Last Tuesday the US intelligence chief Daniel Coats released a new strategy of the country’s National Intelligence. Bloomberg quotes the document hammered out by the American intelligence agencies and revamped every four years. Particularly, it says: “Russian efforts to increase its influence and authority may conflict with US goals and priorities in multiple regions.”
The upgrade of China’s military capabilities expanding its domination in the Asian-Pacific Region has become an equally serious challenge for the United States. Russia and China are described in the document as traditional rivals. Both countries are said to strive to bolster their influence using present-day changes in global environment and such trends as rising isolationist sentiment in the west and de-emphasis of democratic ideals.
As far as an arms race in space is concerned, here, too, the American intelligence community sees quite a few threats tangible to the US. “Russia and China will continue to pursue a full range of anti-satellite weapons as a means to reduce US military effectiveness and overall security,” Bloomberg quoted the strategy.
Meanwhile Washington completely forgets it is the US that intends to transfer the arms race to the outer space as suggested in the recently adopted new anti-missile defense strategy. And for making all stay out of its way, White House plans to pull out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) on February 2 this year. Hence, before rebuking Russia and China, Washington needs to look at itself and the way it behaves globally and fuels a new arms race, in the first place.
The document outlines seven mission objectives of the national intelligence: strategic intelligence, anticipatory intelligence, current operations intelligence, cyber threat intelligence, counterterrorism, counterproliferation, and counterintelligence. As a reminder, institutionally, the US intelligence consists of two independent agencies – the CIA and National Intelligence, eight departments, including military and marine intelligence and counterintelligence, as well as seven units in other ministries and agencies of the United States.
The current document of the National Intelligence’s strategy contains rather broad terms. It specifically stipulates that only those facts and plans are released to the public that will not damage America’s national security when unveiled. But even what has spilled into public view attests to the fact that the plans of the national intelligence fully fit into bigger-picture new National Security Strategy released in December 2017. It puts it directly that the key threats for the United States are Russia’s nuclear weapons and its attempts ‘to derail democracy’ through media, as well as the growing might of China.
Consequently, both strategies contain provisions demonstrating that Washington will continue to strive for global hegemony and retaining monopolar world. And it appears that the US National Intelligence is to make an all-out effort to encourage that. At least, Washington puts high hopes on that.
The US intelligence agencies have always enjoyed a privileged treatment from White House and Congress. The state of affairs is similar today. For example, despite the so-called ‘shutdown’ (suspension of US government’s operations) lasting already for the second consecutive month, intelligence services are still financed adequately. All the more so as funds are provided for those agencies through the end of September…
The National Intelligence’s new strategy points out that the US can find “opportunities to work with Beijing on issues of mutual concern.” Unfortunately, the document has no such statements regarding Russia. That means that Washington still has no plans to seek ways to compromise in a two-sided dialogue with Moscow. And that is a desolating fact.
Particularly as there have been recent examples of a close cooperation, for example, between that same intelligence agencies of the two countries. Specifically, during the meeting with US President Donald Trump in Helsinki on July 16, 2018 the Russian leader Vladimir Putin noted that there had been examples of a successful Russia-US collaboration between intelligence services, with cooperation during the FIFA World Cup held in our country in the summer of 2018 being one of them.
There is another visual example of bilateral cooperation between the Russian and US special services. In December 2017, the Russian leader Vladimir Putin thanked his American counterpart Donald Trump in a telephone conversation for helping prevent a terrorist attack in St. Petersburg with the help of the CIA. Later it became known that bomb attacks were plotted in the Kazan Cathedral. Moreover, terrorists wanted to explode homemade bombs in places of mass gathering.
Unfortunately, examples of such a close cooperation are occasional and rare. Though there is a good scope of work in the area of cooperation between the Russian and US intelligence services for jointly tackling global terrorism. On a related note, in the abovementioned telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin, US President described the collaboration between the two countries’ special services as “an example of the positive things” and emphasized the importance of intelligence cooperation “to defeat terrorists wherever they may be."
It is unfortunate that those words of Donald Trump have come to nothing, and the new National Intelligence Strategy only proves that – Russia still remains the main rival for the United States…
