Q: Do different sets of people come up with the same scenarios given the same information?
A: We just tried that experiment a few weeks ago for the first time. We had two back-to-backscenario groups both looking at political scenarios for the world. One was all non-Americans the other was all Americans to see if they came up with different views of the world and they did - quite strikingly so. We did the non-Americans first and then the Americans and about two-thirds of the way through we showed them the non-American results, and had them react to that as well.
Q: What were the big differences?
A: The overwhelming message was the antipathy non-Americans now feel towards the US. And Americans just weren't seeing that at all. There was no war on terrorism anywhere outside the US. In fact, there was a clear perception that the US was the problem. The scenario that everyone else was talking about was how could you constrain the US, not how could you defeat terrorism. So there are completely different perceptions of the world.
[ 
