Round Table on
"Intelligence and National Security
at the Beginning of the 21st Century"

Dubrovnik, Croatia, October 27-28, 2000.

Session two:

The role of Intelligence in conflict resolution
(crises and wars in South-East Europe)

The role of national Intelligence estimates; national strategies and international agreements; the relationship between Intelligence and policy-makers; bilateral cooperation of Intelligence services; Intelligence support to international community and international forces /UNPROFOR, UNCRO, IFOR, SFOR, KFOR etc./

Moderators: Ambassador V. Jackovich, Admiral P. Lacoste

Jackovich:

I would like to begin the afternoon session. I am very honored to be asked to moderate this session with Admiral Lacoste. Perhaps we should start with the second point on the Round Table agenda, which is the role of Intelligence in conflict resolution in crisis situations; for example, in the wars in Southeast Europe, and, specifically, the role of cooperation of Intelligence services with international forces, with the international community in operations such as SFOR, UNPROFOR, KFOR, IFOR. Probably a lot of FOR's will be coming up in the future.
The discussion this morning was very freewheeling, which is fine, but perhaps we should start this discussion with some coverage about national Intelligence estimates, security and Intelligence estimates, and the relationship to specific international operations. I would immediately throw the floor open to anyone who would like to make a point on this or expand on a point that was made this morning. We talked about actions taken and not taken, options offered and not offered. In terms of context, one of the important points that shines through, for me at least, was the fact that in hindsight, we often look back at the past and try to analyze past actions, losing track of the fact that we have a context, that there was an international context, that there were distractions. The attention of policymakers is torn in many different directions, and they also weigh the consequences of their actions. One of the things that I did when I was in Bosnia, for example, was a mechanism that I developed myself, but I subsequently discovered that others in similar situations have adopted the same mechanism. I absolutely forbade my people to send back policy recommendations out of the zone, out of the war zone. I did this because I felt that we were the least qualified to do so. I felt that we were the best qualified to give information about what was happening on the ground. This happened in this village today, yesterday, whatever. This many people were casualties. This sort of military action was taken. We were on the ground and we could witness the event and send dispatches back and tell the government about it. But I also told my people that we were the least qualified to determine what to do about that in a global context. The discussion this morning, the contextuality, was a special point for me for that reason.

Kerr:

One thing seems to be increasingly important and very difficult, much harder for the US than other countries: our ability to maintain constant liaison and involvement with our allies and friends, and sometimes even our opponents. There is a lot of criticism in this current political campaign that the U.S. has not maintained its relationships, letting contacts go down. Consequently, when we need them and expect everyone to respond to our needs, nothing happens. I am struck by how complicated it is for the US to try to touch base with all those people that are involved in a particular problem or crisis. Maintaining those relationships with international organizations, all the nations that are involved, and keeping them organized and orchestrated, is an enormous task unless the government is exceptionally well-organized. In some administrations, everybody goes off and does their own thing independently, without any general guidance. In other administrations, it's very tightly orchestrated and carefully controlled by a very small number of people. Every crisis involves different players and a different set of circumstances, so the responses are often very uneven. It's very hard to coordinate across the U.S. government because of the sheer scope and breadth of it.

Tuđman:

I'd like to relate some of our experiences. We started to organize our Intelligence community at the beginning of the '90s, and from the very beginning, we established a lot of relations with foreign services, because they were interested in the regional crises. My experience is that when we were discussing the reality of the crises, wherever they were - Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, or Kosovo - the Intelligence estimates among the services were basically the same. We all shared the same or similar views on these basic questions: What is the situation? Who are the main actors? What are their objectives? How can these actors or subjects succeed in realizing their objectives? The problem arose when we had to address the political solutions imposed by powerful countries or the so-called international community. The fact is that they had proper Intelligence at their disposal, but still were not formulating and promoting the best political solutions. I personally don't think the focus was on resolving the political problem in the area but, rather, satisfying the national interests or objectives at home. I will use just one example, the Dayton Agreements for Bosnia and Herzegovina. From the very beginning, everyone was in favor of the agreement, but such an agreement can only function if the political structure is built from the bottom up, not from the top down. Only the three nations, the three peoples, can establish the necessary relations, infrastructure, and so on, within an atmosphere of confidence.
The publicly announced objectives of the international community about their presence in Bosnia and Herzegovina were not primarily to resolve the problem of Bosnia and Herzegovina itself. More often the objectives were to demonstrate the main role of NATO, to prove that the mechanism of European security was working, to implement international criteria and standards, but not to solve the problem of those three peoples living on that territory. That is one part of the problem. The other problem arose with the implementation of Intelligence estimates on the level of the international community. Basically, the Intelligence was exchanged only on a bilateral level, and because of that, we sometimes had problems when it came to multilateral cooperation. Another example based on Croatian experience: we have run a lot of joint projects or operations with other services in support of SFOR, IFOR, UNCRO, UNPROFOR, etc. When we ran those bilateral joint operations with the Americans, for the benefit of NATO, we believed that there was multilateral collaboration, and that at least the higher NATO officials were informed about it. Then we learned that NATO had not been informed at all. That is an example of how the role of partners on a multilateral level is often not recognised at all, the actual role of the partners. It's often not even known who the partners were.

