By Fred Burton
Strategic Forecasting Inc., 09 February 2006
In the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR), the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) outlines four priorities for military policy -- with defeating terrorist networks ranked at the top of the list.
As the department itself clearly acknowledges, the QDR does not signal a change in military policy so much as it attempts to codify strategic thinking and what has been de facto policy evolving since 9/11. This policy, however, has shifted emphasis from conventional warfare to four other areas: irregular warfare, homeland defense, combating the spread of weapons of mass destruction and "shaping the choices of countries at strategic crossroads" -- or, in other words, recognizing the military's role as a powerful lever to be used by State Department policymakers.
At the highest level, it is difficult to quibble with these priorities, given the lessons learned from the 9/11 attacks and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. However, the implications in some areas -- particularly the military's increased involvement in counterterrorism intelligence -- raise numerous questions. For a variety of reasons, a greater role for the military in this area does not necessarily bode well for increased levels of national security.
Historically, the U.S. approach to counterterrorism has consisted of four intertwined elements: intelligence, security, law enforcement and foreign policy. The military has always had a role in intelligence operations: For example, U.S. Air Force signals intelligence and Navy aircraft were used in 1985 to help intercept the Achille Lauro hijackers as they attempted to escape aboard an Egyptian airliner. The following year, both services also carried out airstrikes against targets in Libya that included training camps for militant groups.
The military has always had a certain interest in counterterrorism intelligence collection, but prior to 9/11, this was directed primarily toward service-specific requirements: the protection of military assets and personnel. In the examples above, military forces played a supporting role in counterterrorism operations -- bringing heavy force to bear where applicable, but only after intelligence collectors and analysts from other government branches had finished their job.
Clearly -- and at the risk of understatement -- the approach taken by the CIA and FBI has not been foolproof. The failures that led up to 9/11 opened the door for a greater role for the military in this area, which has become increasingly evident in both Afghanistan and Iraq. The QDR takes note of this reality, stating that -- among many other objectives -- the DoD is attempting to shift "from an emphasis on ships, guns, tanks and planes -- to focus on information, knowledge and timely, actionable intelligence." Ultimately, the new QDR envisions a significant transition in the military's intelligence role: from protecting only the services and their interests to protecting wider national interests as well.
As part of that effort, the QDR calls for an expansion of the military's human intelligence (humint) capabilities, along several vectors. These include "steps to improve cultural and linguistic skills across the joint force" -- an obvious move to address criticisms and improve both the effectiveness of and operating conditions for troops in hostile environments -- but also touch on areas that traditionally have been the purview of the CIA and law enforcement agencies:
"The Department has approved the creation of a Military Intelligence Program and is implementing an enhanced Defense Civilian Intelligence Personnel System to better compete for, develop and retain the professional intelligence workforce. The Department has increased the number of intelligence professionals working in collection and analytical disciplines to support growth in homeland defense and war on terror missions."
Not coincidentally, the Defense Intelligence Agency ran a full-page ad in the Wall Street Journal, seeking to recruit humint collectors and promising competitive pay. On the counterterrorism front, intelligence collection -- particularly with regard to human sources -- has been the function of the CIA or, domestically, the FBI, rather than the military.
What's interesting about the situation is that, though the CIA and FBI clearly have made mistakes in the past, the crucial intelligence failures typically stemmed from a lack of coordination, analysis and follow-through between agencies -- not from a dearth of collections. If anything, there historically has been too much intelligence -- or, put another way, too little analysis and useful insight -- to
pre-empt attacks. And coordination between the multiple agencies already involved in collection has been problematic for years. One example can be drawn from the movements of several of the 9/11 hijackers, who were tracked all through Europe, the Middle East and East Asia at various times by the CIA. Some of them were positively identified as they traveled through Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. But the intelligence handoff between the CIA and the FBI was fumbled, and agents lost the future hijackers' trail.
While the DoD quite correctly has assessed problems with the timely movement of accurate intelligence to military forces who can do something with it, it's not clear that the proposals being voiced will actually solve these problems. For one thing, the Pentagon appears to be throwing yet more resources at the collection aspect -- or taking what you might call "roots-to-branch" ownership of the intelligence issue. Moreover, the Pentagon (while acknowledging the vision stated in the QDR of better coordination horizontally between DoD and other government agencies) is moving into areas that long have been controlled by Foggy Bottom -- and have not been reassigned.
Since 9/11, agencies and departments at nearly every level of government -- from federal to municipal -- have developed some form of anti-terrorism or counterterrorism role for themselves. In many cases, this is quite useful -- especially at local levels, where law enforcement can benefit from the greater dissemination of information and coordination of efforts. The locals are indeed sharing information horizontally, but there remains a serious problem with vertical information-sharing from the federal to lower levels, as well as horizontally at the federal level. Traditionally, there has been a fairly wide gulf between law enforcement intelligence collection and what might be termed "spook" collection efforts, and that -- despite reform initiatives espoused by the White House -- has not yet really changed.
