Intelligence in Promoting Economic Interests - Term Paper Example

I. Introduction George Bush, a former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), was inaugurated as president in January 1989. He was the very first former DCI to assent to that position. Within almost a year of his inaugural, the whole order of post-World War II Europe disintegrated, with the Soviet Union agreeing to the diplomatic dismantlement of its protectorate territories and to the German reunification. Simultaneously, the authority of the Soviet Union weakened on a daily basis as its economic system approached disintegration and its political system wrestled between those preferring progressively more rapid actions toward more receptive and more democratic administration and those adhering to the older mechanisms of control (Trahair 2004). Nine months after the decline of Europe’s old order, Saddam Hussein occupied Kuwait; shortly after five months Iraq was forcibly casted out by an expansive United Nations coalition primarily established and governed by the United States. In 1991, Soviet despots staged an unsuccessful coup détat against Gorbachev, which consequently resulted in to the abrupt downfall of Communist control and the ultimate suspension of the USSR into its constituent and at present divided republics. In these rapid developments the functioned served by the intelligence community and its prospect were both put into question, even as the president and the Congress continued to deal with supervision concerns originating from Iran-contra (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to discuss the changes in mission, scope, organization, resources and technology of the U.S. Intelligence, at the aftermath of the World War II and Cold War, to address the perceived national security concerns of the post-Cold War era. II. Post-Cold War Reorganization The Senate and House Intelligence agencies were hesitant to entrust the concern of restructuring the post-Cold War U.S. intelligence completely to the executive branch. Senator Boren and Representative Dave McCurdy presented bills illustrating their ideas of possible reforms for the intelligence community (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). Both bills shared major points; the two bills established a National Security Council (NSC) Committee on Foreign Intelligence to give overall guidance for the intelligence community; reappointed the DCI as the director of national intelligence (DNI), with reinforced power over the overall intelligence community, particularly the allocation, duty and spending of National Foreign Intelligence Program (NFIP) resources, which would be presented to Congress as a separate financial statement; established a representative (DNI) for the intelligence community and another one for Estimates and Analysis; granted to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) an independent director secondary to the DNI, who would be accountable for human collection and other covert collection, and underground activities; formed an Office of Intelligence Analysis, assembling analysts from all over the intelligence community; furnished legislative agreements for National Security Agency (NSA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); formed a National Imagery Agency to bring together imagery collection procedures and charging (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). However, there are three fundamental questions regarding these bills. First, the bills restored the concern as to what was the optimal means to restructure intelligence: executive orders, which protected utmost resiliency for the main intelligence user, the president, and his auxiliaries, or legislation, which would be more stable. Second, some doubts whether the termination of the cold war demanded an extensive restructuring of the intelligence community, or if the demanded readjustment to shifting incidences could be achieved through a redistribution of reduced resourced. Lastly, some doubts whether it was appropriate to trim down intelligence capacities at a period of enhanced global insecurity when defense capacities were as well being cut down (Deconcini 1994). To a certain extent, the discussion over the intelligence community had regressed, returned to numerous of the concerns that had emerged at the end of the World War II and at the initiation of the Cold War. Nonetheless, no answer was expected to be final, provided that intelligence concerns and demands would continue to vary. Few could dispute with the argument that the creation of the intelligence community is indebted to the cold war or that its main concern for those decades had been the Soviet Union. With the threat of the Soviet significantly dispelled, several questioned if this were not the right moment to review the community’s mission and organization. Among the concerns mentioned as necessitating more consideration were narcotics, massive production of weapons, and economic intelligence (Painter 2003). The dilemmas posed by narcotics and production of weapons and the intelligence support demanded to counteract them were quite clear, even though to some extent depressing for legislators since they are not simply vulnerable to U.S. power or control. In terms of economics, the intelligence concerns were very much dissimilar. First, the need to focus on economics appeared to pay no heed to the fact that for several years the different constituents had collected and generated a considerable economic intelligence. Second, it was as well indefinite as to what was lacking or how it would be employed (Deconcini 1994). The most important area of concern was what was perceived as weakening U.S. capacity to compete with Germany, Japan and other nations. But hardly any seemed capable to describe how enhanced collection or analysis would solve this dilemma, provided with the lack of close government-business relationship in the United States similar to those of its economic adversaries, the threats embedded in exposing highly confidential information to private business, or how and which businesses such information could be given (Deconcini 1994). A number of critics of this whole framework though it embodied a yearning for some ‘magic bullet’ remedy for economic crises rather than an enthusiasm to make the difficult decisions that could be indispensable on such concerns as expenditures, taxes, debts, education and trade and industry policy (Trahair 2004, 23). Even prior to the decline of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, it already became evident that the intelligence community would not carry on to have accessible to it the substantial subsidy increases it had obtained since the 1980s; the weakened threat from the Soviet Union added momentum to this development and also to the attempts to streamline the total size of intelligence gencies. A primary aim for such attempts was the different Defense intelligence units. Congress positioned the Defense Department on probation that redundancies had to be strengthened or removed. The House and Senate Armed Services agencies authorized yearly 5 percent cutbacks in DIA for 1992-1996 fiscal years, to which the House Intelligence Committee protested. In 1991, as section of its budget endorsement procedure, the Senate Armed Services Committee outlined constitutional legislation for the DIA, primarily to safeguard the agency from what it assumed as policy infringement by the conscientious assistant secretary of defense, who had enforced a reorganization of defense intelligence that same