ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the background and progress of Jimmy Carter's policy, with particular attention to the role played by intelligence assessment in both the policy's formulation and its demise. The many problems of intelligence assessment in its execution and in its presentation to decision makers are unusually clear in these events. In 1970, the US intelligence community generally agreed that North and South Korean forces appeared to stand in rough balance, leading most policy makers to conclude neither ade could attack the other successfully. The Korean government was perceived to be uncooperative and obstructionist in the congressional investigation. The army and congressional conservatives fought hard against that option and Congress was also engaged in politically sensitive debates over where the division would move after Korea. According to Zbigniew Brzezinski, by late 1978 and early 1979, Carter was less concerned with the details of the Korean military balance than with his many lost foreign policy commitments.
