Overcoming the Freedom Deficit

By Derek Reveron

President Bush returned to the United Nations this week to restate his vision for overcoming three great challenges facing the world today: human suffering, the freedom deficit, and civil strife. By promoting human dignity as the solution, the United States offers clear guidance to countries of the world—the US does not want to dominate, but liberate. The strategy not only appeals to American values, but directly attacks the terrorists' ideology.  

For President Bush:

Confronting our enemies is essential, and so civilized nations will continue to take the fight to the terrorists. Yet we know that this war will not be won by force of arms alone. We must defeat the terrorists on the battlefield, and we must also defeat them in the battle of ideas. We must change the conditions that allow terrorists to flourish and recruit, by spreading the hope of freedom to millions who've never known it. We must help raise up the failing states and stagnant societies that provide fertile ground for the terrorists. We must defend and extend a vision of human dignity, and opportunity, and prosperity -- a vision far stronger than the dark appeal of resentment and murder.

There is unambiguous evidence to support President Bush's strategy to spark a fourth wave of democracy. The Arab Human Development report traces development problems in the Near East to deficits in knowledge, freedom, and women's rights. What is less clear, is whether or not the fourth wave of democratization has begun. Has regime change in Iraq and Afghanistan inspired friends, allies, and other countries to loosen the reigns of tyranny?

There has been much progress for democracy since the Portuguese revolution in 1974, which marked the beginning of the "third wave." But for the last ten years, the number of electoral democracies has been stalled at about 120. Sam Huntington coined the term third wave to capture "an important—perhaps the most important—global political development of the late twentieth century: the transition of some thirty countries from non-democratic to democratic political systems." But since 1995, the number has stagnated as transitioning states like Russia had a reverse transition that offset newly consolidated democracies like South Africa. With a ten-year pause of democracy's advance, there are reasons to think that a fourth wave may be coming.     

The third wave was characterized by the collapse of authoritarian regimes, the break down of totalitarian states, and the insistence for democratic reforms in many parts of the world that resulted in an unprecedented era of democratization. There are now more democracies on earth than ever before. Freedom is an everyday reality for 2.8 billion people (44 percent of the world's population). An additional 1.2 billion people are considered only partly free because rights are undermined by conflict, authoritarianism, or corruption. Since the publication of Huntington's classic work in 1991, not fewer than 40 governments have undertaken the transition to democracy. 

While the systematic study of transitioning countries is plagued by serious conceptual challenges, there are lessons to be learned about what the "fourth wave" may look like and how we know we are experiencing it. But we should heed Huntington's advice that "there is always the temptation to expect too much of the concept and to imagine that, by attaining democracy, a society will have resolved all of its political, social, administrative and cultural problems." As the last three decades of democratization show, third wave countries vary culturally, historically, and economically—producing different outcomes. Consequently, some regimes transformed from simple electoral democracies defined by universal suffrage and regular elections to liberal ones defined by freedom. Others, however, exercised the principle "one person, one vote, one time."

When the third wave began thirty years ago, it was not immediately clear that the Portuguese revolution would mark democracy's rise. According to Huntington, Portugal's transition began on twenty-five minutes after midnight on April 25, 1974 when a radio station played the song "Grandola Vila Morena."  The song initiated the military coup that brought down Caetano's dictatorship.  However, it wasn't until 18 months later and with considerable risk of civil war that Portugal emerged on the path to democracy.  Since democracy has now taken root in Portugal, we can place Portugal in the category of successful countries in the "Third Wave."  However, in 1974, it was not possible to consider Portugal transitioning to democracy, because the outcome was uncertain. Civil protests were critical to the transition. Are we seeing the beginnings of this in Egypt, Lebanon, Iran, Kuwait, Georgia, Ukraine, and Kyrgyzstan?

