National intelligence and grand strategy are not subjects for the weak-willed or the weak-minded. And yet, choosing its intelligence analysts from the academic groves of our left-professors, setting them up as cloistered bureaucrats, the U.S. government has brought us intelligence analysis as pandering and a national grand strategy based on wishful thinking. If there is a serious problem in the world, like the future intentions of the ruling Chinese Communist Party in Beijing, you won’t hear a worst-case assessment from the boys at CIA or DIA. These smart fellows know enough to take their lead from American political culture, from their former professors. They derive their epistemology from the shopping mall regime, their ethics from television, and their integrity from politicians. These are the same politicians who don’t want to say that Communists rule China. The “C” word is not to be used. It’s one of those negatives, when closely considered, that might suggest our trade policy with China is stupid and dangerous.
When you want to do something that is stupid and dangerous, rationalization becomes essential. In fact, when an entire nation wants to do something stupid and dangerous, in order to enjoy a certain type of consumption, rationalization may become bureaucratized with an official stamp of “truth.” And that’s where our intelligence analysts come in. Like the rest of our society, they have become soft. Their analysis holds that the term “Communist conspiracy” has no proper use whatsoever. A Communist is not a revolutionary conspirator, and a Communist government is not a totalitarian machine bent on global conquest. Such ideas are throwbacks to the Cold War once given credence by Neanderthals like Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower and JFK. We are way too sophisticated to believe in a “Communist threat” today. So we mustn’t say Hugo Chavez is a Communist, even though he loves Fidel and likens himself to Mao. We wouldn’t want to say the old Communists have returned to power in Russia, either. And we wouldn’t want to dwell on the fact that Russia has come out with a new model of ICBM. Today’s intelligence analyst would say it’s due to Russian psychology, having nothing to do with any future war scenarios. Nobody, after all, builds nuclear weapons with the intention of actually using them. For that matter, there is no reason we should have so many weapons ourselves.
The sophisticated intelligence analysis of our time is based on the special sociological insight of the shopping mall. You see, deep down, everyone wants to shop. Even Hitler wanted to shop. This is something Neville Chamberlain understood, and something that Winston Churchill never quite grasped. If you begin with the assumption that everyone wants to shop, and everyone wants to buy what American retail has to offer, then you’ve seen the path to peace, the path to the global village – to globalization and the integration of all into all. War is therefore becoming obsolete. A nuclear war, especially, is too far out of the way. Perhaps the Romans destroyed countries, exterminated nations and salted the land so that nothing would ever grow there again, but the modern shopping mall regime has found a better way to deal with enemies (i.e., wish them away).
Time is on the side of the shopping mall regime. All we have to do is wait for American movies, television and pornography to seep into the rest of the world. All we have to do is liberate women in the Islamic countries, and thereby liberate the political power of the shopper. According to this logic, China has already been transformed and the rule of the Chinese Communist Party is merely nominal. As the preeminent shopping mall regime, where the shoppers long ago replaced the citizens, America sets the example and leads the way. No American politician, therefore, dares to acknowledge that China intends to destroy the United States as a great power, exterminate 100 million Americans in a nuclear exchange if necessary, and has combined its manpower with Russian missile power in order to win the next world war. You won’t hear it from intelligence analysts or see it written in the memoirs of defectors, because the political feeding chain begins with the shopper who is also a voter, and advances through the political guts of the shopping mall regime to the Congress, to the White House and then to the bureaucrats who “serve” and “analyze.
”The worst blockhead in the official analysis business knows that the shopping public shouldn’t be frightened, and the paranoia of domestic extremists shouldn’t be fed. What the politicians want is “the good news” up front. They want positive solutions. They want to look good to the shoppers and the retailers. So if there isn’t a slick answer to a problem, if the answer is “blood, sweat and tears,” then the problem doesn’t exist. In fact, it mustn’t exist.
The problem of Russia, with its massive nuclear arsenal and KGB-led government, should have sent shockwaves of alarm through Washington long ago. Everyone knows the reforms in Russia have failed. What nobody can admit, however, is that the reforms gave the old Soviet military-industrial complex time and money for building a new generation of weapons. Russia now has a new generation of ICBMs while America relies on old ones. Russia has road and rail mobile ICBMs while America has none. Russia has now walked away from the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and NATO doesn’t know what to do. The shoppers will never understand or take an interest in such distant rumblings, so the politicians running for president aren’t going to discuss them. You won’t hear an extensive debate on the emerging Russian threat and which contender can best deal with it. The shoppers aren’t interested. The analysts, in their turn, must deny that Russia’s new weapons and future military buildup in Europe can upset the global balance of power. Today’s “sophisticated” analyst knows that America is about shopping and shopping is about economic optimism. If certain facts clash with economic optimism, then analysis must explain these facts away.
Take the problem with Iran. The Islamic fanatics in Tehran have been attempting to build a nuclear weapons manufacturing capability. Perhaps they only want to make ten or twelve hydrogen bombs each year. Maybe they’d ultimately like to have a thousand nuclear weapons one day. Why not? Why shouldn’t the people that brought you suicide bombers have nuclear bombs? After all, a nuclear bomb is only a bomb. It merely explodes. Furthermore, the Iranians can only hit Israel and parts of Europe. It will be several years before they can lob nuclear rockets at New York or Washington D.C. Therefore it’s a shame that anyone in America should worry about Iran, especially since our feeble attempts to intimidate Iran have failed.
There are too many headaches associated with bombing Iran, and the Americans don’t have enough troops or money for an invasion. Giving moral support to the Iranian people, to the democratic organizers among the millions of Iranian exiles, isn’t sexy enough – as it doesn’t appeal to shoppers and television addicts. All of this is known in Washington. The cynic always sees the bare-bottom reality of a thing. And as cynics, our CIA’s analysts know the politicians want the Iran problem to “go away.” Therefore, it is only a matter of changing the analysis by omitting certain details and building one’s conclusions on unstated assumptions.
The recent National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran is a case in point. As a matter of convenience, we are told that Iran’s nuclear program is no longer a military threat. Why admit a threat when the best political heads know there is nothing we can do about it? Best to rationalize it into oblivion. After all, negative news from the Middle East has already cost us higher oil prices. Shoppers don’t like it. Bad news of this kind makes the markets jittery and the dollar weaker. And so, our intelligence analysts are determined to help the U.S. economy, to slow the meltdown in its early stages. It’s a wonderful assignment, isn’t it? – Analysis for the sake of convenience.
