Two Doctrines
Going into WW2, the US had no intelligence apparatus. They relied almost exclusively on observations by military attaches and diplomats. This led to severe intelligence failures including Pearl Harbor. While the Soviets had established spy networks in every country that could become an enemy the US had done no such thing.
As a result of this, the US was easily deceived. Imperial Japan dressed a bunch of army soldiers up in naval uniforms and paid them to walk around the US embassy. As a result the attache reported back that the fleet was still in the harbor while in reality it had set sail and was preparing to attack – no longer was it in Yukosuka despite what the attache assumed and reported. Meanwhile, the Soviets has reliable intelligence that Japan had no plans to attack them and had defined plans to attack the US between Dec 1941 and Jan 1942.
The outbreak of WW2 woke the US up and made them realize that they needed an intelligence apparatus with many high ranking members of the military and high ranking politicians bemoaning this systemic failure.
The US was allowed to succeed in no small part due to the benefits of time and geography. Geography and allies bought the US time to retool for war. In the modern age of ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons that time benefit no longer exists as attacks can be launched across oceans in less than a day. [ed note: and even more relevant today than it was in 1963 when this was written]. Timely, correct intelligence is vital to being able to react correctly and quickly – and even preemptively.
The US doctrine was heavily focused on collecting and analyzing open source intelligence. [Ed note: Even more true today – elint and osint are the main focuses based on what I’ve read thus far.] Contrast this to Soviet doctrine of the same era. Soviets focused almost exclusively on “true intelligence” – stealing secrets. Russians relegated open source intelligence to the role of research data. This comparative valuation was held true at every level from the tactical to policy making level.
The failure point of US doctrine is that it relies on ‘wise men’ to analyze the data and read the tea leaves correctly. Comparatively, the Soviets could point to stolen secrets and demonstrate exactly what the target intends and knows.
Stalin in particular hated analysts and ‘wise men’ after being burned by it several times in WW2, he would be a major influence in focusing Soviet doctrine in stealing secrets and establishing absolute proof instead of collecting data in drag nets and filtering it through ranks of analysts.