Intelligence community has to be aggressive

December 10, 2009 // "Kiev Telegraph"
Ukraine has to rely on its own powers in the protection of its interests

This September, presenting the new US National Intelligence Strategy, Director of National Intelligence, retired Admiral Dennis C. Blair said: “... The Intelligence Community of the USA is as aggressive in the intelligence world as it was before...and it can be more aggressive because we are gaining more and more knowledge.”

Although the “cold war” ended in the early nineties the past century, the security environment underwent some serious changes over the past few years, both on a world scale and in separate regions, including Ukraine. The world in general becomes more and more dangerous as a result of formation of new centres of force with their own, often divergent interests. One phenomenon that continually gains in scope is the attempts of certain states to solve their foreign-policy problems by means of military force or other forms of pressure in respect of other countries, including the energy factor.

The current security space around Ukraine is formed under the influence of radical changes in the system of international relations. The dominating factor is the resumption of strategic competition between certain countries and unions, while a noticeable aggravation of geopolitical situation around Ukraine is a direct result of the new balance of powers actively shaping in the world and region. The threats of the theatre of war being brought over to the territory of Ukraine, as well as of the instability zones artificially created in some of its regions drastically increased over the past one and a half year.
Once authoritative international security support organisations, such as the United Nations, the OSCE and the Council of Europe, have completely or partially lost their leverage in crisis management or armed conflicts settlement. This was particularly well demonstrated during the armed conflict in Southern Caucasus in the August of 2008, when the mentioned organisations were practically unable to render actual influence in the crisis management in the region. The same is true for the so-called “gas” conflict provoked by Russia against Ukraine (and the Entire Europe as well) in December – January, 2008 – 2009. Absence of actual machinery for the development of the international community’s consolidated decisions in the security sector stimulates the desire of conflict parties to use military force as an ultimate way of achieving their foreign-policy goals.

In this respect, another source of instability is the regional ambitions of certain states that try to strengthen their positions by developing weapons of mass destruction and missile technologies. This is mainly true about Iran and North Korea – the states that develop the technologies that allow creation of nuclear munitions.

These threats and challenges to national security of Ukraine are brought about, first of all, through both hidden and open methods of diplomatic, economic, energy and informational pressure. The comprehensive nature of new threats, extremely high probability of informational impact on the nation, including the sharp orientation of informational attacks of the adjacent states towards blurring the foundations of the Ukrainian statehood, attempts to compromise the state and its leadership, levelling of the national culture and traditions, fomentation of separatist sentiments, justifications of violations of territorial integrity, inviolability of state borders and elimination of the country’s sovereignty.

At the same time, if the military dimension of security is the subject, the precedents of international treaties’ revision already exist, the fact that does not promote strengthening of trust and security in the European continent. A unilateral orientation of the Budapest memorandum concerning Ukraine’s voluntary refusal of the nuclear weapons demonstrated the inadequacy of this decision and the approaches of the nuclear states i.e. the USA, Russia, France, Great Britain and the Peoples Republic of China, in particular regarding the guarantees of security and sovereignty of Ukraine. A continuous stagnation around the issues of unrecognized republics in the post-Soviet space adds significant pressure to the overall situation. As a result, so-called “frozen conflicts” are activated close to the Ukrainian borders. Other concerns are caused by the suspension of the de-limitation and demarcation of borders between Ukraine and the Russian Federation in the Kerch Strait and the Azov Sea. The Russian party wishes not to speak about their preparations for the withdrawal of the Black Sea Fleet from the Ukrainian territory. Meanwhile, there is an increase in military expenditures and strengthening of air and naval components of the Black Sea states (the Russian Federation, Turkey, Georgia).

As a result, the nature of geopolitical changes in the political and military situation in the world, Europe and the Black Sea region, the state of and approaches to the settlement of current armed conflicts, the procrastination of Ukraine’s joining the Euro-Atlantic collective security system call for revision of views and approaches to ensuring the national defence capability by optimal methods. On a medium-term outlook, however, the country’s political and military leadership must rely exclusively on its own powers.

