Intelligence is conspicuously absent from the current debate on European security. The same applies but for one controversial episode
(1) to the national scene. Many are the reasons both at national and international levels, for such an absence.
Nationally, a process to develop an intelligence culture has not even started. To date the national debate has focused on a historical-judicial reconstruction and on the practical evaluation of the Cold War events linked with the "strategia della tensione" and the "anni di piombo"
(**) . These are undoubtedly extremely relevant issues and a large portion of the public opinion still awaits satisfying and complete anwers. Nevertheless, it is also reasonable to say that the analysis of past operative and political mistakes is not sufficient to prepare for the future and to guarantee the effectiveness of national and European intelligence agencies in the new international strategic context. It is indeed important to build the future looking ahead and not, as the French put it, " with one eye on the rear view mirror". The past must not be forgotten, but it must not hold the present and future hostages forever, otherwise we risk permanent intellectual and operative stagnation.
Devising a European intelligence policy is not only a way to move away from the repetitiveness and the limitations of a national debate, but stems from the awareness that the consequences of the European Monetary Union stretch much further than its purely monetary dimension. In the era of the information revolution intelligence has, and should have, added significance and wider relevance after the long Cold War glaciation, as it is tightly linked with the main international transformations.
However, at an international level, many intelligence pratictioners believe that it should remain in the background, if not completely "stealthy". It is therefore understandable that the very idea of a European intelligence policy could raise some concern, since even a national intelligence policy is in practice quite an elusive issue.
The goal of this paper is to show that a European policy is instead necessary, compatible with existing international engagements, and is feasible.
A European intelligence policy is now necessary because some political debate has already started and risks to be focused on very narrow issues. Moreover, an unprepared debate typically tends to develop erratically and to jump eventually to wrong conclusions. The debate on a European satellite programme, in particular the reports drafted by the WEU Assembly's Defence Committee, has been useful in so much as it put the issue on the agenda and it started from an aspect where the need for collaboration is less controversial. However, acquiring satellites without an overall approach to intelligence sharing between information producers and users will be of limited impact.
Since intelligence requirements and methods are not determined by some abstract political requirement, but are more concretely driven by the single intelligence service trying to anticipate and satisfy its political masters' needs
(2) , such a policy does not need to be a highly formalised and institutionalised affair. It should rather be perceived and practised as a different culture, shaping the collective behaviour of the services concerned. However, the use of the word policy implies more than simply another modus vivendi et operandi, because it includes a decision as how to share information in connection with security and strategic assessments.
A specific European intelligence policy is necessary because in a different security environment and in a changed transatlantic relationship, a primary responsibility of the European countries is to increase their capabilities and thus their contribution to common security. NATO itself will not be considered sufficiently relevant by the US Congress
(3) if fourteen of its members do not show that they have something to offer worldwide to their North American partners. The European political and security institutions will be credible to the extent that they measure up to this criterion. The starting consideration for an analysis of the prospects of a European intelligence policy could be "The problem is not the US, the problem is us".
This paper will first review the main obstacles to collaboration, and then the professional, budget and political advantages that make a European intelligence policy desirable. Finally, it will touch upon some potential areas for cooperation. This sequence stems from a deliberate choice to avoid departing from apparently abstract political assumptions to arrive at the practical consequences and advantages. It is an attempt at showing, mainly to the "europessimists", that cooperation offers a practical and concrete answer to real problems. This does not mean that the political reasons lying under the proposal are less relevant; on the contrary, they acquire wider relevance once the practical problems have been solved.
Starting from this point will not make it easier to develop the argument in favour of a European intelligence policy, but it will help to put into perspective the difficulties that have to be overcome and the advantages that could realistically be gained.
The first obstacle is security. Trust and security are needed to protect the sensitiveness of information, the methods used to obtain it and, especially, the source against untimely disclosure. This is a problem often faced by national agencies in their dealings with the external world, and there is no ready-made, universal recipe for constant quality in implementing strict security. It appears reasonable to suppose that, with the multiplication of exchanges of information, potential risks will tend to increase, together with a wariness to continue those exchanges.