The problem with the Pentagon's "roots-to-branch" approach to intelligence collection and dissemination is that it inserts yet another finger into this already crowded pie. And it is difficult to see -- at least on the basis of the QDR alone -- how this will lead to better outcomes than in the past.
Compounding this issue is the fact that, in any government bureaucracy, political turf also equates to "budget" -- which equates to influence, which equates to power. As the United States moves further from 9/11 without another terrorist attack on its soil, the counterterrorism budget is likely to shrink as other issues -- for instance, recovering from Hurricane Katrina or the continued operations in Afghanistan and Iraq -- take precedence in voters' minds. It doesn't take much forecasting acumen to predict bureaucratic knife-fighting within the Beltway (and in back rooms on the Hill) as agencies scramble to maintain their share of the shrinking budget -- and their influence.
Further problems -- both actual and hypothetical -- arise when the law enforcement aspects of the intelligence puzzle are factored in. And it is impossible not to take these into account, since terrorism -- which for our purposes here can be defined as "non-state actors committing illegal acts" -- incorporates both criminal and quasi-military activity.
Civilian law enforcement agencies traditionally have resisted turning over information to the military. This is especially true if they fear it will be used outside their own cultures and without regard for legal restraints like due process.
If the DoD succeeds in institutionalizing a larger role in humint and intelligence collection, foreign governments might be tempted to rethink their cooperation with the United States on several levels. This could range from domestic political considerations, particularly in areas where anti-U.S. sentiment is already strong and obvious cooperation with Washington is frowned upon by voters. Or officials might have reason to fear that their cooperation with U.S. counterterrorism efforts would result in extralegal killings: The reluctance of European states to extradite suspects in U.S. death penalty cases serves as an example. Quiet cooperation from intelligence agencies in the West would likely continue, but fear of leaks -- such as those involved in the "secret prisons" debacle unwinding in Europe -- has damaged many of those relationships and will always be taken into consideration by allied governments.
There is yet another issue to be considered: As the counterterrorism pendulum has swung from an intelligence-based approach toward a military approach, the mentality has shifted as well -- from an "arrest and interdict" mindset toward a "hunt and kill" perspective. While this certainly can be effective and, from Washington's viewpoint, may frequently be required, there are drawbacks as well.
For one thing, effective detection and disruption of terrorist networks, by nature, involves covert operations -- an area where the military, on the whole, does not excel. Obviously, the military traditionally has been called into action to affect situations long after the time for covert activities has passed and precision strikes -- from the intelligence perspective, at least -- may no longer be possible. This is not to detract from the value the military provides in areas like tactical intelligence (where efforts to improve linguistic and cultural skills likely will aid matters considerably) -- but that is quite separate from the ability to infiltrate terrorist cells and report on their activities clandestinely. In order to fulfill the vision laid out in the QDR, the DoD either must involve units in these efforts or else find ways to resolve the inter-agency cooperation issues detailed above.
The hunt-and-kill approach works best when the military is given a defined target, previously identified through intelligence collected by the CIA or other agencies, and then given rein to engage as necessary. Put another way, the military is highly suited to killing terrorists when their physical support structures can be identified and brought under fire. The CIA and FBI identify terrorist suspects through surveillance and forensic techniques, such as wiretaps and bank-record subpoenas. They then track the suspect to a location and turn that information over to the military, which uses its own intelligence assets to determine the best mode of attack. Finally, conventional force -- for example, Predator drones and Hellfire missiles -- is brought to bear.
In many cases, this process has started as an FBI investigation and ended in a strike by the U.S. Air Force in Afghanistan. Thus, the military's ability for force projection and application is well applied here. To state it differently, the military is the "hammer" that provides the final, lethal blow in a process that incorporates numerous government agencies.
The QDR certainly reflects the value of this approach: Among the many goals outlined in the document is the desire to nearly double the existing fleet of unmanned aerial vehicles.
But at the same time, the hammer is only one tool in a toolbox. The one thing in the counterterrorism war on which everyone seems to agree is that victory will require all the tools in the box. It is not clear that there is equal agreement that the tools should be used in the manner for which they are best shaped or were originally intended. As the first Director of National Intelligence, it was expected that John Negroponte would take on the role of "carpenter" and orchestrate the use of these various tools, but thus far there are few signs of the kind of high-level coordination that would be needed to make the counterterrorism program effective.
From a military perspective, the goals outlined in the QDR are difficult, if not impossible, to quibble with, but on the intelligence side, they raise more questions than answers at this point. Institutionalized incompatibilities with various intelligence and law enforcement agencies would leave the DoD with little choice but to change the existing culture of the military or develop its own intelligence establishment top-to-bottom, perhaps relying on cooperation and liaison with friendly foreign militaries.
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Citation: Fred Burton. "The QDR and the Intelligence Puzzle," Strategic Forecasting Inc., 09 February 2006.
Original URL: http://www.stratfor.com/products/premium/print.php?storyId=262015
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