This begs the question of whether or not we can ever know if a country is in transition until the smoke has cleared. Will the Kuwaiti women that have taken to the streets lately to demand rights result in a cultural and political revolution? With the civil protestors in Lebanon who demanded sovereignty from Syria produce a democratic outcome? Will the contested elections in Egypt last week give rise to a multiparty democracy? While it isn't possible to answer yes to these questions, there are reasons to be optimistic. Afghans will again go to the polls this week-end to affirm their human rights by selecting a Parliament. Afghans are riding the wave of democratization.

In a broader context, it was only after 15 years of study that Huntington realized a democratization wave was actually sweeping the planet. Hindsight was critical to understanding what happened, but hindsight offers little to understand what we are witnessing today. And US responses to these events can help as we saw in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan or delay transition in other parts of the world. Michael Leeden argued in NRO that "The fires of freedom are burning all over Iran, Syria, and Lebanon. Don't stand back and admire the flames. Push the dictators in, and then cheer as free societies emerge." The U.S. can and should fuel a democratic wave. President Bush's strategy of pressuring allies like Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait or supporting opposition groups in Georgia and Ukraine is working.

If a fourth wave has started, then it probably began with Afghanistan's presidential elections on October 9, 2004. In spite of the positive developments coming out of Afghanistan, it will be several years to see if US and international efforts will make "democracy the only game in Kabul." But what we do now know is that since last fall, democracy has made gains in Ukraine, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan. And the trend is spreading.

Lebanon held parliamentary elections without major external interference; Egypt held multiparty presidential elections; Saudis held municipal elections. These events increase the fourth wave's flow.

Democracy and freedom are the prescriptions to strains within the Arab world. Democracy and freedom paves the way for integration among developing and developed countries.

So what accounts for this fourth wave? David B. Rivkin Jr. & Glenn Sulmasy argued in NRO that the Bush Doctrine is working—freedom is spreading. There is cause to celebrate that US-sponsored elections in Afghanistan and Iraq have inspired others to pursue freedom.  Democratization is not an end, but a process. The purple fingers held up in Iraq after its January historic election inspired others in the Near East to take to the streets and demand reform. The next two Iraqi elections this year to ratify a new constitution and produce a new government will likely have similar effects of inspiring democrats in Iran, Syria, and Egypt.

To successfully democratize, the transformation of the political and social systems must occur, and a democratic political culture must take root. Democratic transformation is difficult and messy. Violence will not stop in Afghanistan after this week-ends election, but the elections do give political actors non-violent means to participate in government. And this is why democracy is the cure to global misery. Democracy provides citizens and politicians a non-violent forum to not only express grievances, but to shape their country's future.

Elections are just the beginning for a democracy. The creation of democratic political institutions must be accompanied with the liberalization of society. Regular, free and fair elections must accompany civilian control of the military.  Universal suffrage must be accompanied with civil liberties. A democratic political culture founded on trust, tolerance, and willingness to compromise strengthens democracy.  The United States can usher in this fourth wave by aiding these transitions; we just have to be patient for the results years after the first election.  

This should appear in the National Review Online this week.

The Last Best Chance is No Sure Bet

Derek Reveron

Though 9/11 illustrated the horrific violence of terrorism, the absence of a follow-on attack in the United States has prompted a number of policymakers and politicians to beat the drum about the dangers of terrorism. Ignoring the counterterrorism successes and reorientation of the US government to combat terrorism, every few months, a former counterterrorism official leads headlines with a doom and gloom prophesy and concerns that the United States has become complacent. This month, former Senator Sam Nunn is leading the charge through the Nuclear Threat Initiative's new film The Last Best Chance. As he and his co-chair Ted Turner see it, the US is "in a race between cooperation and catastrophe."

The film opens in Russian with a smuggler negotiating with a security officer at a Russian nuclear weapons storage site. For two tactical nuclear weapons, the smuggler offers five years pay (about $10,000). When the security officer hesitates, the smuggler counsels, the terrorists will get the weapons from somewhere, so why shouldn't they get them from us?