Orienting towards the real capabilities, besides proper defence financing and technical re-fitting of the army also concerns the development of an integrated approach to problem-solving in confronting the existing threats and challenges by creating optimal counteraction machinery and methods.

The rise of new threats and challenges for the world and regional stability causes respective reaction of the world’s leading nations, which reflects in changes in their conceptual approaches to national security. This concerns intelligence in the first place, as its purpose is to serve a primary tool for the timely detection of possible threats to the state’s critical interests, and for informing of its leadership on the real and potential problems in the indicated field.

Meanwhile, the new challenges present similar problems to the intelligence communities of all the countries, therefore it is possible to speak in general about choosing somewhat similar strategies for countering the threats that have international nature. In particular, the newly-developed US National Intelligence Strategy, published in the open sources this September, became an example of such an approach. The document specifies the basic threats to national security of the USA for the next four years. It also defines priority tasks of the national intelligence community on their timely prevention and neutralisation.

The following are some of the negative factors and tendencies in the situation development: impact of the global economic crisis leading to the increase of economic and military instability in the world and undermining the foundations of democracy in the developing states; existence of the “failed” states and regimes; global climate changes; aggravation of competition for access to natural resources (first of all, to fuel, fresh water and arable land); emergence and distribution of new dangerous epidemiological diseases.

Considering the indicated threats, the primary tasks of the intelligence community were specified. They include: war on terrorism and extremism; countering of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction; informing of the country leaders about the strategic threats to the state’s national security; intensification of counter-intelligence activities; improvement of the American information and cybernetic infrastructure protection level; intelligence support of operations (first of all – in the struggle against terrorism, proliferation of nuclear and missile technologies, and the illicit drug trafficking) both outside US (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran) and directly in the country.

The major effort of the intelligence community in carrying out the specified tasks is to be focused on three major vectors: constant monitoring of objects that require immediate response; direct participation of analytical units’ personnel in the operations planning; dissemination of information, and constant information exchange with government authorities, NGO’s and foreign partners.

All these issues in general are common for Ukraine, too, since its geopolitical location places it into one of the world’s key regions and at the point where the interests of three world civilizations cross: the Western (USA/NATO/UE), the Eastern (Russia and its allies), and to a certain extent the Muslim world represented by Turkey and – through it – the countries of the Middle East and North Africa.

Other centres of force in the world also have their own political and economic interests in Central and Eastern Europe (which also means Ukraine). In particular, this is true for China, which seems quite interested in Ukrainian technologies in various fields (and military above all). Besides, China sees Ukraine as a broad market for its commodities and a source of raw material, mainly for its metallurgy.

Besides their advantages, such as wide opportunities for Ukraine to develop political and economic relations with the world’s most advanced nations, the indicated conditions create a number of direct threats to the national security of Ukraine. First of all, noteworthy is the possibility of Ukraine being drawn into antagonism or a direct confrontation between various centres of force – something particularly dangerous considering the escalating aggressiveness of Russia’s foreign policy, combined with the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed on Ukrainian territory. Regardless to the so-called “reset” of relations between the US and Russia, they are still very far from being perfect and are characterised by a number of serious problems. The major ones lie in Moscow’s attempts to restore the zones of control in the world, which naturally would bring Ukraine and other post-Soviet states back under the Russian hand.

Other than that, Ukraine shares direct borders with the Black Sea region, which continually gains weight as one of the new alternative transit ways for Caspian and Central-Asian energy resources to external markets. As a result, this leads to the escalation of tension around the control over the region between the world’s leading nations, to a harder competition between various energy-transportation projects, and to the escalation of international antagonisms. Furthermore, it is the Black Sea region that became the point where geopolitical interests of the USA/NATO/EU, Russia and Turkey have crossed. This adds even more pressure to southern borders of Ukraine.

The Russian military aggression against Georgia in August, 2008, the actual blocking of the Transnistrian conflict settlement, intensification of terrorist activity in Northern Caucasus which basically is no longer under the control of the Kremlin, – all these facts constitute the most recent evidence of the described tendency.

