Part II:
The Wrong Culprit
From the February 16, 2004 issue: In stopping proliferation, the problem has been political will, not faulty intel.
by Henry Sokolski
02/16/2004, Volume 009, Issue 22
URL:http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/00...
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More often, though, U.S. officials have taken a more cowardly course, downplaying initial proliferation reports, especially when they involved nations Washington wanted to engage. Thus, U.S. officials were skeptical of the early intelligence that highlighted Israel's nuclear program in the 1960s, Iraq's and South Africa's nuclear weapons activities in the late 1970s, Pakistan's nuclear weapons efforts in the 1980s, and Iran's and North Korea's in the 1990s. Early evidence of China's, Russia's, and, more recently, Pakistan's illicit strategic assistance to these nations was similarly viewed with reservation.
This caution did little to encourage intelligence analysts tracking these proliferators. Thankfully, though, after 9/11, this reluctance receded: For the first time, a president publicly emphasized the desirability of acting against proliferators whenever and wherever practical. This helped put fighting proliferation back on the policy map, but it also had a downside: The increased interest in reporting proliferation developments focused attention on what little tactical information we had.
In the case of Iraq--a nation with a clear intent and history of acquiring and using strategic weapons capabilities and a persistent and annoying habit of openly defying U.N. inspections and dismantlement resolutions--policymakers and intelligence analysts leaned forward, emphasizing specifics that turned out to be wrong. Many of Saddam's strategic weapons capabilities, it now appears, were either dismantled in the early 1990s or bombed during Clinton's second term.
This gaffe is hardly good news, but it's not nearly as bad as Washington pundits are making it out to be. As they see it, the lesson to be
learned (and, if we are not careful, to be driven home by the newly announced investigations) is that the United States must be more cautious in acting against proliferation, lest it repeat the Iraqi error. And what error was this? Attacking Saddam on the basis of insufficient proliferation intelligence.
Yet, surely, this was not our key mistake. Instead, it was waiting as long as we did to act against Saddam's strategic weapons ambitions and his hostility to us, the U.N., and his own population. We had abundant strategic intelligence on this, and had it for two decades or more, but we chose to ignore it. Instead, we actually supported Saddam financially and militarily and sent him the dual-use goods he needed to pursue his strategic weapons programs.
Had we taken a different course when the first intelligence reports emerged about his nuclear ambitions 25 years ago (and his subsequent military buildup), we might have been able to avoid not just one, but both wars we waged against him. The problem wasn't a lack of intelligence on Saddam's strategic weapons programs. It was a lack of will to use the sound strategic warnings we had.
Certainly, before investigations get underway and recommendations start flying to centralize our intelligence agencies further and spend ever more money on more layers of management and new sources of intelligence, we would do well to focus on our uneven use of accurate early warnings. In the end, knowledge of proliferation specifics is the least of our problems.
Henry Sokolski is the executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and editor with Patrick Clawson of "Checking Iran's Nuclear Ambitions" (Army War College, 2004). |