Stolz:

With regard to the question of multinational Intelligence cooperation, I guess I would have to say I am pessimistic that it will be achieved in any significant way. Actually you will hear every once in a while that the UN ought to have a Intelligence service. It's just not going to happen in a practical way.

Tuđman:

Obviously there are certain areas where only bilateral cooperation is possible, so I am not talking about that. A year ago I was in Washington, and we were discussing and evaluating American and Croatian joint operations. It was an overview of the last five years of cooperation, with a number of Intelligence products produced on the basis of joint operations. We were informed about how many Intelligence products, based on our cooperation, were produced for the President of the United States, State Department, Chief of Staff, or for different European commanders of the NATO forces. Most of those Intelligence consumers were Americans, but the problem was that those people were not informed that a portion of their Intelligence was provided thanks to American cooperation with Croatian Intelligence services. I am not saying that users of Intelligence products have to know the origin of each piece of information. My point is that they have to know who the key partners or providers of their Intelligence are. At least it should be known to a certain number of people. That knowledge is relevant, especially in political crises, and especially if the partners themselves are involved of the crises. Both sides have to know whether the partnership is part of the problem or part of the solution.

Leijonhielm:

I see, as the chairman pointed out from the start, two related problems. One concerns a UN Intelligence dimension and the other the relationship between strategic and tactical or operational Intelligence, which seems to be a missing link. I admit that it will be extremely difficult to create a UN Intelligence unit which perhaps could not even be called that, but on the other hand, it seems possible to create an Intelligence task force for special missions to function as a sort of information umbrella. Helene Boatner pointed out in her recent article in the first issue of National Security and the Future that if the parties involved in special missions under a UN umbrella agree beforehand on technical and other practical means, it is much easier to transform national Intelligence into an operational and unilateral Intelligence unit once the mission is initiated. So preparations should be made beforehand, but the UN has, in fact, stopped that process. The other problem which we should consider is that at the operational level, you must have a steady flow of information on what is happening at the strategic and political levels. You are otherwise left in the dark. We have studied this problem and come to some conclusions. The lessons learned have so far been negative, but there is a ways to go. You could, for example, try a scenario-building technique. One or two strategic scenarios could be applied to current events at the operational level, and these would be pegged to each scenario so as to create a better understanding of what is going on in a broader context. There is another special problem connected to Intelligence in unilateral missions. In peace enforcement and peacekeeping operations, human Intelligence (HUMINT) is much more important than signal Intelligence (SIGINT). A method must therefore be created to use HUMINT more effectively, while still protecting one's sources from the other participants in the operation. I don't have an answer to that, but would just like to bring up the problem. Another important aspect is that if you have a united Intelligence force, you must have a common view, so as to avoid misunderstandings in the future.

Jackovich:

If I am hearing this right, it seems to me that there would be some utility in sharing some operational information on a specific issue and specific crises, but obviously there is a lot of conditionality involved, because the national interests of each service are going to be paramount. There was a comment I'm sure you have all seen by the head of the Russian Intelligence service in connection with the Ames case in 1994. He said something to the effect that "there are friendly states, but there no friendly Intelligence services."

Doder:

I would like to raise a specific question about Bosnia. How good is Intelligence in Bosnia? If it's national, if each side has its own national interest, then as a journalist, should I go to the front with the Muslim forces and get shot at by the Serbs? In this case, the Serbs are my enemy because they could kill me. If I go with the other side, the Muslims are my enemies because they are shooting at me. I am the same person trying to be as impartial as I can be. So how good is your Intelligence? What do these people want, apart from the cliché that they are savages, that their ancient hatreds cannot be resolved? Has anybody ever thought about it?

