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Authors: Mark M. Lowenthal

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LEVERS OF POWER. This translates into capabilities and intentions and, as was the case with the Soviet Union, capabilities remain the easier of the two to collect against and to assess. One of the striking changes in the post-cold war period is the decreased emphasis on military power and the increased emphasis on economic power. But it is legitimate to ask whether this reflects an actual shift in the bases of power or the recognition by other states that militarily the United States is, for the foreseeable future, unassailable. Whichever the reason, it is fair to say that concerns over the rapid growth of China’s economic power and the sudden rebound of Russia based on its control of oil and gas predominate over concerns about any military threat they may pose. At the same time, economic power is inherently less pliable than military power because it depends on successful relations with others. China’s economy requires trade, markets, and resources. Without a U.S. market, the Chinese economy will suffer greatly as will, by extension, whatever internal legitimacy the Chinese Communist Party may still have. Russia’s renewed economic power is more unilateral in nature but it still requires markets, albeit ones that are more dependent on Russian energy exports.
Indeed, it can be argued that growing economic interdependency limits freedom of action in the ability to use force to settle regional disputes. For China, the primary regional issue is Taiwan. China’s military build up across the Taiwan Straits is well known—perhaps purposefully—but it is also likely that any Chinese move against Taiwan would have severe and immediate economic consequences.
What does all of this mean for intelligence analysts? They will continue to track military developments, some of which may actually be alarming. China’s antisatellite test in January 2007 is an example, as this represents a new capability, and perhaps a shift in strategy to focus on the nodes where U.S. military preponderance can be attacked. How would an analyst react to one more Chinese antisatellite (ASAT) test? To six more? To no more? What conclusion would be drawn about Chinese intentions? Once again, we are in the capabilities/intentions conundrum.
 
MIRROR IMAGING. One of the intellectual traps in intelligence that tends to appear most often when assessing other nations is mirror imaging. It is very tempting to ascribe ambitions, goals, and drives similar to one’s own to one’s opposite numbers as well. This was evident during the cold war. Analysts and policy makers would often discuss Soviet “hawks and doves”—that is, hardliners and those with whom one could deal. After all, the United States has hawks and doves, so the Soviet Union must as well. There was little concrete intelligence upon which this was based and it is difficult to describe any Soviet leader other than Gorbachev as someone who was willing truly to accommodate Western concerns. Mirror imaging tends to recur, however. For example, discussions about the internal politics of Iran focus on radicals and moderates. This may be a valid distinction, but even if it is, does an “Iranian moderate” mean a “moderate” in our sense of the word or just someone who is less radical but still not moderate as we would understand it? Analytically these types of global descriptions can be misleading and not particularly useful.
 
INTERNAL. STABILITY. Given our recent experience with the Soviet Union and its satellite empire, it is worth assessing the internal stability of China and Russia. How likely are their publics to support more aggressive policies? One of the advantages of authoritarian states is the absence of any need to renew one’s legitimacy through a genuine competition at the ballot box. But it is also a disadvantage as there is then no accurate gauge of public sentiment beyond the internal security forces, whose main job is to stamp out dissent and who are most likely either to overestimate it as a means of safeguarding their role or underestimate it as a means of showing their prowess, But, as was noted with the Soviet Union, if the internal security forces cannot accurately gauge public sentiment, how does an intelligence service do this from outside?
North Korea, which is among those states about which the United States is currently most concerned and is also among the most difficult to judge from the outside, is one of the few states where so much rests on the thoughts and goals of only one individual, Kim Jong II. Russia and China, on the other hand, are authoritarian states (of different degrees) that might be described as translucent. They have government apparatuses, legislatures (with varying degrees of fairly minimal power), and internal factions that lead to a type of competitive political system. But it is entirely a struggle within accepted elites, much of which happens behind closed doors, after which a result is announced. Iran is a very interesting case. Iran is not a liberal democracy in that there are restrictions on the media and on who can run for office, but within those bounds there is competition, regular elections, and the ability to throw out the incumbent government, albeit to be replaced by another candidate also approved by the theocratic rulers. It could be argued that Iran resembles, to some respects, the Soviet Politburo. Any individual who can rise to that rank and then aspire to power is unlikely to be willing to overhaul or liberalize the system radically. One of the most striking aspects of China’s transformation is that three successive generations of leaders, who either helped create or build or were raised in a communist state, have managed deftly to transform, if not wholly jettison, their ideology while maintaining political control.
 
FAILED STATES. The issue
of failed states
is complex and difficult to assess or even to categorize. It is clearly about states but in a more generic way, so that it almost resembles a transnational issue. There is an oxymoronic aspect to including failed states in a chapter on nation states. as failed states have largely ceased to function as states.
A failed state is one in which there has been a breakdown of the legitimacy of the government and the ability of the government to maintain a minimal level of control over its own territory. There is a fairly broad list of attributes of a failed state:
• The state is no longer deemed legitimate by its own people
• Faltering economy and collapse of public services
• Factionalization of the population or of significant groups
• Various social factors or crises that lead to displacement of the population
• Largely independent security apparatus and suspensions of basic rights
 
