[Mb-civic] Better Spies Won't Add Up to Better Foreign Policy

[Michael Butler]

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    Better Spies Won't Add Up to
    Better Foreign Policy
    By Robert B. Reich
    Los Angeles Times

     Thursday 22 July 2004

     America's intelligence system failed to see terrorist threats coming
from Al Qaeda that should have been evident before 9/11, and then, after
9/11, saw terrorist threats coming from Iraq that didn't exist. A system
that doesn't warn of real threats and does warn of unreal ones is a broken
system.

     A unanimous and bipartisan report of the commission established by
Congress to investigate intelligence mistakes leading up to 9/11 is expected
to conclude that when its report is released today. Meanwhile, a unanimous
and bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee has discredited the CIA's
prewar assessments that Iraq possessed banned chemical and biological
weapons and was seeking nuclear arms. Those assessments "either overstated
or were not supported by the underlying intelligence," according to the
committee. The senators blamed "a series of failures" of intelligence, such
as taking circumstantial evidence as definitive proof, ignoring contrary
information and relying on discredited or dubious sources. The failures
occurred because of "shoddy work," faulty management, outmoded procedures,
"groupthink" and a "flawed culture."

     What to do? The White House, Congress and the Kerry campaign are all
sorting through several proposals. One would create a Cabinet-level
intelligence "czar" with more control over the nation's sprawling
$40-billion system for collecting and analyzing information about security
threats. A second would do just the opposite - remove the CIA director from
any control over other intelligence agencies and hence install a better
system of checks and balances. A third proposal would fix the length of the
director's term at five to seven years, removing that position from the whim
of politics. A fourth, and contrary, proposal would make the director more
politically accountable to the president and Congress. Almost all the
proposals would beef up American intelligence with more resources.

     Some of these ideas have merit, but they don't respond to the core
lesson we should have learned: When American foreign policy is based
primarily on what our spy agencies say, we run huge risks of getting it
disastrously wrong.

     The lesson isn't new. American intelligence failed to foresee the split
between China and the Soviet Union in 1960 and 1961 and thereafter never
fully comprehended it - right up through Vietnam. Had U.S. policy been based
on more direct diplomacy and less on covert operations we might have avoided
that shameful and costly war.

     The CIA was also notoriously wrong when it told John F. Kennedy that
its plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs "could not fail," and it misread
Soviet intentions before the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy managed to
avoid a nuclear war only by instigating direct communication with Nikita
Khrushchev.

     American intelligence wildly exaggerated Soviet defense capabilities in
the 1980s, leading the U.S. to spend billions of dollars for no reason.
President Reagan's military buildup didn't bring the Soviets to their knees;
the Soviet Union collapsed of its own weight.

     By all means, let's have better intelligence. But let's not fool
ourselves into thinking that better intelligence is a substitute for better
policy. This is especially true when the threat comes in the form of
terrorism.

     Terrorism is a tactic. It is not itself our enemy. There is no finite
number of terrorists in the world. At any given time, their number depends
on how many people are driven by anger and hate to join their ranks. Hence,
"smoking out," imprisoning or killing terrorists, based on information
supplied by our intelligence agencies, cannot be the prime means of
preventing future terrorist attacks against us. It is more important to deal
with the anger and hate. This means, among other things, restarting the
Middle East peace process rather than, as President Bush has done, run away
from it. It requires shoring up the economies of the Middle East, now
suffering from dwindling direct investment from abroad because of the
violence and uncertainty in the region. And it means strengthening the
legitimacy of moderate Muslim leaders, instead of encouraging extremism - as
the current administration's policies have undoubtedly done.

     Equally fatuous is the notion that "preemptive war," based on what our
intelligence agencies say a potential foreign adversary is likely to do to
us, will offer us protection. Terrorists aren't dependent on a few rogue
nations. They recruit and train in unstable parts of the world and can move
their bases and camps easily, wherever governments are weak.

     The United States cannot control or police the world. Instead, we will
have to depend on strong treaties and determined alliances to prevent
illegal distribution of thousands of nuclear weapons already in existence in
Russia, Pakistan, India and other nuclear powers, and of biological or
chemical weapons capable of mass destruction. The administration's
"go-it-alone" diplomacy takes us in precisely the wrong direction. That the
United States suffers from a failure of intelligence is indisputable. The
calamitous state of our spy agencies is only one part of that failure.

     Robert B. Reich, a professor at Brandeis University, is the author most
recently of "Reason" (2004, Alfred A. Knopf). He was secretary of Labor in
the Clinton administration.

 

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