Smith:

I think their objective is to stay alive in this case, and the case you're talking about is territory. Their objectives are pretty limited, I think, but the Intelligence that we are interested in collecting is, first, what's going on in the front lines. It's very basic Intelligence. Then, second, anything which would threaten NATO troops and force protection has became the aim of Intelligence, any place where there is a military threat. So Intelligence consists of worrying about some group not under control, in the case of Bosnia, and about one of the three parties that has for whatever reason decided to target a NATO element. That is Intelligence.

Doder:

If that's Intelligence, then you are better off reading newspapers, because you have limited yourself to activities which provide no direction to leaders on how to deal with the situation. A political problem has to be solved in part by political means. Action has to be taken from the outside by great powers.

Smith:

So basically the political powers or policymakers tell you what interests them.

Tuđman:

Well, that is one thing. But then why do you believe that a fourth party or the international community automatically has the right position, the correct solution?

Doder:

It costs a lot of money, you see. Bosnia so far has cost more then 5 billion dollars in non-military expenditures. That is a lot of money.

Tuđman:

It's a lot of money and no solution.

Doder:

A lot of money and no solution. Shouldn't we invest money not to hear what the leaders say, but what the people say? I don't know how you do that. I'm not in the Intelligence business.

Tuđman:

There have been a lot of estimates in last five or six years about the Dayton Agreement. There is nothing, in my opinion, which needs to be corrected in those estimates. They were accurate then and are still accurate. The basic conclusion was that the Dayton agreement would not function if the structure were built from the top down, and I think that most of us will agree on that. Why was this type of structure then implemented? What good then is Intelligence in the resolution of conflicts, or the impact of Intelligence on the resolutions proposed to resolve the conflict?

Doder:

I think you have to look at it this way. You have to provide your customers, that is, your national leaders, with the best possible assessment of the situation so that when they talk to other people, they can feel secure and know how to proceed. This is conflict resolution, because if they go into a meeting with a chairman and know exactly what the situation is, then they can actually agree on something. If they go in without an accurate picture, they can be manipulated.

Agrell:

We have moved to a fundamental issue: what is actually conflict resolution, what is the international community doing when it is solving conflicts? Is it solving its own collective or national problems relating to the conflict? This is precisely what Mr. Tuđman is saying we experienced in the 1990's. The European security system is basically an introverted security system that functions mainly to resolve short-term internal problems which arose from the conflicts in the Balkans. Its main focus is not to solve the conflicts in the Balkans, but to solve those problems created through the media and public opinion, and address political frustrations within the European Union and with the countries themselves. This explains why a number of actions taken were not functional or appear pointless. But they were not completely pointless, because they served another purpose, and this is the explanation as to why the Dayton agreement was built from the top down. This was a way of solving the Western problem with the Bosnian war, not the conflict itself. The West wanted to remove the conflict from the top of the agenda, and Dayton succeeded in that, although it has not solved the conflict and will not solve the conflict. There is a lot of knowledge to be collected from the mistakes and failures in the 1990s. When UNPROFOR was organized in the spring of 1992, it was done without the even the most basic Intelligence assessments. That is why the UNPROFOR headquarters is based in Sarajevo, in a pleasant, faraway place with good communications. That is why it was placed there. Lots of nice restaurants and an airport and so forth.
The same goes for the planned location of the main logistics base for UNPROFOR in Banja Luka, which was ideally situated in Northern Bosnia, and had a good line of communication to the conflict areas in Croatia. Everything upside down, as we know now, and of course with some kind of Intelligence we should have been able to predict this at that time. I think the whole UNPROFOR operation in Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1992 up to the end in 1995 can be characterized as a tremendous Intelligence failure on the tactical as well as the strategic level, because I have the impression that the UNPROFOR never understood the war in Bosnia. They never fully understood what was going on, and this explains the debacles in 1995. The UNPROFOR leadership simply did not understand what was going on.
Another aspect is the role of the NGOs. In contrast, they have certainly learned to play the game and operate through the media; that is, achieve results not by going directly to the political decision-makers, but by influencing the media. This media policy has been much more elaborate than what government agencies have achieved. I would suggest that some of the NGOs should actually be regarded as Intelligence organizations, since the organization is basically collecting, analyzing, and distributing information; for example, Human Rights Watch, which is basically an Intelligence organization. This means that we have other actors in the Intelligence field. They might even be superior to national Intelligence agencies in some aspects. Certainly we have seen in a number of cases that Human Rights Watch or Amnesty International has been more rapid, more detailed in its reports about events taking place in conflict zones such as Algeria, in Kosovo and Rwanda. The question is whether or not to regard the NGOs as targets for Intelligence activities. If they are so influential, then their decision making processes and their priorities must be regarded as one of the factors fundamental to world politics. But how do states direct Intelligence activities against NGOs? How does this relate to ethical legal norms?