The only answer is probably that, notwithstanding the very limited number of partners who are collaborating, security failures will happen. However, the effects of even the most disastrous ones (some happening within well-tested partnerships) do not seem either to spread their effects like wildfire, nor affect in the longer run the quality of the basic relationship. It must also be taken into account that a multiplicity of collaborating agencies entails a multiplication of security checks.
The security of sources, particularly human ones, remains and will rightly remain a top priority. The security of methods, instead, is subject to changes in the appreciation of its importance. Where there are low levels of trust and cooperation it is considered quite important, whereas when the relationship is deeper, shared methods can multiply the overall effectiveness. Security of information cannot be an end in itself: its function is to ensure the appropriate people get access, while others do not. The Gulf War drove this point dramatically home so that it is not acceptable anymore that the distribution of military information should be rigidly dependent on the rank of the receiver. The same can also be said of non-military situations. One should honestly acknowledge that the security clearance system during the Cold War was greatly simplified by the relative limitation of the targets and, conversely, by the use of ideological and political screening. Today, determining the right of access to information in a world of shifting and transforming loyalties is very much a case-by-case business.
Another potent obstacle is the fear of spoiling privileged relationships with significant partners through increased European cooperation. Much depends upon the specific arrangements of this relationship, but, if the weight of the two parties is vastly unequal, one should look more at the available opportunities than at the traditional shortcomings of the bilateral agreement. Allowing oneself to become passive hostage of some technological advance in the field of satellite data relay systems, does not appear a sensible option. A European intelligence policy, for instance, might extend the life of the partnership through an overall more significant intelligence contribution by the junior party and by the higher profile that a wider European collaboration offers.
The concern mirroring that of special relationships is that of the "Trojan horse" when one or more agencies involved in a European intelligence policy could disclose sensitive information to bigger allies or act under their influence. Although this scenario was not unusual during the Cold War on both sides of the Iron Curtain, it is interesting, with hindsight, to see how much national and regional interests were safeguarded despite the East-West polarisation. Since then the strategic environment has deeply changed and the "Trojan horse" scenario appears much less credible.
Different is the problem of "intelligence targeting" among allies. If it only happens occasionally and is limited to HUMINT it may be a minor irritating factor; but when it is carried out sistematically and continuously it may erode mutual trust between allies because it is not justified anymore by Cold War conditions
(4) .
Slightly different problems are probably entailed by the inclusion of countries sharing a long-standing antagonism. If a European intelligence policy implies a more systematic exchange of information, both will suppose that mutual exposure will increase, and will probably oppose its practical implementation. It could be an unfortunate circumstance, having nevertheless fairly limited effects:
- first, because the sensitive information concerning national security would not be passed on;
- second, because areas for collaboration still exist and are greater than those considered taboo;
- third, because the agencies concerned would quickly discover that self-imposed limitations cost more than variable-geometry collaboration;
- fourth, because the respective leaderships know that the problems they have to deal with go beyond any regional rivalry, and that additional undeclared "transparency" and back-door channels have their own advantages.
Among the major obstacles one cannot ignore the perception that an agency from a smaller country runs the risk of being infiltrated, influenced, controlled and ultimately dominated by bigger partners. The history of European collaboration is full of such perceptions, even in sectors much more open to public scrutiny and balanced competition. This fear, however, does not take into account the very basic fact that in Europe no single national intelligence agency (indeed no single nation-state) is in the position either to aspire to or even to claim a dominant position. At a global level, the European intelligence scene appears as a collection of more or less undersized and weak entities, whose cold comfort could be that they share this junior position with many other similar bodies. European agencies, but above all their political masters, should decide if they want to become collectively more relevant through pragmatic synergies or if they accept remaining dwarfed in a worldwide comparison.
