WHY IS THE WORLD SO DANGEROUS? AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP87T00472R000200210026-3
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 6
• Document Creation Date: December 21, 2016
• Document Release Date: January 14, 2009
• Sequence Number: 26
• Publication Date: December 6, 1983
• Content Type: MEMO

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ROUTING AND RECORD SHEET
SUBJECT: (Optional)
Why Is the World So Dangerous? An Alternative View
FROM:
l
EXTENSION
NO.
Haro
d P. Ford
NIC 8784-83
NIO at Large
DATE
6 Dec 83
TO: (Officer designation, room number, and
building)
DATE
OFFICER'S
COMMENTS (Number each comment to show from whom
RECEIVED
FORWARDED
INITIALS
to whom. Draw a line across column after each comment.)
VC/NIC (Waterman)
2.
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DCI/B96-I
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STAT
STAT
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The Director of Central Intelligence
Washington, D.C. 20505
National Intelligence Council NIC 8784-83
6 December 1983
MEMORANDUM FOR: Director of Central Intelligence
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence
Herbert E. Meyer, Vice Chairman, NIC
FROM : Hal Ford
National Intelligence Officer At Large
SUBJECT : Why Is the World So Dangerous? An Alternative View
1. I want to second some of the alerts Herb has sounded, but disagree
with him about other of his alarms, and about a lot of the world picture he
paints in arriving at his conclusions. My differences are not just academic,
but relate professionally to how we should assess world developments most
accurately for our policymaking consumers.
2. Herb's think piece performs some useful functions in stimulating
intelligence officers (a) to avoid straight line projections in the belief
that the world will necessarily go on about as it has; (b) to be alert to the
possibility of a Soviet-initiated rise in the intensity of global competition,
and hence to the prospect of an especially dangerous possible period of world
history immediately ahead of us; (c) to acknowledge that the USSR's world-wide
network of CPs, agents, client states and groups offers Moscow considerably
greater opportunities for creating trouble than is often appreciated; and
(d) to entertain the idea that the USSR's vulnerabilities and disarray may be
substantially greater than has been generally acknowledged.
3. Apart from these considerations, however, I disagree fairly strongly
with a number of the propositions of the memo. Overall, it tends to pick and
choose only selected data, those which happen to fit the particular arguments
being advanced. As for specific areas where I disagree, the memo overstates:
-- The uniqueness of present violence in the world.
-- The possible degree of alarm on the part of Soviet leaders
in 1983, as compared, say, with their probable world view
in 1979.
-- Soviet causation of various ills in the world.
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-- The likelihood that a significant number of Soviet leaders
believe that the USSR has had it, and is now terminally
ill.
-- The according readiness of such Soviet leaders to "go for
it."
4. Is there a rise of global violence? In the first place, it can be
questioned whether there is such a thing as "global violence." There are,
certainly, always many violent situations in train at any one time in the
world, stemming from countless causes. Secondly, there is nothing too
distinctive about recent months: there are many times in the past where a
number of disparate, dramatic events could have been viewed as a "sharp rise
in violence in the world." Certainly various years could so qualify: for
example, 1948-1949, 1950, 1963, 1968, and so on -- even Herb's own 1979 (i.e.,
Iran, Afghanistan, Rhodesia, the Nicaraguan revolution, the Yemeni war, the
China-Vietnam war, etc.). And, Lebanon's self-immolation did not begin in
1983. Thirdly, in selecting only certain violent events, what does one think
about other continuing bloodshed now: in Iran-Iraq, Timor, Spanish Sahara,
Northern Ireland, the southern Philippines, Latin America, and many other
locales? Are all these, too, the product of Soviet impetus? Fourthly, 1982-
1983 could have been picked for making a case just opposite to that of Herb's
memo -- that is, a time of especially unique non-Communist violence: e.g.,
the Falklands; heightened resistance movements in Afghanistan, Angola,
Mozambique, Nicaragua, and Ethiopia; Israel's armed initiatives in Lebanon;
the invasion of Grenada; and US, French, and Israeli reprisals in Lebanon.
