy and find ways of deflecting the political and military impact that this weapons race produced during the Cold War. Looking back on the situation, it appears that there were many ways to interpret the actions of this enemy and provide new and important insight that could contribute to the common defense of this country and its way of life.

The purpose of this essay is to re-evaluate the Intelligence Community's effort against the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This will be accomplished by utilizing a system of Analysis of Competing Hypothesis to determine the actions and behavior of the Soviets in regards to the nuclear capabilities of each country. This essay will propose a different idea that can assist analysis's in practicing the methods of keeping an open mind and allowing new and fresh ideas flow into the environment to eventually make better, and well informed decisions that are aligned with national strategies and objectives.

Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH)

Reevaluating the intelligence community's effort during this period of time requires some imaginative thought and reasonable analysis. The CIA (nd) suggested that the Analysis of Competing Hypotheses (ACH) is an extremely useful tool and method to achieve this attainment of new ideas and fresh perspectives. The information suggested "ACH is an eight-step procedure grounded in basic insights from cognitive psychology, decision analysis, and the scientific method. It is a surprisingly effective, proven process that helps analysts...

Because of its thoroughness, it is particularly appropriate for controversial issues when analysts want to leave an audit trail to show what they considered and how they arrived at their judgment." In other words those ideas that were perhaps taboo or unbelievable, should actually be considered to help paint the clearest pictures.
A New Approach

The intensity and destruction of the nuclear weapon's proposed capabilities are devastating and create levels of fear previously unknown in modern history. The psychological impact of the possibility of blowing up the world in one fatal swoop is absolutely taxing on the emotional and intellectual capacity of the human mind. As the back drop to the cold war, nuclear proliferation set a global tone of fear and terror that no doubt dictated the national defense strategy, and hence the national political strategy during these times.

There is little doubt however that the intelligence community, along with the rest of the modern world was reacting under a certain set of assumptions that have never been truly proven or accurately demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt. The most glaring and perhaps controversial assumption of the Cold War is that the nuclear arsenals of the competing alliances in this war actually worked. Furthermore, it is extremely possible, if not likely that nuclear weapons, nuclear power and the entire nuclear idea of the atom is false. While nuclear power has seemingly been proven to work, it is necessary to reevaluate the past to interpret how the intelligence community may have, and continue to this day, be duped into this trick of massive proportions.

A famous propagandist once proclaimed that the bigger the lie, the more people will believe it. This may certainly be applied to this situation…