Doder:

The crucial role of the NGOs and the media is obvious, I think. What is happening in the media is absolutely fantastic; it's such a big change that you have to take it into account. Here's an anecdotal example: Leon Panetta, the White House Chief of Staff, is woken up at 2 in the morning by White House security. A small plane had just landed on the grounds of the White House and a security man is reporting to the Chief of Staff on the incident. Panetta asked a few questions before he discovered that the security an's information was based on CNN reporting. Did you go outside and see it? he asked him. No, the security man replied. He saw it on CNN. Now this may sound like a parody, but it shows how people approach information. And in this context, the NGO becomes an important player in a third world conflict situation. You have a reporter in Kosovo equipped with a cell phone and a satellite dish. But the American audience does not want to watch people who do not speak English. The audience doesn't like voiceovers. So reporters interview NGOs. They and some contract employees of international organizations have been the source of much misinformation about the Kosovo war. All the governments involved were also generating misinformation. We were told that hundreds of thousands of people were dead or presumed dead. The NGOs repeat these figures. And the whole system of information getspolluted. In an era of instant communication, we have an illusion of knowledge because we see live pictures.

Dedijer:

I suggest that you write an article for the Washington Post. That is, what is the world expenditure on Intelligence and security by different countries? The United States spends approximately 28 - 30 billion. How much is France's, Russia's, Sweden's, Bulgaria's, and Croatia's ?

Doder:

I think you know in the case of American Intelligence, most of that money goes into monitoring and you know it's all technical. It's not like Russia in 1912.

Kerr:

Just to comment on that. Most of the money that goes to technical Intelligence is for military purposes and not for what we are talking about. It is quite different. But let me ask a question. These NGOs I find kind of interesting because they are extra governmental and they are often on the other side of a problem, because they are pushing a problem while the government is sometimes trying to stay out of it. I have to comment on something you said. You described them as providing Intelligence, and they don't provide Intelligence from my perspective; they provide information. I think that is a very fundamental difference. I look at Intelligence as information which undergoes a validation process and is then applied to a particular purpose; for example, supporting a government objective or a government problem. Information has no objective. For instance, I don't consider what Duško does to be Intelligence. It is not done to help the government order its priorities or resolve its problems. It's done for quite different reasons. I think that is an important dinstinction. I would be interested in your response.

Agrell:

Can I respond immediately? I think that you are 95% correct. Traditionally the NGOs, especially in the field of human rights, have been providing information, and have built their credibility on providing objective information on events which have happened.

Doder:

In Kosovo this was not the case.

Agrell:

Although this wasn't always the case, I think now that they have gone more and more into the field of politics. This is distorting their traditional rule of reporting established facts, and Kosovo is the case where this happened. Because if you look at the NGOs in the 1990s, they have been moving away from simply reporting to making policy recommendations. That is why I used the word Intelligence, because they are actually starting to assume an Intelligence role. They are working as information collectors as well as providers, and these two roles conflict with one another. You don't know whether they are simply reporting the facts or whether they themselves are actors.

Dedijer:

There are 25,000 NGOs in the world today, and they are all bureaucratic. They don't have any social control system. Business has profit controls; if you don't make a profit, you're out. But all these organizations are terribly bureaucratic, regardless of their goals.

Tuđman:

Just to add a comment on NGOs and what you mentioned before. It is not always clear whether we are talking about NGOs, because sometimes they appear to be NGOs but are not. I estimate that there are 5,000 non-governmental associations in Croatia. It is an enormous number, which is an indication itself of something. Some of them have secure communication, and nobody knows where the money is coming from, nobody knows to whom are they reporting, and they are providing political judgements and questionable findings. Another fact, probably common in transition countries, is that there is no legal foundation about what NGOs are allowed or not allowed to do. Then we have to ask what the real criteria are for NGOs. Is it independence from government sources or not? How do we define an NGO? Sometimes they are very close to the domestic government, and sometimes to another government, but that is not the main point. Obviously the media, NGOs, Intelligence services, and diplomacy are all producing information. But the information belongs to different categories of knowledge, which have different goals and values to satisfy. In the media, you can find whatever you want to support your particular thesis, especially in turbulent times or in transition countries where no protection exists in the area of national interests or privacy. There are basically no professional rules. What kind of valid, long-term, relevant information or knowledge can we can expect from such sources? Because of this, I rarely read the newspapers. What we really need is to better understand the essence of Intelligence. What is information, what are NGO findings, what are diplomatic messages? That enables a better understanding of the world of knowledge.