5. Is 1983 so much worse a year than 1979, say, for Soviet leaders that
they have become despondent about the course of world revolution? Again, the
memo does not clue the reader that there may be offsetting data that do not
happen to fit the memo's construct. True, Soviet leaders almost certainly
have been frustrated by many developments in the last year or so, and
certainly most of all by the way the United States has stirred itself at home
and abroad. But are the Soviet setbacks as momentous as the memo makes
them? And are they so much worse, say, than in 1979? That year, 1979, was
itself no great shakes for Soviet leaders, given for example the then-recent
US recognition of China, and Soviet fears at the time of an impending US-PRC
alliance; NATO's INF decision and the nightmare prospect this presented Moscow
of Pershing II warheads ten minutes away; the sharply adverse worldwide
reactions to the USSR's invasion of Afghanistan, including China's cutting off
of what had been somewhat promising talks with the USSR; the necessity the
Soviets faced of having to repair their fortunes in the Horn of Africa, after
having been deprived of the good thing they had had going in Somalia; and the
beginnings of a sharp decline in Brezhnev's health. Also, most of the facets
of Soviet domestic malaise that Herb's memo lists for 1983 were already of
great concern to Soviet leaders then, in 1979.
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6. Are the Soviets indeed the source of all this recent "global
violence?" Here the memo is on shaky ground, in attributing to what it terms
a rickety USSR the capability to orchestrate the world's grief. Granted, the
Central American and Lebanon challenges to US interests are much the worse
because of the Soviet pressures back of the Cubans and the Syrians, and the
USSR certainly initiates and exploits much trouble the world around, including
-- in my view -- much more in the way of terrorist activities than we have yet
been able to document. But it's quite another thing to see some brooding
Slavic malevolence behind all kinds of disparate crises in the world. This
applies in particular to the memo's listing of the KAL shootdown: why did
these clever Soviets so botch their responses to that flight, both on the spot
and subsequently? And just what did they have in mind when they put the North
Koreans up to the Rangoon bombing? Did the Soviets purposely intend to deal
North Korean fortunes a heavy blow? It cannot be excluded that the Soviets
planned the murder of Aquino, but what happens to the giant causation thesis
if we learn some day, say, that some of Marcos' (or Imelda's) own thugs
mistakenly thought they were serving their boss when on their own they did
away with their troublesome Becket?
7. The principal disservice the giant causation thesis performs does not
relate to these particular issues in debate between Herb and me, however, but
to the broad question of how best can intelligence guide policymakers to the
true state of the world, and to the true sources of that world's troubles.
Even if the USSR and the CPSU did not exist, the late 20th-Century world would
be experiencing much violence. All kinds of people would still be killing one
another: Arabs vs. Arabs, Shias vs. Sunnis, Gemayel Christians vs. Franjieh
Christians, Arabs vs. Israelis, Southeast Asians, Palestinians vs.
Palestinians, East Indians, Irishmen, Africans, Iranians - Iraqis, and so
on. The root sources of world violence would continue to reside chiefly in
the forces of historic antagonisms, unresolved territorial disputes,
dislocations of de-colonization, wide disparities in wealth, gross social and
political inequities, tribal and religious emotionalisms, distorted debt
loads, the sharp rise in the number of political actors, the increase of
literacy and education but not of opportunity, the gaps between expectations
and reality, the instant awareness of TV and cassette without accompanying
responsibility, the ready access to arms, and so on and so on. Certainly many
of these troubles are of greater danger to US interests because of Soviet
exploitation. But constructive US policy attack on the world's violence
requires that we address its root sources rather than settling for cursing the
Soviet darkness, and that we ask ourselves more often, "Just where do the
Communists come from?"
