by Michael Cohen
theguardian.com
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/feb/06/james-clapper-us-threat-assessment-fearmongering
[...]
Last week the man who serves as America's Director of
National Intelligence trudged up to
Capitol Hill to tell
the assembled members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee (pdf)
that the annual worldwide threat assessment, put together by the intelligence
community, has filled him with dread. He told the room:
Looking back over my more than half a century in
intelligence, I have not experienced a time when we have been beset by more
crises and threats around the globe.
That is some scary stuff.
However, if you think you've heard this before from
Clapper … well you have.
Last year he appeared before Congress for a similar
purpose and, lo and behold, he was very,
very concerned then too (pdf):
I will say that my almost 50 years in intelligence, I do
not recall a period in which we confront a more diverse array of threats,
crises and challenges around the world. This year's threat assessment
illustrates how dramatically the world and our threat environment are changing.
And here he was in 2012 testifying (pdf)
on that year's threat assessment report, "Never has there been, in my almost
49-year career in intelligence, a more complex and interdependent array of
challenges than that we face today."
Of course, one must consider the possibility that over
the past five decades the world has never been as dangerous, complex and
challenging as it's been over the past three years (putting aside for a moment
that whole "threat of nuclear holocaust" that defined much of the
60s, 70s and 80s.) If, however, you're skeptical about this, well you have good
reason because Clapper's alarmist tone is hardly matched by the threats he
cites.
So what precisely is worrying Clapper? There are the old
stand-bys like "the scourge and diversification of terrorism" both of
the global jihadist and home-grown variety. We'll simply put aside for a second
the fact that significantly more Americans die each year from falling
furniture and exponentially more die from freedom … er, I
mean guns.
Clapper is concerned about "implications of the
drawdown inAfghanistan", which is a
nice pivot from a few years ago when Afghanistan was a vital national interest
that necessitated
a ramp up of US military engagement there (pdf). There's also the
"sectarian war in Syria" and "its attraction as a growing center
of radical extremism", which is compelling evidence that Syria is poised
to take up the mantle of"failed
state that foreign policy elites are really worried about."
There is the habitually frightening adjective war front,
"an assertive Russia, a competitive China; a dangerous,
unpredictable North Korea, a challenging Iran." The sober-minded might
look at these countries and conclude that a more accurate set of descriptors
would be "an
enfeebled and corrupt Russia, an economically slowing and environmentally
challenged China, a contained and sort of predictable North Korea and an isolated
and diplomatically-engaged Iran". But that would be a pretty lame
threat assessment, wouldn't it?
Then there are the really scary sounding threats that
aren't actually threats to Americans. Things like, "lingering ethnic
divisions in the Balkans, perpetual conflict and extremism in Africa; violent
political struggles in … the Ukraine, Burma, Thailand and Bangladesh." I
for one am troubled by each of these, as well as Clapper's reference to
"specter of mass atrocities" and "the tragedy and magnitude of
human trafficking" and "the increasing sophistication of
transnational crime" and even the "insidious rot of inventive
synthetic drugs" but the idea that any of these are serious
"crises" or "threats" to America and its citizens is
ludicrous.
This is what makes Clapper's argument – and indeed the
entire process of writing a "worldwide threat assessment" so
fundamentally unserious and distorting. America doesn't face a single truly
serious security threat. We are a remarkably safe and secure nation, protected
by two oceans, an enormous and highly effective military and dozens upon dozens
of like-minded allies and friends around the world. Truly we have nothing to
fear – except perhaps global climate change, which oddly merits a one-paragraph
mention (pdf) in this year's threat assessment.
To listen to Clapper and others in the intelligence
community one might never know that inter-state war has largely disappeared and
that wars
in general are in the midst of a multi-decade decline. For all of
Clapper's expressed concern about "the proliferation of weapons of mass
destruction", one might not know that 2013 was a landmark year for
non-proliferation with important progress made in slowing down Iran's nuclear
aspirations and enforcing the norm on chemical weapons usage.
With Clapper offering worrying words about "the
increasing stress of burgeoning populations" and "the urgent demands
for energy, water and food" one might be surprised to find out that global
poverty continues adramatic
free-fall; that people around the world are living longer lives and have
better access to healthcare, food and education than ever before. You also
probably wouldn't know that these indicators of material and political progress
point in the direction of continued global stability.
It's almost as if Clapper and the intelligence community
that he helms are playing up foreign threats in order to justify bloated post-9/11
budgets and broadly supported intelligence capabilities. Now granted, it's
uncomfortable to accuse public officials of purposely hyping potential foreign
threats, but how else does one react to arguments like this about the
community's perpetual bête noire, cyber:
Iran and North Korea are unpredictable actors in the
international arena. Their development of cyber espionage or attack
capabilities might be used in an attempt to either provoke or destabilize the United States or its
partners.
Or "Terrorist organizations have expressed interest
in developing offensive cyber capabilities."
I've expressed interest in playing second base for the
Boston Red Sox … and yet the man currently holding that job (Dustin Pedroia)
seems blithely unconcerned that he will soon be unseated. Balancing intentions
versus capabilities is (or at least should be) a crucial element of threat
assessment and yet in Clapper's telling virtually every threat is of equal
significance and likelihood.
All of this is not to say that there aren't real
challenges facing the United States. There certainly are terrorists who still
want to kill Americans; there is the potential (albeit slim) for instability in
the Far East; and there are international criminal networks and even global
pandemics that could harm America's economic interests as well as pose health
risks. The United States should hardly ignore these – and other ongoing
challenges – but policymakers like Clapper should also be able to talk about
them in sober, evidence-based, non-hysterical terms.
The irony of all this is that Clapper has been under fire
for months now because he
allegedly lied to Congress over the extent to which the National
Security Agency was collecting phone and e-mail records of individual
Americans.
Yet, the yarn he spun on Capitol Hill last week was far
worse than that: deceiving Americans about the nature of the world today and
the threats facing the country. But in a political environment in which threat
mongering and exaggeration is the norm rather than the exception, Clapper not
only gets a pass – hardly anyone even noticed.
[...]
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