Jackovich:

It's hard to follow everything out there, because there is so much, and you are right. How do you filter it, the information that is there? But one must have access to it, treat it in a particular manner, and be careful of it. I'm reminded here of the famous CNN reporter that was in Bosnia at the time, Christiane Amanpour, and what she said during a presidential town hall meeting with President Clinton. They were recording this town hall meeting with the President, and all of a sudden they beamed in Christiane Amanpour, and you could hear shelling in the background and see refugees running around, and on camera she asked the President, "Mr. President, what are you doing about Bosnia?" If you were in President Clinton's shoes, it would be a tough situation, and it is not something where you can say, "well, let me assess this, or I'll do that." It's very immediate, and millions of people are watching. There is an immediacy to this which I think we're trying to grapple with.

Ćosić:

I have a comment on the NGOs. I have a feeling that NGOs are much more active than just collecting information. What are their rules and objectives? How they are functioning? What is the source of their budget? Who is responsible for formulating their mission goals? I would like to read just one of the definitions of an NGO, which seems completely different than what they are actually doing on the ground. "NGOs are the institutional expression of civil society. They are non-profit organizations, long-established and well-funded, or short lived for a single purpose. Just a few additional sentences. There are 32,000 NGOs from the developed nations, 80,000 within affected nations, and the budgets for all of them totals 100 million. What is the source of their budgets? Disaster relief, food and agricultural activities..this I can see. But activities meant to encourage democratic processes? Initiating a process is an active role. This is not just acquiring information, but the shaping of the environment. NGOs are a very interesting issue, and I agree that they are much more like Intelligence organizations. They have reliable information, gather prime information on site, and so forth.

Kerr:

I think it is going to be harder and harder for Intelligence to focus on the problems of greatest priority to U.S. policy. It is too easy to be diverted by current issues that may be relatively unimportant in the scheme of things, but which get publicity. A one liner on the news that catches people's attention, or a photograph of some dramatic incident, may drive both Intelligence and the policy maker. Intelligence cannot shape the issues that it wants to address.

Dedijer:

Bill Colby initiated a national Intelligence debate about what is important at this moment for the U.S. to deal with. You've got that.

Kerr:

No, no. We always have statements of priority in one form or another, but it is not clear who pays attention to them, and they are easily crowded out by current issues.

Doder:

What is important to understand about television is that it's picture driven. In other words, first they acquire pictures and then you put in the text and the picture dictates what the text is. Irrespective of what's happening.
Something else on NGOs. I can see why any government that is not established is afraid of NGOs, and also of journalists. You know when I was in Moscow in the 1980's, the journalists were regarded as spies and you saw us as spies.

Shebarshin:

I didn't.

Doder:

I really don't think so.

Shebarshin:

Why not?

Doder:

What has happened in several instances is that people then get so radicalized that they get into different kinds of warcraft, but I don't think that American papers would employ journalists connected to the CIA.
Shebarshin: The role of the media, in particular television, is very cleverly illustrated in a De Niro film, "Wag the Dog". I advise you all to see it.
Jackovich: I feel we're getting deeper into a media-related subject, which is good if that is a productive direction, but we might be getting off the subject.

Smith:

I don't think it's a productive subject. It's part of life, one has to deal with it. We have to deal with it, politicians have to deal with it, policymakers have to deal with it. But television is rarely very informative, very often it's misleading, and therefore, Intelligence services have to know what the impotant issues are, whether they like it or not and whether the policymakers like it or not. Now clearly, some other people have to answer the policymaker's questions in regard to what they see on television. That has to be responded to.

Kerr:

I agree with one exception. Intelligence officers want to do things the way they want. They expect policymakers to read their product. But whether you like it or not, more and more policymakers are used to sitting in front of the Internet. They are used to being on e-mail. They are used to getting quick responses to their questions. They are going to want information in a different form, so if Intelligence is clever, it's going to have to figure how to influence the policymakers as they are, not as we wish them to be.
When I used be an analyst, there was a certain arrogance about analysts who would try to tell a policymaker about an individual that lives 3000 miles away, a person from another culture, someone he even doesn't fully understand, and whose language he probably doesn't speak, and yet he can't even figure out how the policymaker sitting right in front of him thinks and feels. I'm off the subject, obviously.