Probably the final obstacle is that a sound esprit de corps spurs each intelligence organisation to have ultimate faith and confidence only in its own work. It is a reflex that belongs to any serious researcher (whether he uses open or covert sources), but which must take into account the limitations of any given organisation's resources. Time is the most critical of these, and the very fast pace of international politics cannot be adequately compensated only by national human or technical resources. Therefore they should be concentrated where they really matter, and confidence in others' work accepted in other sectors.
a. Professional advantages
Again, the order in which the advantages of such a policy are listed, is deliberately a bottom-up one starting from the more operative aspects. The goal is to show at a functional level the usefulness of this new approach, dispelling the impression that everything derives from some debatable political assumption. Only at the end of the paper, an attempt will be made to stimulate thought at a more political level.
First of all, there is simply too much classified and unclassified material available to be collected, analysed and evaluated by any single agency or bilateral agreement in Western Europe.
A succint list of the general demands on a foreign intelligence service might include:
- defence intelligence, including arms and hi-tech trade and proliferation (NBC);
- intelligence on terrorism;
- defence intelligence on foreign countries and likely insurgencies, including conflict prevention, peacekeeping and verification intelligence on disarmament treaties;
- defence intelligence on foreign states' internal and foreign policies, internal and international economic policies;
- intelligence in support of diplomatic activities both in the political and economic sectors (economic intelligence may be considered a specific domain in common with the previous activity);
- counterespionage, intelligence against and penetration of foreign agencies;
- support in the fight against organised crime and drug trafficking;
- intelligence on man-made ecological disasters.
To this already impressive workload some agencies add: covert action and information warfare.
(5)
On a more general level, there is a national and international political consensus that stresses the lack of a well defined threat and instead the emergence of multiple, unforeseeable risks. For the intelligence agencies this entails a multiplication of collection requirements and targets. Even worse, the importance of certain targets can be as fleeting as the interest of politicians and public opinion in them.
As Robert (Bob) Steele
(6) repeatedly states: "We have passed from a ‘just-in-case' intelligence collection, to a ‘just-in-time' one". A relatively stable threat, generated by a secretive Soviet regime, led to the collection of every bit of evidence avaliable so as to have the right piece of the puzzle when required by future circumstances. Diffuse risks, often originating from secretive state or no-state actors, pop up unexpectedly on the political screen and require a fast answer to be provided for by the political master. On the one hand intelligence must rely on a systematic and protracted collection activity and analysis effort in order to break the secrets, but on the other it cannot always wait for its covert tradecraft to bear its fruits.
OSINT does not fill all the gaps in knowledge of the secrets, but can make it easier to arrive at a first informed political decision. Here the role of intelligence is crucial not necessarily for its own capabilities, but for its quality control training and on some occasions as an effective channel of information inside the governmental and political machinery.
National agencies are confronted today with the contradictory pressures to maintain their core capabilities and to respond in new ways to requests for information. A coordinated approach to OSINT at European level would not preclude the tailoring of information, but would help in saving precious money and time. The consequences of this policy on the associated aspects of information warfare and netwarfare cannot be underestimated.
Equally important is a common exchange of views within a European intelligence policy on the even more controversial subject of economic intelligence. Each country has its own ways of addressing the problem:
- support to governmental negotiations;
- economic counterespionage;
- disruption of unfair competition (called in the US "leveling the playing field");
- passive, semi-active or active intelligence support for specific corporate policies, that are considered of national interest;
- refusal to address economy intelligence, but creation of semigovernmental subsidiaries;
- monitoring of economic penetration and influence;
- combination of counterespionage and support of open government information dissemination to all companies.
The most important consideration is that, notwithstanding national interests, European collective interests are in most cases clearly identifiable and should receive appropriate attention. The first step should be to clarify the debate among agencies so as to avoid contradictory concepts and methods. The implications of EMU are far-reaching, so preparing for it is not simply the concern of businessmen: it matters to everybody in the governmental machinery.
b. Budget advantages
The start and the bottom lines are very clear: there is no more money.
Budgets have been cut, in some cases they continue to be reduced and for the foreseeable future there is no indication that this trend will be reversed.
Such financial strictures are not new in the history of intelligence. The usual pattern has been: reduction to essential capabilities, decline in recruitment quality, lower policy-making relevance, still lower budgets, decay of the agency, sudden political or military emergency followed by lucky resurrection through chaotic surge or more frequently intelligence disaster and foundation of a new structure.
