
Amid Calls for ‘Overhaul,’ Challenges Facing the Intelligence Community
BOTTOM LINE UP FRONT — President Donald Trump vowed throughout his 2024 campaign that if elected, he would initiate a revamp of the intelligence community (IC). […] More
EXPERT OPINION — A recent report from Washington’s Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) is getting attention for calling out the failure of the professional analytic class in assessing the ability of Ukraine to weather the Russian invasion in 2022. At the time, U.S. intelligence developed evidence that Moscow would invade, but the predictions by Russian military experts subsequently botched what would happen next. Respected outlets and organizations such as The Economist, Foreign Policy, Foreign Affairs, RAND, The New York Times and others offered analysis that was as confidently presented as it was wrong. The expert community grossly overestimated Russian capabilities and underestimated Ukraine’s ability to resist.
In addition, as the CSIS authors note, “hangovers from the initial failure” still infect the narrative of the war. Many of the same analysts that so misunderstood Russia’s flaws continue to be quoted by the media and have access to the halls of power. Further, the sweeping and overly confident judgments may well have influenced the West’s initial hesitation and timid support for Ukraine. The slow roll of support and failure to follow-up on opportunities have come full circle, such that many of the same analysts are promoting a narrative of inevitable Russian victory. As British journalist Nick Cohen noted, “Because the West believed Russia could simply march into Kyiv, we initially failed to send Ukraine the weapons it needed. Even today there’s a lingering belief in the invincibility of Russia’s power and tendency to dismiss Ukraine’s achievements despite everything its forces have endured.”
What the experts said then
At the time of the Russian invasion in 2022, the professional class largely shared a narrative that the Russian military was so powerful that the war would be over quickly, and all resistance was futile. The unequivocal language of inevitable Russian “shock and awe” warned against providing Ukraine with weapons, as they would simply be useless against the staggering power of the Russian military.
These “experts” often spoke of Russia overwhelming Ukraine in days or even hours. As the analysts spread out to provide TV hits following the attack, it seemed that each outlet tried to outdo the next with maps showing likely axes of Russian attack engulfing the country. When it came to Ukraine, analysts regularly wrote about Ukraine’s culture of corruption and supposed lack of national identity. The overwhelming confidence in Russia’s capability and Ukraine’s infirmity was odd in one sense – American officials and experts had first-hand experience working with Ukrainian units, and no access whatsoever to Russian military units or personnel.
The assessment that the Russian military would roll over its supposedly weaker neighbor set a tone that has yet to be fully overturned. Senator Ted Cruz championed the power of the Russian military in contrast to the supposedly “woke” U.S. military. Even now, Donald Trump has echoed the same narrative of Russian invincibility. “That’s what they do, they fight wars. As somebody told me the other day, they beat Hitler, they beat Napoleon. That’s what they do. They fight.”
Forecasting – a fool’s errand?
Of course, mistakes are inevitable in the prediction business. Those who study “expert predictions” tell us that experts are often no better than anyone else, and the success of their predictions are basically random. A specialist can provide historical and cultural context and provide relevant data, but the world is just too complex to predict with any accuracy.
As bad as the misjudgments were, they point to a bigger problem. The analytic and military communities completely misjudged the willingness and ability of the Russians and Ukrainians to fight, but earlier made similar errors about both the Iraqi and Afghan forces. Generals repeatedly trekked to Capitol Hill to laud the success of their training of Iraqi and Afghan troops, only to see them fall apart at first contact. I suspect the take on Hezbollah’s strength was also skewed. We have been strikingly bad at a fundamental tenet of intelligence analysis – assessing the capability and spirit of foreign fighters. It is a flaw that needs to be remedied as we face challenges across the Taiwan strait.
The professional analytic cadre faces several long-standing challenges in fixing these problems. For one, U.S. intelligence agencies do not generally direct analytical firepower or collect against our allies and friends. The CIA focuses its energies on understanding China, Russia, terrorism, Iran, proliferation, North Korea and other challenges. Similarly, bureaucratic culture in the intelligence community often maintains an unnecessary divide between collectors and analysts, such that those providing finished analysis on issues often don’t spend time living with or speaking with those on the ground. Reportedly, CIA has had officers working closely with the Ukrainian military for years. It is not clear that the Washington-based analytical cadre capitalized on the opportunity to learn from practitioners on the ground (see reporting from The Washington Post and New York Times).
During the 1999 bombing of Belgrade, CIA analysts nominated targets for the military, but never bothered to check with their own people in Serbia, leading to the accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy. Those of us that lived in Belgrade could have easily pointed out the error. Even those who wrote the after-action report on the disaster didn’t bother to talk to any of us who were there, even though we were in the same organization.
As crises arise, there is always media appetite for immediate analysis. Experts on one issue may give the impression that they know more than they do. Almost all of the experts that got 2022 wrong were trained as specialists on the Russian Army. There were almost no real experts on Ukraine or the Ukrainian military. As such, the analysis was skewed toward Russia. Similarly, following the fall of the Soviet Union, Kremlinologists quickly repurposed themselves as “experts” on the new countries to emerge from breakup. Few bothered to ask the supposed experts if they had ever even been to the former republics about which they pontificating.
The outcome of the war in Ukraine will of course be immensely consequential. The world order will be changed, for better or worse. American credibility will be strengthened or weakened. Undoubtedly, some countries will judge the West’s slow and weak support to Ukraine as the consequence of Moscow’s nuclear intimidation and seek such weapons for themselves. Many of the same analysts who subscribed to Russian invincibility in 2022 are still on TV and still quoted in the media regularly, now often pushing the narrative that Russia is just too big and powerful to be defeated. It is as if we haven’t processed the fact that the far more powerful U.S. military failed to win in Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan, or that smaller countries often win and arthritic empires often fall.
The fate of Russia is dependent on a single man who desperately needs to hide from his own population that Russia loses more soldiers in most weeks than the U.S. lost in Afghanistan in 20 years. It is high time that we better assess the power of the U.S. and collective west, and jettison the view that Russia is ten feet tall and Ukraine can’t win. Indeed, the one unquestioned expert on Ukraine, Yale historian Timothy Snyder, has repeatedly explained that Ukraine can win. In any event, the analytic community needs to come to terms with its shortcomings and improve its tradecraft. Misjudging the strength of China and Taiwan could well lead to disaster.
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