The rest of the film is not quite the cat-and-mouse game we've come to expect from films on the subject or the real world where the terrorists don't hold very many cards. But I was left the impression that the terrorists are omnipotent; they sip tea and take delight in the forthcoming nuclear terrorism while the US government is confused, hampered by an unwieldy bureaucracy, and downright befuddled on how to confront nuclear terrorism. This is a serious flaw and an annoyance in the film.

In Nunn's words, the film was produced because "it is urgent that people learn about these dangers and what they can do to help prevent terrorists from getting nuclear weapons." But the film amounts to no more than a 45-minute infomercial to further publicize the dangers of nuclear terrorism—fairly obvious even to those outside of policy circles. A March MSNBC poll found fifty-three percent of Americans think a nuclear attack by terrorists is at least somewhat likely.

The popularity of Fox's hit action drama 24 should also be good evidence that Americans have been grappling with the realities of nuclear terrorism. In the latest installment of the award-winning show, the Secretary of Defense is kidnapped and nearly executed; scores of nuclear reactors nearly melt down; Air Force One is shot down to steal the nuclear football; a nuclear warhead is stolen; and a cruise missile with that warhead is launched from the Midwest to destroy Los Angeles.

As an avid 24 fan, I had high hopes for The Last Best Chance. 9/11 Commission Chair and Vice Chair, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton called the film: "A wake-up call for America and the world."

My expectations were further raised when I learned that the film would not be broadcast or carried on cable. Could it be more violent than the Sopranos, more morose than Six Feet Under, and more intense than 24?

But after the opening scene, I discovered the answer. The film is just not that good. The Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) would have been better off running commercials during 24 to explain the policy choices that need to be made today. A commercial after the show's hero liberates the Secretary of Defense could solicit the needed funds NTI is hoping to raise to reduce the threats from nuclear weapons.

While the Director clearly had 24 in mind as a way to compose the film, it just falls short in execution. Even as a docudrama, it is not very good. It is not easy to discriminate the facts from the fiction in the film. For example, while a nuclear weapon or nuclear material is fundamentally necessary for nuclear terrorism, the film portrays nuclear terrorism as too easy. This in fact underlies the film's basic message—act now while we still have a chance. When senior Administration officials quibble on the rate it will take to secure Russia's nuclear materials, former US Senator Fred Thompson who plays the President warns, "we'll all be dead at that rate."

The threat of nuclear attack has been real for decades and the policy to secure loose nukes is familiar. Before the Soviet Union fully collapsed, Congress passed the 1991 Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. In the past 14 years, the program claims to have eliminated more than 6,000 nuclear warheads and secured hundreds of tons of nuclear material. While the policy is working (albeit slowly), the film does point out that there is enough material in Russia today to produce more than 60,000 weapons and hundreds of weapons could be made from material in more than 100 research facilities in more than 40 countries (NTI has programs in several of these).

The goals of the Last Best Chance and the Nuclear Threat Initiative are noteworthy—no one should be against making the world's nuclear materials more secure. But the overly didactic film and banal plot is probably what kept it off the air—not the treatment of the subject. At times, the film even strays from its prime purpose to criticize the current nuclear posture. Echoing Robert McNamara's recent concerns about accidental launches, the film argues the current strategic deterrence posture is dangerous.  This is very much out of place from the film's emphasis on nuclear terrorism, doesn't reflect 55 years of safety, or the improvements in command and control measures in the 37 years since McNamara left the Defense Department. 

The film does give the appearance that it is easy to steal nuclear material. Ironically, Russia is not portrayed as the weak link. With the help of the US, the Russian government was able to prevent the theft of nuclear weapons. A facility in Belarus, a factory in Poland, and a scientist in South Africa are the sources of vulnerability. While the film doesn't end with mushroom clouds, the scenario just isn't plausible.

As I argued in NRO earlier this year, the lessons of Iraq teach us that it is not that easy, even for a country with substantial resources, to develop and conceal weapons of mass destruction. While it is technically possible for non-state actors to produce a nuclear weapon, it is overly simplistic to say that they will develop and execute a WMD attack.