year (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). The Senate Intelligence Committee in 1991 also recommended stating publicly the aggregate intelligence budget, claiming that release of the financial statements would provide a better understanding to the public of the expenditures of foreign intelligence and would enhance public participation in the national discussion over allocation of resources without impairing national security. The fundamental concerns remained the same as they had been in the 1970s, disputing concerns regarding the right of the public to be aware of how public resources were being used against security issues and concerns about whether exposing these substantial aggregate figures would in fact provide the public any actual grounds for evaluating how well or badly their tax moneys were being used (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). Mission The U.S. Intelligence in post-Cold War period is tasked to provide national security intelligence to higher-ranking US policymakers (Trahair 2004). Scope Far from scaling down the function of the U.S. Intelligence community, the post-Cold War period has broadened the scope of its task through obliging a regular intelligence report on international economic condition. Administration officials are arguing about placing the National Security Agency responsible for the nation’s cyber-security attempts, a development civil liberties supporters argued was not well-thought-out (Trahair 2004). Resources and Technology The genuine dilemmas within the U.S. intelligence community are much profound and more embedded. One means a technology addressees could perceive them is as a failure to establish an efficient knowledge management mechanism to sustain U.S. government legislators. That point of view divulges loads of evident imperfections. There is a government tradition that gives high importance to secrecy and amasses knowledge rather than disseminating it with those who require it most. Secrecy is very important, yet while surfacing technologies, such as quantum encryption, which will put a stop to eavesdropping, make it more effortless to safeguard confidential information, they must be used to enhance, not weaken, prospects for transparency (Trahair 2004). III. Conclusions The decline of the Soviet Union protectorate territories in the 1980s and of the Soviet Union itself in the 1990s both led to appeals for restructuring and scaling down U.S. Intelligence community (Valcourt & Hulnick 1999). The brief interval between these incidents and the appeals for reorganization and reduction, and also as the fundamental assumption, that these adjustments likely lessened the necessity for the intelligence community, demonstrates how closely numerous people continued to relate the intelligence community and the cold war. A handful raised the similarly compelling counterargument that in a period of reinforced insecurity, of new balances of power, greater transmission of power, enhancing weapons production, and political insecurity in the nuclear-armed ex- Soviet states, the necessity for dependable intelligence has not weakened at all. Whatever its achievement of the past six decades, the intelligence community should now reaffirm justifications for its continued existence even as the whole national security policy agency tries to reorient the major concerns for the United States. Under these conditions, the function that the intelligence community fulfils in this reorientation could be critical to its future. The community’s capability to become involved sincerely and in a way that is not perceived as self-serving will help guarantee more than merely threatened survival, not essentially a plain and simple mission as the most predictable concerns lack the forceful and severely threatening character of a nuclear-armed, dogmatically expanding, unified Soviet Union. The abrupt and mainly unforeseen termination of the cold war as well poses important questions regarding the performance of the intelligence community. After more than five decades of focused analysis, why was the extent and profundity of disintegration in the Soviet system so poorly undervalued? Why did no one even predict the evidently sky-high level of the gross national product of the Soviet allocated to self-weakening defense, or the impacts this would have on the entire Soviet Union? The intelligence community has at all times been hesitant to embark on investigations, but it would appear that an investigation on the Soviet Union is necessary. Not merely is there perhaps a great deal to become aware of; such introspection would as well facilitate to guarantee those preoccupied with reorganization that the intelligence community is sincere about adjusting itself to changed conditions. Such a mechanism of self-assessment would not be simple for U.S. intelligence, provided with its recognizably irregular record, which poses the complicated problem of the community’s success against failure. Therefore, the community becomes an irony. Even though no one logically anticipates flawlessness of the intelligence community, it is indefinite what extent of error is allowable or which areas are not that important in order to permit defective analysis. Practically, no such explanation is likely. Unluckily, it abandons the intelligence community with a norm of excellence, and with any defective analysis being represented an as intelligence letdown. There is a significant dissimilarity between defective analyses or unforeseen incidents and truthful intelligence failures, specifically, errors so obvious and of such enormity that key strategies or even national security itself are endangered. Furthermore, such a perspective places more of the trouble than appears just on the intelligence creators and not sufficient on the intelligence users. The users are much more than merely inactive receivers. They lay down the scheme of concerns and the orientation within these concerns and can order the direction and main concerns of intelligence collection, as well as the content of analysis, relying on how they respond to shocking news. Even though the post-cold war world creates considerable difficulties for intelligence analysis, it could prove a benefit to intelligence campaigns. The campaigns that have inclined to become difficulties, even political calamities, were the unlimited paramilitary campaigns. It turns out to be difficult, with the absence of the reflection of the cold war, to imagine several near-term prospective situations that will necessitate such campaigns. This does not imply a termination to every intelligence campaign; there are other forms of campaigns, smaller, better planned, that will still be required and that indicate less danger for internal or domestic politics. Still, a reduction of campaigns may be probable. References Deconcini, Dennis. "The Role of U.S. Intelligence in Promoting Economic Interests." Journal of International Affairs (1994): 39-57. Oseth, John M. Regulating U.S. Intelligence Operations: A Study in Definition of the National Interest. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 1985. Painter, James A. "Uncovering Ways of War: The U.S. Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918-1941." Air Power History (2003): 53+. Trahair, Richard S. Encyclopedia of Cold War Espionage, Spies and Secret Operations. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Valcourt, Richard R. & Hulnick, Arthur S. Fixing the Spy Machine: Preparing American Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999. Read More