Smith:

But you're right. We have to do what the policymaker wants. We have to feed the policymaker material we want to feed him in a form which he would find digestable and which makes sense to him. There is no doubt about that. We can't say "no no, that's not what you want, here is what you want."

Jackovich:

There is a subject that came up earlier in regard to international operations, operations where the international community has agreed in one form or another to be present on the ground, and to take action or to do some peacekeeping or peace maintaining. Bosnia comes to mind, Kosovo comes to mind easily, but there are other places as well. What I would like to do in the short time remaining is to talk about successful operations or quandaries, challenges or problems which developed in terms of how Intelligence is provided to these operations, either in a national way, from one particular national service to the operation, or in a multilateral form. If we could just return to that particular question which we addressed earlier. Would somebody like to speak to this?

Doder:

This touches on a problem we dealt with in the morning; that is, how the political world, great powers, and the members of the Security Council reach an agreement to implement a certain decision. I pointed out that we have no agreement in the Balkans between the four Western powers, France, Germany, the United States and Britain. If you don't have an agreement on a political level, you let the UN handle it, and then you characterize everyone who works for the UN as incompetent, lazy, and gutless. I don't know who said that if your commander has clear cut decisions and knows where he is going, then everything functions. Here we don't know where it's going, the United Nations is taking care of it, and we create countries, say in Bosnia, with money. This only encourages a sense of dependency. I remember Sarajevo just after Dayton; the street was full of garbage. I said to people, "why don't you burn this goddamn pile of garbage." One guy says "we're waiting for Italian trucks; they're coming any day and then we're going to remove it." You create such a dependency on international donors, who actually resent this. I'll tell you another thing about this NGO's which has just occurred to me.
I was a fellow at the U.S. Institute for Peace. The Institute gives grants to NGOs to promote conflict resolution. Distinguished figures, former ambassadors, and cabinet members sit on the Institute's board. They invited me to sit in on their meeting. They had given a grant of $150,000 and the groups were back now to report on their mission to develop brotherhood between the Muslims and the Croats in Livno. So in come two guys in nice, clean shirts and the books are presented with charts, and everything is in color, and I look through their expenditures, and see that they have two Jeep Cherokees. In other words, the expenditures that went into the infrustructure of this project exceeded the expenditures that were allocated for their project. For example, they considered part of the project to put in a heating system for the Livno high school, which supposedly did not have a stove. I have covered almost all the Communist countries, and the Communists always built good schools. There was always a stove. But let us assume the town of Livno, which is a very cold town in winter, didn't have stoves. Wouldn't the parents of these kids, 40 years ago, 50 years ago, get a stove, cut up the firewood? I mean, these are their children. So they looked at us and said, "well, maybe there was a stove, but we want to upgrade everything." Sarajevo is now full of people like this, actually driving around doing something, looking very busy, and probably in the process of doing some good. The question is the price. The price that we pay doesn't correspond to the results. And the funniest part is that the board didn't like to hear this, because they all felt good about having given the money. They actually want to give money to promote friendship between Croats and Muslims in Bosnia. When you tell them that maybe this was not such a brilliant project, then you feel like you're pissing on the parade, and you don't do that.

Smith:

What has he got against Cherokees?

Doder:

No, I like them. But they are very expensive.

Tuđman:

60% of the expenses for humanitarian organizations in Croatia go for the people, for their salaries.

Doder:

But that's crazy.

Tuđman:

But that's a fact.

Kerr:

If you want to get back to the principle issue. It seems to me that from the US perspective, when the US is dealing with a problem like Bosnia or a situation where U.S. forces are involved in coalition forces, it would put together a special task force and, essentially, Intelligence would not be a major problem. I don't think the U.S. is going to be a major contributor of Intelligence to an organization where it lacks control. So I think in the case of U.N., which acts largely independently, the U.S. would be very reluctant to do more than give token support. It will show some help, but unless it is the principle player, unless it feels it has the leadership role, it's going to be very reluctant to provide information on a open and thorough basis. I think that's the reality of it and I don't see that changing soon. I don't think it should change that much, either. I don't think there's going to be globalized Intelligence, by any means.