As a film, The Last Best Chance echoes the Fox hit, but it fails because it misunderstood the popularity of 24. The reason so many fans tuned in every week was not only the threat of destruction, but also to watch Counterterrorism Unit agent Jack Bauer race against the clock to save the United States. It was balanced and reflected the move-countermove nature of counterterrorism. The Last Best Chance ignores reality and portrays the United States as a sitting duck. I think high-level al Qaeda detainees in American or allied custody would also contest this one-sided view of the film.

— Derek Reveron is the editor of America's Viceroys: the Military and U.S. Foreign Policy, associate professor of national-security affairs at the Naval War College, and a former intelligence analyst for the FBI. You can find him online at connectthedots.blog.com.

Clarke is at it again:

From Friday, May 27, 2005 issue.
Former Counterterrorism Czar Cites Complacency
By Chris Strohm
Government Executive

“It’s been 44 months since 9/11 and there is, in some locations around the country and in popular opinion, a growing sense of complacency,” Clarke said during a keynote speech at the 2005 Government Security Conference in Washington. “We can’t get back to normal. We can never get back to normal.”

He raised similiar points in an Atlantic article in January. Here is my response that ran in the National Review Online:

	http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/reveron200501130715.asp

Mission: Possible

Reforming the Intelligence Community

By Derek Reveron

By one count, there have been about 40 commissions since the US was surprised at Pearl Harbor that have proposed changes to how the country gathers and analyzes intelligence. Since the 9/11 attacks, four Congressional, Presidential, and independent reports have recommended major changes to the intelligence community—including the creation of a new Director of National Intelligence. Last week, former US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte was officially sworn-in with his deputy former National Security Agency Director General Michael Hayden.

The Negroponte-Hayden team has strong bipartisan support (Negroponte was confirmed with 98 votes in the Senate) and has the full backing of President Bush. Negroponte is the President’s principal intelligence advisor, has the power to create national intelligence centers like the National Counterterrorism Center, and has budgetary authority for intelligence matters. "I've relied on his candid judgment to help solve complicated problems," Bush said at Negroponte’s swearing-in ceremony.  "Our nation is at war, and John is making sure that those whose duty it is to defend America have the information we need to make the right decisions."

Both Ambassador Negroponte and Air Force General Hayden are no novices when it comes to the intelligence community, Congress, and the federal bureaucracy. Both have had distinguished careers (nearly 80 years experience collectively) and have a distinct advantage over their colleagues who were given the task of overseeing the other new federal effort created after 9/11 for homeland security. Ambassador Negroponte is a career foreign service officer that has recently served the President well at the United Nations and as the first US ambassador to a free Iraq. General Hayden recently led one of the country’s largest intelligence agencies and earned his fourth star last month.

In spite of their qualifications, the task before them is monumental. The intelligence community is huge—15 agencies consuming an estimated $40 billion annually. While much attention has focused on the CIA these last few years, the defense intelligence agencies dwarf the Langley campus and consume nearly 80 percent of the intelligence budget. The first task the new DNI and his deputy face are effectively managing relations with the Defense Department, which has a two-year head start on intelligence reform.

About a year after the 9/11 attacks, Congress created a new Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence or USD (I). Filled by a close Rumsfeld advisor, Steve Cambone has been leading the transformation of defense intelligence.  Rumsfeld supported the new office’s creation because he wanted “one dog to kick” for intelligence matters. USD (I) oversees the largest portion of the US intelligence budget and ensures no misunderstanding between the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence on intelligence matters.

While the 2004 legislation makes it clear that the Director of National Intelligence will be the President’s principal intelligence advisor and manage the intelligence budget, he will only “participate with” the Secretary of Defense on national intelligence matters. This is not too different from the statutory authority the dual-hatted CIA Director had when he also was the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI), who had little control of resources outside the CIA. This ambiguity will require Negroponte to use his diplomatic expertise to ensure civilian and defense collection efforts are harmonized. With DoD controlling about $32 billion of the intelligence budget, this will be no easy task. But General Hayden, who formerly controlled much of this budget when he led the NSA, will undoubtedly be up to the mission.

