In recent years, strategic surprises are everywhere. Russia and the United States were surprised by Ukrainian resilience in 2022, and Israel was surprised by the Hamas attacks in October 2023. Just recently, Iran was surprised by Israel’s preventive strikes in June 2025, probably also wrongly assessing the US resolve to strike the Iranian nuclear program if negotiations fail. Such surprises reflect not only foundational misperceptions about the environment, but sometimes also flawed self-perceptions. They also highlight the need of scholars and practitioners to study the phenomenon of surprise, take measures to prevent it, avoid hubris, and exercise deception to surprise our adversaries.

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