Unfortunately, the present situation is much more complex than when national governments had the full power and capability to decide and to implement their own policies. The comparison might seem far-fetched, but intelligence will shortly face what is happening to the European defence industry. There are no funds to sustain a national defence industrial and technological base and, in the absence of a common policy, unique capabilities will be lost. The environment is such that even very relevant capabilities will vanish in the midst of general indifference.
The comparison can be developed further if one compares the needs our US counterparts have to satisfy with those observable in Europe. The effects of ill-informed decisions are felt by approximately the same number of people, since Europe is so intertwined. The need to know, however, is the same if not greater. Indeed, smaller governments need to know more, better and faster if they want to protect their own interests more effectively. Yet the absolute and relative budgets are very different.
Some duplication might be needed, but the imperative to spend better cannot be satisfied only at national level. A European dimension is most evidently where the best results can be obtained, with greater benefit for European governments and for the transatlantic relationship.
Of course technical collection means are the aspect where it is somehow easier to advocate common policies. This is shown by the cases of the aborted Zircon UK SIGINT satellite, the successful French-Italian-Spanish Helios PHOTINT satellite, and the controversial French-German Helios II and Horus programmes. Ten years after the end of the Zircon project, some useful lessons could be drawn on the issue of joint versus national satellite programmes. But satellites are only the sophisticated and not the all-decisive end of a palette of intelligence capabilities. Common or shared satellites need an underlying culture, involving the whole national and European intelligence community.
Another field where lack of money is sadly felt is all-source evaluation. Evaluation per se does not entail huge sums of money like technical collection means, but it often receives only residual funding, after all the more expensive items and activities have been paid for. Bureaucratic practice puts more weight behind the collection of intelligence, because it is more measurable, than behind the much more difficult and nebulous evaluation activity. All-source evaluation is nevertheless the ideal goal on which all single source collection and evaluation tends to focus.
A further complicating factor is that until now most of the evaluation has been carried out within governmental structures, which in future might not always be the case, if one wants to exploit better governmental human resources. Outsourcing some or more segments of the all-source evaluation process could be one solution, provided funding is adequate. Again a common policy could assist in the benchmarking of competitive external service providers and in carefully allocating resources within and outside governments.
c. Political advantages
Last but not least, the political advantages are undoubtedly the ones from which all the others afore mentioned derive. This is true because logically intelligence exists as a function of politics, but also because the will of cooperation between services is heavily dependent upon the political impulse coming from above.
Joint experiences between intelligence operators are very limited in number:
- one can have interesting multilateral debates, but with limited practical consequences;
- one can create "clubs" of intelligence services and generally they work because there is a more or less clearly recognised leadership;
- when an operation is ready to be carried out the only option is either within a bilateral or, at best, trilateral agreement.
Most proposals drawn up to date, however, elude such a rigid list. They can be summed up as follows:
- a coordinated approach to OSINT;
- a common approach to information warfare and netwarfare;
- a compatible approach to economic intelligence;
- joint satellite and SIGINT programmes;
- all source evaluation and outsourcing based on common criteria, and where necessary, joint intelligence assessments;
- in future, common workshops for analysts.
These may seem visionary ideas, but no more than the European Monetary Union was. In practice these are projects which should help to build gradually, jointly and with no major risks a systematic and strong cooperation among European services to confront common needs. They do not jeopardise many existing bilateral cooperations, they create instead a net of multilateral relationships which promote common efforts and joint actions, well beyond what happened in the fight against terrorism and against the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
It goes without saying that such projects need a political blessing, that is they need a preventive effort of persuasion in the relevant contexts, and there the well known problem of the relationship between intelligence and politics surfaces.
The relationship between national/international politics and intelligence services is far from being simple and easy to describe. Intelligence services ideally do their job correctly, irrespective of which democratic governement is in power, or, more realistically they may get involved in politics to a greater or lesser extent. Not even the nationality divide is sufficient to define clearly the limits of the intelligence activity. Services know well what political push, back door politics, schools of thought, camarillas, transnational factions, strong international connections and the like mean.
