Eminent Bristish historian Sir John Keegan wrote the book Intelligence in War in the climate of a contemporary public tendency to attribute magical powers to anything covert.
His thesis, from the conclusion of the book (pp. 348):
Yet in the last resort, intelligence warfare is a weak form of attack on the enemy, also. Knowledge, the conventional wisdom has it, is power; but knowledge cannot destroy or deflect or damage or even defy an offensive initiative by an enemy unless the possession of knowledge is also allied to objective force. As David Khan puts it simply, there is “an elemental point about intelligence… it is a secondary factor in war. ... Intelligence can only work through strength.”
Keegan draws a sharp distinction between operational intelligence and espionage, which he is dismissive of. In the final sentences of his book he states: “Foreknowledge is no protection against disaster. Even real-time intelligence is never real enough. Only force finally counts.” Intelligence is useless without the ability to act on it. “The ability to strike sure will remain the best protection against the cloud of unknowing, prejudice and ignorance that threatens the laws of enlightenment.”
Sobering advice for those making military/intelligence funding decisions for the future of the war on terror.
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COMMENTS / 5 COMMENTS
mark safranski added these pithy words on 31 May 05 at 4:01 amKeegan’s great. I have many of his books. However, a sword and a scalpel, while similar, are not the same. Nor are they interchangeable simply by virtue of both being sharp. If you need one and don’t have it, a moment of crisis is too late to get either.
Spies are not simply supposed to be reporters with better more inside, sources – even though the IC has always tilted toward ” kollection uber alles”. They should sometimes be agents of influence, broadcasting rather than receiving.
Curzon added these pithy words on 31 May 05 at 4:09 amI was always bemused to hear people work themselves up that 9/11 was an intelligence failure—as if the CIA had ever predicted anything like that in its entire existence. The CIA was in the dark on the invasion of Korea in the 1950s, was a disaster in Vietnam, didn’t predict the fall of the USSR (in fact it predicted quite the opposite until the late 80s) or Tiananmen or the invasion of Kuwait. but because it had some minor successes in Iran and Cuba that got great publicity people felt that had a mythical status and ran the world behind the scene. In reality, intelligence should be expected to provide insight into the behavior and strategic goals of groups and individuals, occasionally conduct covert operations, but never expect it to predict events. And to return to my point about 9/11, Steve Coll, said it best in Ghost Wars: “It was a foreign policy failure.”
mark safranski added these pithy words on 31 May 05 at 3:12 pmhey Curz
Re: Foreign Policy failure
Fred Wettering, a former CIA senior D.O. operative did something highly unusual – in a recent discussion of Iranian policy on H-Net, Wettering named names of the policy makers and State department personnel who had consistently blocked the CIA from acting effectively in Iran prior to the 1979 revolution that toppled the Shah but then subsequently blamed the CIA for not ” forseeing” Khomeini’s revolution. Wettering reseved particular bitterness toward Anthony Lake, Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance.
Curzon added these pithy words on 31 May 05 at 3:22 pmLake was a big player as late as the 1970s? I thought he was only on the scene in the 1940s and 1950s…
But yeah, that hit the nail on the head. The CIA had such a bad rep in the 1970s that it was a hollow shell by the time the Iranian revolution happened. Although I don’t really blame anyone for the Iranian revolution except for France… ;)
Curzon added these pithy words on 31 May 05 at 3:47 pmMy bad—I mixed up Anthony Lake with Arthur Lane.
