[southernplaces7]

Your claim is absurdly, childishly reductionist. The actions of countries themselves can often be wrapped deeply in layers of obfuscation, secrecy, hidden motive and incompetence, or in many other things, and be extremely hard to even know of unless you're literally on the spot, or read at a distance for the events leading to them and their ramifications.

Analysis of other's texts and selective reading from well curated sources is absolutely useful and important in knowing what's going on in a place or what might come. Many historical examples of this abound and what you say is literally just nonsense, as if it were something invented by a dramatic teenager who hasn't actually read anything of history outside a Robert Ludlum novel (if that).

Many excellent analyses by informed outsiders with insider sources or by people who just used good investigative procedure, existed of Nazi Germany, the USSR under the bolsheviks, the USSR pre-collapse, and other countries, that if they had been read by people with a discerning eye, could have yielded powerful information about what these countries would eventually do and how. News, as in general run of the mill reporting, is often just blather, but in between it, or distilled from it and from other sources, much important information can be gleaned.