Noteworthy is the on-going large-scale militarization of the Black Sea region which assumes deployment of new military bases, reinforcement of the existing troops along with their re-fitting with modern weapons and materiel, intensification and expansion of military exercises conducted by the adjacent states in direct proximity of the Ukrainian borders. Aside of that, the Black Sea region is where the major potential territorial claims in respect of Ukraine still remain (above all – concerning Sevastopol and the Crimea). The issues of the offshore zones and sea basins division also remain unsettled.

Other threats of whether a world-wide or regional nature also put Ukraine in a possible danger. Among those are the international terrorism, proliferation of nuclear technologies, illegal migration, illicit drugs traffic, sea piracy, and global climate changes.

An example of such processes is the existing and sometimes increasing atmosphere of tension in the areas of operations conducted by Ukrainian peace-keepers: in Iraq, Afghanistan, Sudan, Kosovo etc. Not to mention the cases that become regular of ships manned by Ukrainian crews being hijacked by the pirates off the Somalia coast.

At the same time, there is a distinctive aspect that poses a real threat to the Ukrainian state and already seriously harmed its national interests. The broad and intentional informational campaigns run against Ukraine by a number of states sometimes take the shape of frank informational wars. Such wars have already revealed the symptoms of the Ukrainian society splitting by the political, ethnic or religious criteria. This threat is currently particularly painful in the light of the up-coming presidential elections in Ukraine, seen by certain states and political forces as an opportunity to achieve their goals in respect of the Ukrainian state.

The globalization of the world economic and financial processes creates new potential sources of threats and challenges for the world stability. Although speeding up the world advance, such processes create additional opportunities for global crises, including those artificially designed by certain oligarchic financial groups with the purpose of gaining illegal profit or money laundering.

The development of modern information technology that allows for global information exchange is another new phenomenon. Despite its advantages, it also opens the door for cyber-terrorism, which poses the greatest threat to the technically advanced countries.

In general, all the mentioned negative factors, threats and challenges increase the role and importance of Ukrainian special agencies in the protection of the national security, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. In return, this sets up new requirements before the intelligence agencies that have to work more intensively, resolutely and, let’s say, offensively. To the point, in his interview for the “Viysko Ukrainy” (The Army of Ukraine) magazine, current Chief of the Defence Intelligence Victor Hvozd said, that the national intelligence has to be aggressive and “... has to work towards prevention of any possible threat to the Ukrainian state’s national security adequately to the modern high-tech world. Such an agency must have an effective structure capable of covering the entire range of the existing and potential challenges and must include space, radio, radio-electronic and clandestine components.”

Mr. Hvozd is certainly right about another thing. Allegiance to the cause on the part of the Defence Intelligence and the rest of Ukrainian special agencies is probably even more important than the facilities and skills of the personnel. This is said only for the interests of Ukraine, not for the interests of any political force, no matter how promising its programme may look for any specific person. Such Ukrainian interests in the first place lie in the protection of the independence, territorial integrity, unity and national identity of Ukraine, in other words, all the things that allow Ukraine to remain a sovereign state.

At the same time, the allegiance of Ukrainian special agencies to their cause does not mean that they should reject constructive cooperation in all the general fields with the special agencies of other nations in cases, when all sides would mutually benefit from it.

Other than that, such interaction can be one of the possible ways (machinery) for Ukraine to approach the existing collective security systems, which would help to increase the security level of the Ukrainian state.

We have to stress, that more profound relations between Ukraine and NATO create no barriers for the development of Ukraine’s cooperation with other collective security systems, and with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in particular. This is mainly so because both NATO and SCO members and Ukraine have a common enemy represented by the irreconcilable Islamic extremism.

In this respect neither the Euro-Atlantic integration of Ukraine, nor the aggressiveness of Ukrainian special agencies in the sense described above pose a threat to any civilized country, including Russia. And Russia, one way or another, remains among the closest neighbours of Ukraine. On the contrary, such position of Ukraine obviously greatly benefits the interests of Russia itself, allowing it to find even better points of contact with the West through cooperating with Ukraine, instead of confronting it.

Victor RATNIKOV