"Intelligence analysis needs to look backwards before looking forward"
di C. Andrew
Executive summary
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As Winston Churchill said ‘The further backwards you look, the further forward you can see’. In a political culture increasingly dominated by Historical Attention Span Deficit Disorder (HASDD), the Intelligence Community today needs to heed Churchill’s advice.
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Four historical methodologies of proven value offer an antidote to HASDD: the ‘lessons identified’ approach to significant events; full-scale intelligence histories; the retrospective analysis of our own previous intelligence assessments of enemies; and their evaluation of our intelligence systems.
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Such historical awareness would have forewarned the west that intelligence agencies in authoritarian regimes, especially those in one-party states, invariably tell their rulers what they want to hear. In Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, as in the Soviet Union, they thus act as a mechanism for reinforcing the regime’s misconceptions of the outside world.
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History has a long-term familiarity with the supposedly ‘new’ threat of a terrorism which is far more concerned to kill than to terrify, and identifies fanaticism as its core component. What makes the 21st century a less dangerous place so far than the 20th century is that fanaticism is no longer in control of any of the world’s major powers. But if the political power of fanaticism has declined, its destructive power over the next generation will be enormously increased by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.
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History also shows that fanaticism is so dangerous because it often combines obsessional conspiracy theories about its opponents with great tactical and operational skill, a combination which intelligence analysts have traditionally found difficult to comprehend. Bin Laden and his fellow-travellers are so dangerous precisely because they are like Hitler and Stalin in this respect. A valuable addition to the 21st-century US national intelligence community would be a National Intelligence Officer for Fanaticism and Conspiracy Theory.