Better intelligence needed to keep a world in crisis from getting worse
OPINION:
At their recent meeting in San Francisco, Chinese President Xi Jinping reportedly told President Biden that China would one day reunify Taiwan with mainland China. CIA Director William Burns warned months ago that Mr. Xi has directed his military to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027.
For the Pentagon, that’s potentially a third major war to deal with on the not-so-distant horizon if Beijing is not deterred from taking military action.
It’s worth noting that the Israel Defense Forces are taking the fight to ruthless Hamas terrorists, and Ukraine is in an existential war to defend its sovereignty against a Russian onslaught in part because of intelligence failures, which have contributed to costly strategic failures to deter malicious adversaries.
Blinking red lights in Kyiv and Tel Aviv were potential opportunities to detect threats “left of boom” and dial-up countermeasures to reestablish deterrence.
It’s imperative to make it clear to the aggressor that the cost of an attack would be prohibitively high. Follow-up intelligence collection confirms whether the adversary got the message or whether further countermeasures should be taken.
Rather than simply warning of Russia’s impending invasion months in advance, the Biden administration could have started sending Ukraine the military equipment it would later provide after the shooting started, including air defense, artillery and tanks.
And Israel could have hardened its defenses against Gaza and put its defense and security forces on higher alert.
The U.S. was so convinced Russia would defeat Ukraine quickly that the Biden administration famously offered to evacuate Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy after Russia invaded.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, who fashions himself a cloak-and-dagger espionage virtuoso, likewise failed accurately to assess Ukraine’s will and capacity to fight. For that strategic blunder, Mr. Putin’s war has cost Russia over 300,000 troops.
The U.S. underestimated Mr. Zelenskyy’s effectiveness as a wartime leader who would courageously lead his country’s defense and awaken NATO from its post-Cold War slumber. According to Defense Intelligence Agency Director Scott Berrier, Washington also failed to appreciate Russian military weaknesses, including poor leadership, horrific logistics and ineffective doctrine.
Failing to accurately assess Hamas’ intentions and capability, Israel’s intelligence services reportedly concluded that the Palestinian militant group had no intention of going to war and, on that fateful day in early October, was merely conducting a nighttime exercise rather than launching a murderous assault on innocent civilians.
Israeli intelligence analysts had reportedly warned for months about Hamas’ plans to attack, but the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu implemented no corresponding deterrence measures. Shockingly, it took hours for the Israel Defense Forces to respond to the Hamas rampage.
The CIA‘s central mission is cultivating human intelligence sources. Clandestine reporting forms the basis of the all-source analysis on which the president and his closest national security advisers rely to make policy.
Intelligence-gathering and analysis are never certain. The Kremlin and Hamas are deeply secretive and propagate sophisticated disinformation to mask their true intentions.
It’s counterfactual history now, but could we have prevented those two costly wars with a more effective strategy of deterrence?
Intelligence can be a force multiplier for executive decisions that best serve a nation’s national security interests, but only if elected leaders incorporate it properly into their calculus.
At the Doha Security Forum, which I attended this year, it was obvious that Russia and China view the wars in Gaza and Ukraine as proxy wars against their main enemy, the U.S. Their hypocritical criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza was designed to drive a wedge between the U.S. and our Middle East allies.
China is committing atrocities against its Muslim Uyghur population and should have nothing to say about the Palestinians’ right to self-government. Russia has been guilty of war crimes not only in Ukraine but in its bloody wars in Georgia, Chechnya and Syria as well, so its recommendations for the Middle East crisis also ring hollow.
Russia and China clamor for a “multipolar” world to ensure weaker countries do not band together with the assistance of reliable allies like the U.S. and NATO. China and Russia want to have a free hand to exploit smaller nations economically or conquer them militarily.
Getting back to Mr. Xi‘s threats, intensive Intelligence collection, prescient analysis and sensible decision-making will be key to deterring China from launching a war on Taiwan, a war that would have disastrous consequences for the global economy and U.S. national security.
It’s not enough to collect accurate information on China‘s intentions while assisting Taiwan in hardening its defenses, especially with coastal air defense. We also need to be sure Mr. Xi believes the risk of attacking Taiwan today outweighs the cost of delaying action indefinitely.
• Daniel N. Hoffman is a retired clandestine services officer and former chief of station with the Central Intelligence Agency. His combined 30 years of government service included high-level overseas and domestic positions at the CIA. He has been a Fox News contributor since May 2018. Follow him on X @DanielHoffmanDC.