Different failed states will display different attributes in varying degrees. (Every year
Foreign
Policy
magazine publishes its list of failed states worldwide and the degree to which different factors led to the ranking.) The policy issue raised by failed states is threefold. First, there is concern for the effects of the failure on the state’s population. Second, the effects of the failure tend to spill over its borders. Among the most frequent manifestations of this is the shifting of populations from failed states to neighboring states that are deemed more secure. This then puts additional demographic pressure on the neighboring state to house and feed the refugees. Third, the failed state becomes a magnet for groups that would prefer to operate in an area where there is little law enforcement—terrorists, criminals, narcotics dealers, human traffickers, and even WMD proliferators. Thus, failed states become the loci for many of the transnational issues. Afghanistan is an excellent example, serving as a host for al Qaeda after Osama bin Laden left Sudan (another failed state) and still the site of combat between the Taliban and NATO.
The first intelligence challenge posed by failed states is to identify which ones have either reached this nadir or appear to be approaching it. This is a difficult task as there is no agreed index as to what constitutes a failed state and there will be some states that display some of the attributes but still function, albeit at a very minimal level. This indication and warning function is made more difficult by the fact that policy makers often do not know what to do about a failed state. Indeed, in most cases the options are fairly limited. Unilateral intervention is rarely attractive (such as the U.S. intervention in Somalia in late 1992) and crafting a coherent multilateral approach is often very difficult as the interests of states will differ when viewing the failed state. The crisis in Darfur is an excellent example. Most people would agree that Sudan is a failed state.
(Foreign Policy
assessed it to be the most failed state in its 2007 list.) Few would disagree that the actions of the Sudanese military and associated militias are horrific. However, meaningful international action is stymied by the fact that China, which has a veto on the United Nations (UN) Security Council, does not want to upset the Sudanese government and put at risk the oil that China imports from Sudan.
It is also important to correlate the failed state with our national security interests. For example, on the
Foreign Policy,
list of top twenty failed states in 2007, nine are in sub-Saharan Africa, where it would be difficult to define major U.S. national security interests beyond the fact that these are failed states. Two others, Iraq and Afghanistan, are of concern as U.S. and allied troops are engaged in these countries. Pakistan and North Korea are not only important to U.S. national security interests but also have nuclear weapons. Finally, Nigeria and Sudan have significant oil deposits. In short, all failed states are of concern if they become magnets for the various transnational issues, especially terrorism and its supporting issues, but some failed states are more problematic because of specific attributes.
The second intelligence challenge posed by failed states is then identifying which transnational issues may be growing or flourishing. Collection can be difficult because the groups in question tend to be covert and because the actual conditions in the state can be chaotic and dangerous. These states and the issues in which the United States has the most interest are also less likely to be susceptible to technical collection systems.
 
LEADERSHIP. A key component when assessing nation states is the issue of leadership. Despite the intellectual objections of those who argue that systems and institutions are the major building blocks, leaders and their personalities matter, even in democracies. Gorbachev, again, stands out as an excellent example, as does Deng Xiaoping, Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher, and Ronald Reagan. Interestingly, one of the best sources of intelligence on these leaders are the leaders or senior officials who deal with them, as most intelligence analysts will have little opportunity to observe the leaders close up or to interact with them. To mine this source requires the policy makers to be willing to set aside some time to be debriefed by their intelligence officers, which appears to happen quite rarely. And, even if it does, the intelligence officer must take into account the subjectivity of the source answering the questions. Still, the CIA, for example, has a branch that studies and produces “assessments of foreign leaders and other key decision-makers in the political, economic, science and technology, social and cultural fields,” as a recent job posting on the CIA Web site advertised. Leadership analysis is a somewhat controversial endeavor, between those who believe it can be a successful activity and those who remain skeptical of doing this type of analysis from a fairly long distance and with little or no personal contacts. It is also important to remember that an actor can be rational without sharing a common rationality. Then, too, there are those actors who are not entirely rational by anyone’s standards.
 
REGIONAL STABILITY. It is also important to think about the core national security issues that may suggest which nations are important to watch more closely. As was noted in chapter 2, the United States is a status quo power. This essentially requires the intelligence services to be alert to states that seek either violent or sudden alterations to the status quo, as well as states whose relative stability or instability can affect the international status quo. At present, those states that appear to seek a true change in the international status quo do not possess multiple levers of power: Iran, North Korea, Venezuela. But each state controls at least one lever—weapons or oil, or in the case of Iran, both. There are also states that serve as platforms for these antistatus quo states, such as Cuba and Syria, neither of which has many significant levers of power beyond geographic position and a willingness to exploit regional opportunities. It is interesting that the DNI has put Cuba and Venezuela together under one of the mission managers, signaling this as an area of major collection and analytical emphasis. Again, one must consider these states not only as potential threats to U.S. interests but also to broader regional interests. This suggests a number of flashpoints: Venezuela-Colombia; North Korea-South Korea; Iran and Syria in Iraq or Israel.
The most obvious role of intelligence in a regional crisis is warning, both for the immediate participants and for other states that may have interests in the outcome. But intelligence can also serve to diffuse a regional crisis by allaying false perceptions of the other side’s activities. This happened in the early 1990s, when India and Pakistan appeared to be moving inexorably toward another war. DCI Robert Gates (1991-1993) shared imagery with both sides, showing their actual troop dispositions. Gates was able to give a sense of assurance when none would have been possible on a bilateral basis.
Several states likely fall into the category of those whose sudden change in stability could be problematic. This would include Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Egypt. The main issues here are internal stability and cohesion but we once again run into the problems noted above in successfully collecting against and analyzing this problem. This is also an area where the intelligence is not likely to suggest many ways in which U.S. policy can influence the outcome successfully. For example, the United States urges reform on many of its Arab and Muslim allies on a fairly constant basis. In most people’s minds reform should lead, inevitably, to some sort of democratic system. But recent events in the Gaza Strip, Algeria, and Egypt might also suggest that any truly open election could result in the victory of those very forces that the United States does not want taking control: radical Muslims. Even worse, they will now have achieved power by democratic means, suggesting greater legitimacy than the regimes they replaced.
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