GailForce: More on Aspen Institute’s Security Forum – Dennis Blair

Probably the talk that generated the most media headlines at last week’s Security Forum held at the Aspen Institute were the comments of former Director of National Intelligence, retired navy Admiral Dennis Blair. His session was moderated by Lesley Stahl of CBS news and 60 Minutes fame. Some of the media headlines gave the impression that Blair was being highly critical of the current administration. I didn’t come away with that impression. Looking at all of his comments, I came away with the sense he was saying we have been successful in our war against terrorism but now may be the time to modify our current strategy. He presented some well thought out comments and gave some compelling arguments to back them up.

I do not presume to speak for Admiral Blair but I do have experience with how the military mindset generally approaches problems and why their may be differences with civilian leadership. I joined the military in the early 1970’s when the public was so anti-military they were attacking military recruiters and harassing military members on the street if you walked around in your uniform. Even though I was pro military, I must admit up until the time I joined I did hold the image of Slim Pickens cowboy hat in hand, riding a nuclear weapon as it dropped down on the then Soviet Union at the end of the movie Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb as an example of the military mindset. What I experienced was totally different and found military strategists to be some of the sharpest thinkers I’ve ever run into. It’s a matter of focus. I think its best said by Hans J. Morgenthau in my favorite book on international relations, Politics Among Nations The Struggle for Power and Peace:
“The military leader must think in absolute terms. He lives in the present and in the immediate future. The sole question before him is how to win victories as cheaply and quickly as possible and how to avoid defeat.” In lay men’s terms, that means focusing on solutions to problems that allow you to win.

That said Lesley Stahl began by asking Blair if all of the resources thrown at the intelligence community for the Al Qaeda threat had been spent well. The Admiral responded that work toward Al Qaeda is not something we should judge just the entire intelligence community by and that every American was driven to help by the 9/11 crisis. He also made the point that at every working level the intelligence community personnel wanted to do everything they could to help and didn’t care who got the credit. There was so much sharing of information going on that the problem wasn’t that the community didn’t share but they did and the large amount of data and information available became a problem. I’ve blogged before about one of the major problems facing the intelligence community both before and after 9/11 was shifting through the large amounts of data.

The latest data I have is from a presentation the Navy gave on The Maritime ISR Challenge within the last year or so is it took two centuries to fill the Library of Congress with 29 million books and publications, 2.4 million recordings, 29 million photographs, 2.4 million maps, and 29 million manuscripts. Today, that much information is generated every 5 minutes.

Admiral Blair said now is the time to look at our overall strategy not just because of the budget issues but because it’s the right thing to do. To illustrate he said right now there are estimates that there are about 4,000 Al Qaeda members world wide. If you take out the budget dollars spent for our operations in Iraq and Afghanistan we’re spending about $80 billion a year. That works out to be about $20 million for every estimated terrorist. Since 9/11, not counting troops killed in Afghanistan and Pakistan there have been 17 Americans killed by Al Qaeda. Of that number 14 were killed in the Fort Hood incident. By way of contrast around 150,000 Americans are killed each year in violent deaths (murder, rapes, and auto accidents). He asked the question what is it that justifies the large amount spent on terrorism. The Admiral said we need to look at our overall strategy to see if we are putting the budget money in the right places.

When asked by Stahl if we needed 16 agencies, he replied that by concentrating only on Al Qaeda we’re not looking at the over all goals of the intelligence agencies which are to defend and protect American lives. He looks at the Al Qaeda situation as having 3 levels, the first is 9/11 style attacks which result in deaths of 1000’s. The second level involves small groups and small scale attacks; a handful of people who kill 100’s and the third is in the nuisance category that results in occasional incidents. He seemed to feel that in 2010 we were at the first stage vulnerable to big attacks but in 2011 we’re down to the small scale attack level. He asked how do we get to the third level and that is what we need to rethink.

When questioned on the drones (note: the US does not officially acknowledge the drone strikes), the Admiral stated attacks against individual terrorists when we find them are important and made a huge difference in Iraq. He said Iraq was where we first put together conventional forces, charged with keeping overall security and special operations forces operating together powered by intelligence support. At this point Leslie Stahl bought up the issue of the rise of anti-Americanism in Pakistan as a result of the drone strikes.

Admiral Blair indicated there is a key strategic question of drone use places like Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia because we don’t own the ground and they are operating in someone else’s country and because these countries are unable or unwilling to cooperate in the fight against terrorism. If we pull back on unilateral drone attacks except in exceptional circumstances it would make it a lot easier to work with allies like Pakistan in the long term.

Think I’ll end here. The weather is great and I feel the need for a bike ride. I’ll finish up my summary of my time in Aspen tomorrow. As always my views are my own.