Markus Ederer*
After the fall of the Iron Curtain, we have not seen the end of history as some had predicted but a phase of rapidly changing parameters of International Secu-rity Policy. As unexpected as they were in nature and scope, the attacks of 9/11 are nevertheless paradigmatic of this New Age of Security Policy. But they are not the only symbol of a changed security landscape. The US have become the world’s only superpower. We have witnessed that increasing globalisation and bloc building (EU, NATO, NAFTA, etc.) do not exclude concurrent regional fragmentation and ethnic strife as in the Balkans and in some parts of Africa. The borderlines between war and peace have become blurred. The same holds true for the distinction between internal and external security. Nowadays the debate about security is dominated by transnational and asymmetric threats which our free and highly developed societies are extraordinarily vulnerable to.
Intelligence analysts must attempt to rise above the shifting sands of daily crises and try to structure the threat environment as well as our responses. As a practitioner, I very much advocate defining intelligence requirements from the customer’s angle, that is what governments expect from us. As I was asked to add a European view to this panel, let me remind you that in December 2003 the Member States of the European Union collectively defined the main threats in their EU Security Strategy:
– International terrorism – Weapons of mass destruction – Failing states
– Regional conflicts – Organized crime
*Hr. Dr. Markus Ederer is Deputy Director of Analysis, Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Ger-many.
This threat analysis, which is primarily characterized by transnational chal-lenges and asymmetric threats, requires intelligence services, too, to update and change their modi operandi fundamentally. The situation may be described by how a US colleague put it a couple of years ago: “A plane hit the Pentagon, and we have not changed our processes.” We Europeans would probably come to similarly sobering conclusions, even after the bombings of Istanbul and Madrid.
In this vein, let me refer to just three current issues in our wider intelligence culture which we can turn into opportunities, if we get things right:
– Culture of prevention: warning and response;
– Fighting the elephantiasis of reason;
– Fighting networks with networks.
Culture of Prevention: Warning and Response
First, we have to improve our culture of prevention. Crisis prevention is cost prevention. This is particularly pertinent when it comes to state failure and re-gional conflicts, but applies as well to fending off other threats such as the pro-liferation of WMD, international terrorism or organized crime. A culture of pre-vention which deserves its name is about warning and response. We, the Inter-national Community, are often not very good at timely and adequate responses;
the Balkans and recent African crises are eloquent proof of that. Let me illustrate this with a recent experience. Some time ago, I accompanied a briefing team to an EU institution in Brussels. The case in hand was a failing state in the EU pe-riphery about to corrode into a failed state. After listening to us, these people said: “Thank you, we fully agree and we, too, have it on our radar screen. Our problem is that with all the ongoing mega crises we cannot bring this one to the attention of politicians.” And then they jokingly added: “Can’t you organize a re-al conflict there?” This says everything about our culture of prevention and the missing link between warning and response.
Fighting the Elephantiasis of Reason
A second point I would like to make is particularly pertinent in countering the number one global threat: jiha¯d terrorism. It is about overcoming the elephanti-asis of reason. As most of us are educated in the Western world, we are taught to base analysis primarily on hard facts, to think in a linear way and to come up with rational conclusions. I suggest that while this is necessary, it is not enough.
In order to illustrate this, I want to ask you two questions: Would anyone in his right mind fly a plane into the World Trade Towers? Most of us would say No. Did it happen? Yes.
The conclusion to be drawn is that we need to improve our ability to think the unexpected or even – as in this case – the unthinkable. Furthermore, as a matter of methodology and when the situation at hand requires doing so, we have to be able to question our usual rational, linear thinking. We ought to understand that merely extrapolating on the basis of past data may be as fallacious as using your car’s rear mirror as a prognostic instrument for the road ahead. Moreover, skilled analysts know that assessing the perceptions of the other side is often more im-portant than analysing facts.
But do our services have the type of analysts who live up to the above crite-ria? Without any doubt, there is a dire need for improvement, which can be achieved by more intelligent recruitment and training of future analysts. In this process, however, we are hitting several roadblocks, and I want to mention three of them:
• Most of our current analysts as well as the newcomers lack the historical and cultural knowledge as well as the religious and sociological backgrounds of Islamic societies which are required to penetrate the minds of jihadi terrorists.
• Our intelligence-gathering systems rely heavily on traditional data collec-tion and on measuring quantifiable facts. Correctly assessing percepcollec-tions as well as cultural and religious aspirations is a still underdeveloped and yet to be con-ceptualised discipline.
• Intelligence is generated in bureaucracies. This reminds me of the old joke that “intelligence service” is a contradiction in terms. Indeed, intelligence is pro-duced in bureaucracies, and bureaucracies are inherently averse to thinking in terms of discontinuity. They do not reward tangential thinkers and people who think “out of the box.’’ Therefore, we are losing much potential there, and it is a management question of how to tap this potential.