Connect the dots…

Two different lessons have emerged from the intelligence failures of 9/11 and the Iraqi WMD National Intelligence Estimate. While it is only speculation (and much wishful thinking), 9/11 might have been prevented had only the “dots been connected.” The FBI had information that Middle Eastern men were seeking to learn how to fly aircraft and not land and the CIA had the names of two of the hijackers that entered the country. Had the FBI and CIA shared their information, the federal government might have had a chance to disrupt the 9/11 plot. Since this revelation first emerged several years ago, the slogan to fix intelligence has been to “Share! Share! Share!” The challenge for the intelligence community has been to balance the need to know with the need to share.

The lesson of the Iraqi WMD estimate failure was not about failing to share. Rather, there were not enough dots to connect. The President’s Commission on Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction http://www.whitehouse.gov/wmd/ makes clear:

The Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence.

While imagery could identify suspect buildings in Iraq, there was little to no reliable information to determine what was in the buildings. As such, the slogan to fix intelligence in the wake of this revelation has been “Collect! Collect! Collect!” Specifically, collect more human intelligence or HUMINT.

While both lessons are important and should inform Negroponte’s efforts, the solutions are different. The 9/11 lesson is viewed as more structural than cultural; much progress has been made to integrate the FBI more into the intelligence community during the past four years. The new National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC) is now a single building housing both FBI and CIA intelligence analysts and operators to prevent any future failures in intelligence sharing. Increased technology spending by the FBI and its Executive Director for Intelligence Maureen Baginski (former NSA colleague of General Hayden) has connected the FBI more completely to the intelligence community. It has only been about two years since an analyst at FBI headquarters could email an analyst at CIA headquarters—but now they can talk. Though the FBI missed the Microsoft and the Internet revolutions of the mid-1990s, Ms. Baginksi has the FBI on a clear path to become a substantial, contributing member to the intelligence community. The Negroponte-Hayden team will have to ensure they continue on this course.

Collect more dots…

The lesson of failing to accurately portray Iraq’s WMD capabilities requires an entirely different set of solutions than co-locating personnel and modernizing IT infrastructure. Fundamentally, it is a collection problem—not enough dots were collected to accurately analyze Iraq’s weapons programs. While HUMINT has been portrayed as the silver bullet to fix the problem, there is no easy solution. The types of organizations and countries that threaten the United States do not lend themselves to be penetrated by US intelligence. North Korea, Iran, or the mountains of Afghanistan are difficult operating environments. The lessons from the Cold War should remind those that sing the praises of HUMINT—there were few successes in understanding the Soviet Union and a failure in predicting the timing of its demise. Similar challenges exist today for the CIA, FBI, and military services that attempt to penetrate a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.

To overcome this penetration challenge, the intelligence community has adopted “red cells” in an attempt to role-play how adversaries might behave. While this approach can be important to understand North Korea’s intentions, it will do little to locate al Qaeda’s senior leadership, identify terrorist operators, or disrupt terrorist plots. With the inability to disrupt the 9/11 plot being the principal reason for Negroponte’s new job, this is a challenge that will occupy his time by ensuring unity of effort to collect intelligence to prevent future attacks. The challenge will also be to balance collection efforts against other threats. If he fails to do this, then the Defense Department will likely exert its mass to ensure its intelligence needs are met.

Mission: Possible

With nearly a month on the job, President Bush is pleased with the DNI’s progress. "He's ensuring that our intelligence agencies work as a single, unified enterprise. And he's serving as my principal intelligence advisor," Bush said last week. With a good start, strong Congressional and executive support, Negroponte and Hayden should succeed in their mission possible. The trick for them will not to become mired in the day-to-day of current intelligence, but to craft a strategy to guide the intelligence community to collect and connect more dots.

Derek Reveron is the editor of America's Viceroys: the Military and U.S. Foreign Policy, associate professor of national security affairs at the Naval War College, and a member of the intelligence community.