After putting the intelligence budget through three years of sequestration-level funding—and the likely return to sequestration levels this year, the United States is in serious jeopardy of repeating the fatal mistakes of the early 1990s when it drastically slashed its intelligence budget and exposed the nation to serious risks. In a post 9/11 world, the intelligence budget peaked in 2010, but since then, it’s been cut by some $10 billion.
This should set off alarm bells. As the 9/11 Commission Report documents, in the years following the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the US drastically cut its intelligence capability, claiming a “peace dividend.” As a result, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) stations overseas were closed and personnel were dramatically cut, with only 25 new officers entering the CIA’s clandestine service in 1995. These cuts proved unwise and dangerous for the new security threats that led to the 9/11 attacks, the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil in modern history.
After 9/11, the US recognized the fallacy of the peace dividend construct and reversed course, ultimately doubling intelligence funding to $80 billion in 2010. This change better reflected the indispensable role of intelligence in making better, well-informed decisions; avoiding surprise; and giving US warfighters decisive advantages. This funding enabled the country to bring the fight to the enemy in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Yemen, keeping another 9/11-style attack from US shores.
It helped facilitate strong sanctions on weapons of mass destruction proliferators, Kremlin cronies, and terrorist financiers. Increased funding and a focus on practical capabilities also improved the high-quality, real-time intelligence critical to precision military strikes. Indeed, this latter change alone—delivering detailed intelligence information, in real time, directly to the warfighter—represents a true revolution in intelligence and military affairs.
The truth is that the world is dramatically less safe today than it was even a decade ago. A massive, growing terrorist state exists in the land between Iraq and Syria and is exporting terrorism worldwide. Iran—a longtime state sponsor of terrorism—is stronger and more influential in the Middle East than ever before and will now keep a domestic uranium enrichment capability that could rapidly be converted to weapons use.
Furthermore, Syria, Yemen, and Libya are on the verge of becoming failed states. Russia has occupied Crimea and is expanding its invasion of Eastern Ukraine. China is building islands in key disputed waters and continues its aggressive activities in cyberspace. And al Qaeda and its affiliates remain a very real threat to the US homeland.
For all these reasons, intelligence is more in demand than ever. US policymakers will turn to the intelligence community to determine if Iran is cheating on its nuclear obligations, to monitor Russia’s creeping domination of Ukraine, to understand the threat posed by the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, and to limit the extent of Chinese pilferage of US intellectual property through cyber intrusions.
Cutting intelligence as the global landscape deteriorates simply makes no sense. This is especially true during the current period of rapid technological change. Dangerous technologies and the know-how to build weapons that could threaten tens of thousands are increasingly available and ubiquitous, and encryption makes it easier for US enemies to disguise their communications. Cutting intelligence in the aftermath of the greatest loss of sources and methods in our history—the theft and expanding disclosure of thousands of classified documents by Edward Snowden—is especially foolhardy.
To meet these imposed cuts, the intelligence community has identified savings in its IT enterprise and has eliminated excess and redundancies. More can and should be done to seek efficiencies. But many long-term projects that are important to national security have also been deferred, with effects that will almost certainly become apparent down the road unless reversed. The quality of intelligence we’ll have available to policymakers in the next decade depends critically on investments today in advanced satellites and other collection sensors, high-tech agent spy gear, and cyber and cutting-edge IT capabilities.
Moreover, as we look for savings across the entire federal budget, it is critical that we recognize intelligence as a force multiplier, meaning that a relatively smaller investment in intelligence can help compensate for larger cuts elsewhere. We also have to recognize that sequestration—and the massive hit it imposes on the overall national security budget—substantially increases the risks we face in an increasingly dangerous world: while we must return to fiscal discipline, doing it on the back of the cuts to the defense and intelligence communities is a serious mistake.
At least in the 1990s, we could explain away our bad decisions as based on a flawed belief in the peace dividend. How will we explain our mistakes next time?
Michael Allen is the former majority staff director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who previously served on the National Security Council as senior director for counterproliferation and senior director for legislative affairs. He is also the author of “Blinking Red: Crisis and Compromise in American Intelligence After 9/11” (Potomac Books, 2013).
Bryan Smith is the former Budget Director of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, who previously served as acting chief financial officer of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and in the national security branch of the Office of Management and Budget. Both currently work for Beacon Global Strategies.
Notes:
[1] Marshall C. Erwin and Amy Belasco, “Intelligence Spending and Appropriations: Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, September 18, 2013.
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