Fighting Networks with Networks
There is another field where we need to get better. The expansion of interna-tional communications structures and globalization have facilitated the emer-gence of networks which reflect the new dangers (such as international terror-ism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, organised crime). Therefore, one of our central tasks must be to improve the formation of our own networks so as to be able to counter the adversaries’ networks.
Why is there no viable alternative for intelligence services? I see two main reasons:
• When it comes to information management, we have a famous saying refer-ring to Germany’s biggest IT company: “If Siemens knew what Siemens knows.” This refers to the fact that in big organisms the piece of information you are looking for is often hidden somewhere in the system but is not available to
the person or the unit that needs it most. Networking and communications can prevent that.
• Networks unlike hierarchies have built-in redundancies. If part of a network is hit or becomes dysfunctional, other parts of the network can take over. This makes well-managed networks the most efficient organisational structure in times of crises.
A System of Network-Centric Intelligence
Such a network on our side of the intelligence community should look like a system of concentric circles, with each circle describing one network and all these circles communicating with each other on the pattern of a network.
The innermost circle represents the intelligence service. The network poten-tial is chronically underexploited already in our organisations. Enhancing lines of intra-service communication, questioning those firewalls which hedge bu-reaucratic competences rather than secrets, as well as task force building are the needs of the moment. Regular meetings of regional experts from the various ar-eas, collective tasks for multi-experts resulting in interdisciplinary and supra-re-gional analyses, tighter networking of analysts with their colleagues from HUMINT and SIGINT without giving up the intelligence-specific protective functions are additional tools to get better results.
The intelligence service (inner circle) needs to network with the entities in the next circle, which describes the national arena. We are talking about inter-service relations, we are talking about inter-service-government relations, we are talk-ing about service relations with lower layers of administration. There is a lot to be done in terms of better networking within governments, which brings me back to the issue of governance which was already mentioned today. We all know about the rivalries between services domestically as well as about commu-nication gaps between government and services. The answer is to move away from this type of inter-blocking institutions and create interlocking institutions instead. As intelligence services, we also need to reach out to national compe-tence hubs which have the expertise we don’t have: think-tanks, NGOs, and even the private sector. To this end, we have to do a critical review of our self-creat-ed firewalls and of the neself-creat-eds of our civil society partners, whose professional purpose and integrity must not be compromised.
The outer concentric circle in this system of network-centric intelligence de-scribes the network at the international level. When it comes to outreach to oth-er entities such as NGOs, private sector and so forth, the rules of the national are-na should apply mutatis mutandis and new approaches should be sought. When it comes to networking of intelligence analysts amongst themselves, this seems to be nothing new to them, as we convene at this conference. Also standard
prac-tice are bilateral exchanges, even multilateral exchanges, but all of these are re-ally only exchanges of finished intelligence.
My understanding is that this will not suffice in the future. We have to take the network idea further. Decisions on countering transnational or external threats to our societies are usually taken at a multilateral level – be it the United Nations, NATO or the European Union. However, the intelligence assessments which serve as basis for governments to take their decisions are produced au-tonomously at national level. While there is some justification for that due to the very nature of the product, we are liable to generate more fissures in the Inter-national Community, such as over Iraq, unless we advance to selective joint as-sessments internationally. As long as national threat perceptions are potentially divergent, how can policies at the international level be convergent?
In this vein I would like to refer to what was said today about the “War against Terror.” Interestingly enough, the United States is in a war against terror, where-as the Europeans, while fighting terror, have prominently rejected the notion of war in this context. This is the result of different threat assessments. There are a few more cases in the transatlantic relationship where joint threat assessments such as on Iran or North Korea would greatly help joint decision-making.
I am not sure whether our American friends, who some believe are from Mars, are aware that we on Venus (Europe) have already engaged in the futuris-tic activity of joint intelligence assessments. With the Joint Situation Center (SITCEN) in its Secretariat General, the European Union has made the hitherto widest-ranging attempt at international level to lay the groundwork for its Com-mon Foreign and Security Policy by generating integrated situation and threat analyses. Made up of analysts from a total of presently seven EU member states, the SITCEN essentially operates on the basis of the so-called watch list of about 25-30 crisis regions. Their joint assessments are to facilitate decision-making in the EU Council. The merits of this unique networking approach, as I see them, are clear:
- the knowledge base is broadened;
- pooling of different information from different services with different strengths;
- harmonization of warning cultures;
- joint conclusions which necessarily help for unified decisions.
Not only with its enlargement will Europe widen and deepen this approach.
I would also like to refer to the appointment of a EU counterterrorism czar, Mr.
de Vries from the Netherlands, in the aftermath of the Madrid bombings as well as to the decision to hold regular meetings of all EU security services.
There is a clear message emanating from the above: if we want to live up to our responsibility to protect our citizens from the new threats, we don’t really have a choice. There is no more powerful alternative to fighting networks than with this level of networking amongst ourselves.