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By Root 716 0

Discussion of Soviet intentions veered quickly to the political realm, where equally adamant hawks and doves dominated the debate, often freed from the constraints of intelligence by its unavailability. Operationally, the record is much less clear. Early efforts to foment rebellion within Soviet domains were disasters. Attempts to limit Soviet expansion were uneven. U.S. intelligence operations were successful in Western Europe. Guatemala, and Iran but were failures in Cuba and Southeast Asia. The contra war probably could have been dragged out inconclusively indefinitely. But the intervention against Soviet forces in Afghanistan was a major and telling success. In espionage, U.S. intelligence scored large successes, such as recruiting Col. Oleg Penkovsky, and suffered a number of Soviet penetrations, some of which, notably those conducted by Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen. bridged the Soviet and post-Soviet Russian states.

In short, the record of intelligence in the cold war is mixed. Perhaps a better way to pose the original question might be: Would the United States have been better off or more secure without an intelligence community during the cold war?

THE CURRENT NATION STATE ISSUE

As was noted in the introduction to this chapter, nation states still form the basic unit of analysis for a great deal of intelligence. Even in the face of abundant transnational issues, the actions of state actors tend to dominate on a regular basis. And even though policy makers want opportunity analysis, the basic means for selecting which nations to focus on remains those that are seen as threatening or as rivals in a serious way.

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,