Lacoste:

Yes, we have a point here. In today's world, military Intelligence is very expensive, because it uses a lot of sophisticated devices that are essentially useful only for combat actions against "high tech" modern armies, as was the case when NATO and Soviet forces were preparing for a possible war. There was a brilliant demonstration of such a "high tech" conflict during the Gulf War. It worked well because the Iraqi forces had been modelled on the Soviet and Western modern forces. We had another demonstration of American tactics during the Kosovo conflict, but the issue was not really satisfactory. In both cases, the political goals were not achieved: Saddam Hussein is still the head of Iraq, Milošević was not immediately deposed, and the populations were the real victims; moreover, it is not surpirsing that the Serbian army suffered practically no casualties. When for demagogic reasons one announces before initiating a war that no ground troops will be engaged, the enemy merely has to wait it out under cover of well-camouflaged and protected shelters. This is one of the consequences of the ridiculous "zero dead", as though the life of one soldier is more precious than the life of hundreds of civilians.
I believe this is an interesting issue to raise when considering political aspects of future conflicts. We should take into account the economical and psychological issues. War is no longer between superpowers, between national armies, so that the model developed all these years in the U.S. is probably not the best one to use for present and future conflicts. High tech is not paramount; photographs from space cannot help understand what happens in the mind of a dictator; even the best "decrypts" by the NSA fail to understand the projects or strategy of an enemy. I observe many discrepancies between the former world and the actual, contemporary world. We developed specific tools for the Cold War, highly sophisticated systems that are increasingly incapable of addressing new challenges.

Kerr:

I would assure the Admiral that it is easier for the United States to think about new investments in technical collection, and to try to solve the problem that way, than it is to think about political solutions to difficult political problems. So it is easier to spend the money and invest in that than to work out the real problems. But I will bet you that this is the direction we will be inclined to go, because that's a programmatic decision only involving money. So you can say, for example, that you want to build a satellite that will take pictures of something as small as my fingernail and you want to see it all the time, every moment of the day, 24 hours a day, in all kinds of weather. That's very satisfying to the military, because it gives them a marvelous sense of knowing everything. It doesn't have much to do with the problems that we are going to face, I agree, but I think that is the solution we'll follow.

Agrell:

I would like to go back to the UNPROFOR. The UNPROFOR operation was basically a coalition without a clear goal, without a unified command, and without any qualified Intelligence support. The latter was a disaster. The combination of lack of Intelligence support and lack of unified command is one of the best recipes for military and political disaster that you could ever prescribe. Why? Why was there no qualified Intelligence support? Certainly there was a lot of information available and a lot of Intelligence assets around, but it didn't work, because there was this loose coalition of various countries contributing their forces on a national basis. They contributed some lowgrade information to the Intelligence system of the UNPROFOR; basically, military maps and handbooks of Yugoslav weapon systems. I have seen some of these things, and they were not very useful for the force operations. It was not quality Intelligence support, and of course this was not given because security was not guaranteed. If UNPROFOR had been provided with quality Intelligence, there was the risk that it could have been leaked to those who were not supposed to have access, and thus sources would have been compromised. Now the European Union is organizing a 60,000 intervention force for crisis management, which would end up with 250,000 men, but with no Intelligence structure. There we have a big problem, at least as Europeans, because we might end up revisiting UNPROFOR.

Tuđman:

But there will always that problem, because if you don't have a clear objective, there is no chance of getting the Intelligence.

Agrell:

You must have an objective, you must have a unified command, and then you have a chance of getting Intelligence support.

Tuđman:

This afternoon we discussed the fact that there is no clear objective, and that there is no precise wish to solve the problem on the ground.

Dedijer:

Miro, can I ask you a question? How do you explain that the European Union doesn't work at all with Intelligence? They want to invest tremendous amounts of money without using Intelligence. It's crazy.

Agrell:

There is a very strong national hangup on Intelligence. You can hand over sovereignty to the Union in many fields, but not in the field of Intelligence. That is the last field where you hand over anything.

Lacoste:

Not unless you accept having shared Intelligence in certain sectors. It is done, though not very well, in criminal investigations, which are low level but can be effective, even in drug investigations. We have positive examples of such task forces.

