Intelligence in a Trump Presidency

The election of Donald Trump has generated plenty of interesting talking points for pundits, political scientists, and everyday people. I am mostly fascinated by the interpretation of his actions by the media.  It is an interesting time to be a social scientist.

One recent area that has received a lot of attention lately is the apparent feud between the President-Elect and the intelligence community.  This issue has come to a head because of the Russian hacking accusation and scandal. In a recent article in Politico, there is a discussion of the issue in which Trump accuses the intelligence community of playing politics because the Top Secret briefing he is supposed to receive has already been leaked to the media.

"How did NBC get 'an exclusive look into the top secret report he (Obama) was presented?'" Trump tweeted Thursday. "Who gave them this report and why? Politics!" 

The network says a senior U.S. intelligence official confirmed leaked details of the report first published in the Washington Post, which states that U.S. intercepts captured Russian officials congratulating themselves on Trump's election win, citing U.S. officials. The overall report makes the case that Russia intervened in the election, NBC News reported. 

The president-elect is set to meet with intelligence officials on Friday, when he is expected to be briefed on evidence uncovered by the Russian hacking probe. Trump has repeatedly questioned intelligence agencies' conclusions that Russian operatives were behind several cyberattacks during the 2016 presidential race.

The accusation that intelligence is politicized is not a new one. Remember the ink that was spilled about the Bush Administration pressuring the CIA to provide evidence of Iraqi non-compliance with WMD? Goodman (2003, 62) attributes the failure of strategic intelligence to a politicization of intelligence at the CIA under Director Casey in the 1990s, and which he noted continued under Robert Gates:

Casey and Gates were directly responsible for the CIA’s poor analytical record in dealing with Soviet issues throughout the 1980s, from the failure to foresee the Soviet collapse to the revelation that CIA clandestine officer Aldrich Ames had been a Soviet spy for nearly a decade, altogether the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the agency until the terrorist attacks in 2001. In an unguarded moment in March 1995, Gates admitted that he had watched Casey on ‘issue after issue sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the policy he wanted pursued’. There has never been a better definition of politicization by a former director of central intelligence.

Loch Johnson (2003, 659), the father of modern intelligence studies, also weighed in on the issue of politicization of intelligence in a piece about theories of strategic intelligence had this to say:

Beyond these basics, a theory will have to take into account the most significant inadequacies of intelligence, including its periodic irrelevance and lack of timeliness, the frequent unwillingness of policymakers to accept reliable information (often a function of pathologies in the relationship between the producers and the consumers of intelligence), and the risks posed to democracy by the politicization of information.

His definition of politicization comes at the information presentation stage of the intelligence process.  The larger issue, and one which seems to be more frequently applicable today, is the leaking of intelligence information (which may be politicized in the Johnson context first) to the media.

News that Trump wants to shake up the intelligence community may cause them to lash out, but NPR has a great story about how the CIA has lost these battles in the past.

This particular agency battle will be one that should be interesting to watch unfold over the coming months and years.
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 Goodman, Melvin A. 2003. "9/11: The Failure of Strategic Intelligence." Intelligence and National Security, 18(4): 59-71.

Johnson, Loch K. 2003. "Preface to a Theory of Strategic Intelligence" International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, 16(4): 638-663.

Is there a coup a-brew in Turkey?

Over the past 18 months I've read half a dozen books about Turkey and scores of articles.  I did this for a long-term project in which Turkey's position in the international network of rivalries is very interesting.  That project is looking at Turkey as a case for whether an unknown social position that is determined by the cumulative social choices of all states about which states pose a threat (rivalry) can affect state behavior.  There is also a question about whether factors within a state may cause it to become central in such a network.

I am far from an expert on Turkish politics, but my foray into the academic international relations and historical literature about that state has made me curious.  The events within Turkey over the past six months have made the country even more interesting from the standpoint of someone who is interested in civil-military relations.

The reporting on the abortive coup and its aftermath has been interesting and scattered.  On the one hand, it seems as if the coup itself was largely theoretical and ineffective.  The prolonged and continued effort to blame the coup on Gulen and his followers has seemed like a naked political maneuver to minimize any influence that Erdogan's former ally has within the polity.  However, Michael Rubin from the American Enterprise Institute has been writing about other issues with Turkey, and specifically about the chance for a real coup to take place sometime in the coming year.
(article)

Much of the reporting about Turkey in the West focuses on either President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s efforts to draft a new constitution or the aftermath of the abortive July 15 coup. But, behind-the-scenes, there is a story with ramifications as great: the competition for control of the military between followers of Erdogan on one hand and those of ultra-nationalist and former Maoist political leader and businessman Dogu Perincek on the other. Perincek’s followers have long occupied top role in the Turkish military which was fine when Erdogan and Perincek sought to take on common enemies: Kurds, liberals, followers of Fethullah Gülen etc. I had previously written about the Erdogan-Perincek struggle within the Turkish military here, but now it seems that the conflict may be accelerating. 

In recent days, Perincek has appeared on television and insisted Erdogan give up on his dreams of changing the constitution. He has cited a letter from a member of his political party calling for a popular rebellion and has now openly called for a change in government. Perincek has also suggested that Turkey could be aflame by March. One prominent Perincek supporter, prominent retired air force officer Ahmet Zeki Ucok has openly said there will be a new coup, but with full buy-in from all levels of the Turkish military.

 The continued unrest within Turkey, including the murder of Russia's ambassador, attacks carried out by ISIS, and Kurdish restiveness provide the military with plenty of arguments for the need to change the leadership of the state in order to right the security situation. While the idea that there may be a coup in Turkey is still speculative, the growing instability in the country's security situation heightens the risk that such a change could occur.

I am teaching a course this semester on civil-military relations, and we will be doing a lot of Turkey watching.