Sometimes intelligence officials, like Lewis Carroll's Alice or the protagonist of Baltasar Gracian's "Mirror of True Virtue", have unique opportunities to see the world from the other side of the mirror. Loyalty remains unaffected, as it ought to be, but political stereotypes lose credibility along the road. It is precisely at these moments that hindsight, foresight and instinct are needed by an intelligence service to offer the best information to help the transition from an old to a new power constellation. Elected parliaments and governments will make their decisions, but it is vital for them to understand in time the features of the "instability"on the movement towards a new world order that is still hard to define, but whose essential features must be understood in good time.
The first manifestation of this unstable environment is the frequent pressure to share information in the new multinational endeavours and environments. The recognition that multinational partners are often former enemies or, worse, unknown people whose reliability is untested, is a truism. The classic answer is to bowdlerise intelligence to acceptable levels, i.e. to the limit of its uselessness. Another more helpful defence is to sign security agreements with new potential allies (as WEU is doing now, prior to any further enlargement) or to set up intelligence ‘clubs' among like-minded agencies.
A second contradictory manifestation could be the intelligence targeting of countries until now considered as friendly, as old collective loyalties are giving way to new political and economic needs. One should not overestimate what is generally a sideshow, but nor can one underestimate the erosive effect it has on mutual confidence.
All this happens to the services of the Old Continent, where political trends of reinforced international cooperation and towards deeper European integration sometimes reinforce each other, but are sometimes strongly opposed. Against this background, a European intelligence policy appears more than necessary, indispensable.
As one experienced German intelligence official has put aptly: "Intelligence services are the last representation and embodiment of the raison d'état". Yet in Western Europe this statement begs the fundamental questions: which state, whose raison d'état?
With the forthcoming introduction of the Euro, surely the nation-state in Western Europe is not the all-powerful entity of which the continent's landscape was composed at the beginning of the century. Two World Wars, one Cold War, one economic miracle, the 1968-revolts, three major recessions, the European integration process and the globalisation of economics, have transformed this political reality literally beyond recognition.
Nation-states came into being because they guaranteed external security, internal order, national prosperity and cultural identity. Today the guarantees they provide are very limited at best, and everybody realises more or less openly that only through a European dimension (whatever that might be) can national interests be furthered and protected. Political stereotypes still wave the national sovereignty as a rallying flag, but what they can show is only very limited sovereignty. The power of only saying no versus the effective shaping of one's own future compares rather poorly. This is exactly the predicament of all members of the EU and WEU today, in comparison with other real great powers.
Democratically elected, accountable governments and parliaments are the source of legitimacy of the raison d'état, but this does not imply either that there is only one raison d'état for each national government, nor that a powerless legitimacy is the best instrument for defending democracy and national interests. A raison d'état that cannot chart and promote change is a recipe for slow-motion national suicide.
If it is true that we are living through the information revolution, then the intelligence communities can be one of the key actors. These communities have a rich experience in source management, speculative analysis, thorough research, employing working hypotheses, and sometimes they still command the resources for advanced technical information fusion systems. Finding a healthy, mutually useful relationship with other information-based professions is an essential step in the creation of ‘smart nations'
(7) making up a smart Europe.
A frequent political objection is that an intelligence policy at European level might be another potentially disruptive factor in an already changing transatlantic relationship. Intelligence has surely a strategic value and potent political symbolism, but the Alliance is different from the days of the Cold War and so are the needs of North American allies. A relationship stands if both sides see mutual benefits. With an estimated 20% of the overall intelligence contribution to common security, European countries do not present a very strong case.
It could be argued that an unbalanced relationship can be equally profitable, provided that the stronger party wants to shoulder the greater burden and cost of its leadership. In the field of intelligence this might be still true, but in the overall political picture the opposite is true. The USA are in substance ready to accept some of the disadvantages of a more balanced relationship in exchange for greater European support for common interests worldwide. To take the example of another close ally, it is interesting to see that while the Israeli Lavi fighter programme has foundered due to lack of US funds, its Ofeq (Horizon) satellites have not.
(8)