8. Is the outlook of some Soviet leaders now wholly bleak, and do they
indeed consider that the October Revolution is going down the drain of
history? Herb's memo once again raises only a partial list of
considerations. In many respects the future must certainly look unpromising
to Soviet leaders. But the memo does not mention many issues which various
Soviet leaders may feel will work to the disadvantage of the United States
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over the long term, and so prevent it from reversing "the inescapable logic of
historical determinism." Mistakenly or not, Soviet leaders may well consider
that such issues include: the weak political base for US objectives that
exists in Lebanon; difficulties the United States faces in increasing its
influence among Arab audiences; a United States identified with Israel but not
in control of its domestic and foreign initiatives; the strong hand the
Soviet-backed Syrians hold; the vulnerability of the US allies to any
diminution of Gulf oil supplies; the intimidating effect which the USSR's
strategic power and expanding military reach can exert in the world; the
security dependence of NATO on certain weapons which are becoming more
difficult political instruments for NATO; the growth of neutralism in Western
Europe, especially among the rising generation; the many difficulties the
United States faces in the Third World, and the existence of many Soviet
assets and intermediaries there; the not to be excluded possibility that
Central America and Mexico may constitute a long-term time bomb for the United
States; the absence of US foreign policy consensus; and the existence of
sufficient economic and sociological problems within the United States to give
Soviet ideologues confidence that a society with such "inherent
contradictions" cannot in the long run prevail over the more disciplined USSR.
9. US policy certainly must stay alert to the possibility that the USSR
is much weaker than has generally been acknowledged, and must develop improved
ways and means of exploiting such weakness to US and allied benefit. At the
same time, US intelligence and policymaking officers must keep that view of
the Soviet condition in perspective, weighing it against the greater
possibility that the USSR -- rude, brutal, and crude -- is going to be with us
for years to come, continuing to present enormous challenges to US security
and policymaking. I would hazard the guess that the US-Soviet cold war may
still be confronting our grandchildren; that two world systems will still be
locked in competition a la earlier Islam-Christendom or the wars of religion;
that the Soviet challenge will not disappear as the result either of its own
folly or of the brilliance of this or that Republican/Democratic policy
initiatives; and that the reduction of that challenge will require a long
sustained effort; much acuity; much imagination; much consistent, measured
toughness; much diplomatic skill; much attack on the root causes of
vulnerability to Soviet and Communist exploitation; and -- not least -- much
in the way of taxes.
10. Will despairing Soviet leader "go for it?" We must of course keep
our watch up and our powder dry. But, the cruxes of Soviet -- indeed Russian
policy have been steady pressure, long-term outlook, and a fairly keen
sense of what the traffic will bear in risk-taking in each circumstance. The
bear is patient. His modulated pressures have paid off in many ways over the
decades. His leaders are not damn fools. Since Stalin the ponderous
bureaucratic necessity for consensus has prevented any leader or leadership
faction from getting too far out ahead on any dramatic new foreign policy
initiative. The Soviet leaders and the Soviet public know -- far better than
do we, for that matter -- what war on a large scale can bring to the
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homeland. And, if the bear doesn't like the present US Administration, the
surest way some Soviet leaders can rally the American people around another
term for that Administration will be to "go for it" in some way, or to pull
off a coup of sorts within the Kremlin and embark the USSR on a program of
greatly heightened aggressiveness in the world. In the near term at least,
the Soviets have got to sort out their troubling succession problem. In past
experience at least, such periods have not given birth to aggressive new
adventurism, although we must of course watch that succession with extra care,
to insure against the outside contingency that some Soviet Strangelove faction
has not taken control of the USSR's destiny -- and ours.
11. What is the so-what of these alternative views of the world's
violence? The answer is one thing if the debate is just between two
intelligence officers. The significance would be quite otherwise, in my
opinion, in the event senior policymakers should subscribe to many of the
views Herb's memo advances.
~/V -;7-.
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