Unfortunate failure

We were reflecting on the current situation regarding Ukraine and Russia, as well as the environment that has been built up in less than a month, thanks to Trump’s irruption in the international arena.

When the war broke out, the European political elite was taken by surprise. Governments all over Europe didn’t know how to react. Astonishment, disbelief and despair was at the centre of the European stage.

This exemplifies a failure of intelligence services. Despite warnings provided by the so-called anglosphere that the war was looming, no one wanted to believe them.

Again, this anti-American sentiment played its role in the minds of the ‘allies’. But it also hides a deeper problem that agencies don’t want to think about, less to mention it. All of them lacked the necessary information (data) to make a proper assessment which would have allowed them to convince their respective governments of the imminent threat.

There is an exceptional piece of work by Eva Michaels which has analysed this topic in Germany (https://doi.org/10.1080/02684527.2024.2330133). In it it is mentioned that the BND, the German foreign intelligence service, did actually warn the authorities although unconvincingly and too late. The very same is valid for the rest of the countries. Some of them discarded completely the information provided by the anglosphere and kept denying the possibility of an invasion.

To make things worse, it was also dismissed by the Europeans the information provided by some East European services which aimed in the same direction.

It revealed that the European services didn’t have the required resources to address issues of strategic importance from within the Russian Federation. And it remains the same nowadays, as current events reveal.

Negotiations between Russia and the United States have been ongoing for a while but nothing has transcended. It means that if an ‘ally’, such as the Unted States, doesn’t share information about that topic, European services are blind and deaf about it, because after three years of war they have been unable to build a reliable network which informs about what’s going on inside Russia.

And European governments cannot but watch this in bewilderment. Absent of intelligence, no proper decision or plan is available. Governments must rely on accurate intelligence to formulate effective policies, anticipate threats, and respond to crises. Without a robust intelligence framework, decision-making becomes reactive, increasing the risk of strategic failures and unforeseen consequences.

Intelligence services may say, as they did before, that they had warned or indicated that this might happen. What they don not dare to say is that those dossiers are full of conditionals, of words such as probability, might, likely and so on. With that wording no decision maker can turn the intelligence received into actionable intelligence.

Decision makers should ask for more from their intelligence services. Of course, agencies will request more budget to hire more people and get better systems. And this is an issue which in most of the countries in the Western world is not easily conveyed to the public. It would be regarded as the establishment of a police state. And it would, if no control over these activities is enacted.

But today, we wanted to stress that intelligence agencies in Europe are failing to their fellow citizens to whom they serve through their respective elected governments.

If education or health services are due to meet certain requirements and efficiency, the same goes for the intelligence agencies which should also be accountable to the governments and parliaments they have to inform and obey. And this is a duty that parliaments and governments cannot reject, set aside or abhor.

Intelligence services are consulting companies with enlarged faculties. They are expensive and recruitment is supposed to be exquisite. The means they have at their disposal are phenomenal and they act protected by a special law coverage. But their performance should be exquisite, too. It should be expected, demanded and delivered.

At this very moment, as we enter critical times, intelligence agencies are failing to meet expectations. This represents a major issue that must be addressed. As European governments prepare to increase military spending, intelligence agencies should see their budgets rise accordingly, and their leadership should instil a war-ready mindset within them.

It is often said that past mistakes may be repeated. However, it is also possible to create a different outcome by anticipating needs and implementing measures ahead of time, just before they become necessary.