CIA Director William J. Burns traveled to Ukraine recently to brief President Volodymyr Zelensky on his expectations for Russia’s near-term military plans. He was clueless, however, about how the war might end. Thereby hangs a tale about the CIA’s mythical expertise in futurology.
The C.I.A. was born in 1947 to prevent another Pearl Harbor intelligence failure.
That mission from the outset was as unachievable as King Canute’s futile attempt to make the waves from the incoming tide stop.
The future is inherently unknowable with the certainty required for rational political planning. The known unknowns and the unknown unknowns are infinite. The greatest geniuses recognize that predicting the future is as risky as rolling dice. Socrates was the wisest man in Athens because he knew what he didn’t know and acknowledged the same.
The CIA largely justifies its existence by falsely pretending to knowledge required to avoid Pearl Harbor-type blunders. Its entire history is earmarked by chronic forecasting errors. An inexhaustive list would include the 1948 Berlin blockade, the Korean War and entry of Chinese troops, the overthrow of Iran’s Prime Minister Mossadegh culminating in the regime of fanatical mullahs, Dien Bien Phu, the Hungarian uprising, the Suez crisis, the Bay of Pigs debacle, Soviet missiles in Cuba, the anemic Soviet economy, the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall, the Chinese-Soviet split, Prague Spring, India’s nuclear testing, the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, 9/11, WMD in Iraq, the Rwanda genocide, and, the beginning and end of Arab Spring. The late Charles Lichenstein, deputy to UN Ambassador Jean Kirkpatrick, told me he derived more useful information reading The New York Times than from the CIA’s fabled National Intelligence Estimates.
Does anyone believe the CIA knows if or when China will attack Taiwan and what consequences would ensue?
Do not be fooled by the CIA’s sound track that countless accurate forecasts are generally unknown because classified. All experience teaches that bureaucratic success stories are immediately declassified or leaked to the media for political advantage. Success has 1000 fathers while failure is an orphan. With all its lavish funding since 9/11, the CIA has not prevented a single international terrorist attack against the United States.
Indeed, the CIA has been unable in 76 years to forecast or scuttle a single Pearl Harbor-type of surprise. It is better for the United States to plan based on inherent uncertainty than to believe we can know the future and act accordingly. Our optimal policy is invincible self-defense against any foreign aggression including instant obliteration of any aggressor. There is no greater deterrent. The CIA should be turned into a museum piece.