Kerr:

But don't you think that Europeans also are and have been very unwilling to invest in the infrastructure needed to do this? You just don't say "I'm going to have Intelligence systems and I'm going to have a comprehensive view of the world through all the technical means available." After all, the United States started building a huge intelligence system at the beginning of the Cold War. It is a huge industry and a vast investment and operation. Even if you have the technical means, even if the Europeans have the satellites to put up, they couldn't interpret them, they couldn't read them or figure out what to do with the information. This is not just a casual business. The United States, in my view, is in the wrong business for the future. But that is the business we have been in, so that is what we know how to deal with. Remember the old joke about the drunk looking under a street light for his keys? Someone asks him "Is that where you lost them?" and he says, "No, but this is where the light is". That is what we are used to doing. Whether we'll do it effectively in the future is a crucial question.

Jackovich:

I think the topics tomorrow are going to be fascinating. The possibilities and limitations, what can and cannot be done, and also ethics and legal norms. We got into this a little bit; in fact, Admiral Lacoste got us into the question of organized crime and its connection with the Intelligence services, which I think will be a fascinating discussion under one of tomorrow's topics. I will not attempt to sum up what we said in a rather broad-ranging discussion, whether you look at this as pessimism, cynicism, realism, or simply, as Mr. Shebarshin said, the hard nosed reality of the business. It's either in the national interest or it is not in the national interest. It is probably not in the national interest to go into broader information-sharing where it cannot be protected and may not be used properly in the national interest. At the same time, we have an environment where there is proliferation in the information field, and a multitude of new players. The proliferation is not represented just by players like the NGOs, which have their own services, politics, and self-designated role to play, but also by television and its impact on the public and policymakers. Then you have the immediacy of communication through the Internet and people's access to a broader public dialogue. So we have the reality of national interests of the Intelligence services versus a world in which there are many more players and an explosion of information capabilities. Would anyone else like to comment?

Lacoste:

Just a point maybe. We know that if you want to play a role in the world, not just against others, but as real players, you need to have the Intelligence capacity. In my own country, that has been disregarded by politicians for years and years. It began only after the Cold War, when there was a lack of real information. So we tried to develop a satellite capacity, not just for collection, but also for interpretation. You know there is a European service near Madrid that we share with the Spaniards and Italians. We had another project with Germany - a radar satellite - but that project failed because they didn't put the money into it, and we got to the same point as we did before. I think now everyone agrees there is a necessity for this.

Dedijer:

In closing, I woujld like to talk a bit about the lack of individual and political intelligence in conflict resolution in the former Yugoslavia, and the stupidity and corruption in Yugoslav conflict resolution by the representatives of the European Union, the United Nations, and, to some extent, the U.S. My political approach to the problem of former Yugoslavia is very simple: I am a Serb and I know from experience in the U.S., Sweden, and other democratic countries that Serbs cannot be free until Croats, Slovenes, Albanians, and Bosnians are free. That is why I have opposed the Milošević regime since he came into power in l988, and launched four wars against Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in order to achieve the goal of "Great Serbia". I watched in horror from l991 to l995 as, among others, John Major, Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, Lord David Owen, former prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, Francois Mitterand, Bill Clinton, and Al Gore proclaimed the Milošević aggressions in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo "civil wars", and urged the democratic countries to remain neutral. On July 4, l995, I published an article in Dagens Nyhetter in Stockholm, "Send Thousands of Bombers to Serbia", which NATO finally did in l999, thus bringing the criminal Milošević regime to an end. I was further shocked to read the following in Lord Owen's 1996 book: "I told Milošević that he would not get a Great Serbia, but he would get a greater Serbia." The UN representative in Bosnia, Carl Bildt, spoke of Milošević in his book as the only Balkan leader with whom one could discuss problems, and condemned the presidents of Croatia, Tudjman, and Bosnia, Izetbegovic, as unreasonable men. It was incomprehensible to me that the Dayton Agreement established "Republika Srpska" in Eastern Bosnia, run by the very Serbs who had established the heinous concentration camps that repelled the world, and who were responsible for the butchery in Srebrenica, where several thousand Croats and Muslims were killed. It is thus not surprising that, after the signing of the Dayton Agreement, the representative of Republika Srpska, Koljevic, said on CNN: "Now we have achieved Great Serbia". Soon after Dayton, when the Labour Party came to power in Britain, it was revealed that the Milošević government utilized the National Westminster Bank, which is headed by Major's former foreign minister, Douglas Hurd. (Hurd, Bildt, and Kissinger are consultants to the Hucklyt Company, founded by FitzRoy MacLean in l996 to provide intelligence for corporations and governments in business, now run by former MI6 officials. See Financial Times of March 23, 2000). My guess is that after Milošević is overthrown from power and tried for his crimes, many former European ministers and prime ministers may be found to have done business with Milošević in his wars.