Recently it became known that the Pentagon has begun to reform military intelligence. First of all, the transformations provide for an increase in the number of employees of the Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense abroad.
Over the next five years, the number of DIA operatives working in other countries, including under cover (primarily diplomatic), is planned to be increased to about 1600 people. Now in the DIA abroad there are about half a thousand operational workers - these are only working undercover. In accordance with the plans approved by the US leadership, the number of "covered" people will be increased by 2018 to 800, or even up to 1000 people.
In addition, the US Department of Defense intends to ensure closer interaction between the DIA and the CIA and the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM). According to the latest information from the Washington Post, the priorities in the activities of the DIA from now on will be tracking Islamist groups in Africa, the supply of weapons by North Korea and Iran to other states, and, of course, the modernization of the Chinese armed forces. The DIA operatives will share the tasks with the tseerushniki: if the latter pursue mainly political goals, the former will be interested in military aspects.
The expansion of the Intelligence Agency staff during the economic crisis is something new for the Barack Obama administration. However, there is some kind of internal logic in the latest decision of the Pentagon.
America will save. As Pentagon officials have specifically emphasized, the transformations do not mean that the DIA now has new powers or increased funding. The creation of new staffing levels will occur due to the reduction of other departments and changes in the staffing table.
Nevertheless, the plan has already been characterized by the Washington Post as "ambitious." In essence, we are talking about the rapid transformation of the intelligence department of the Ministry of Defense into a special agent network. By the way, the intelligence officers, according to the plans, will be trained in the CIA, but they will obey the Pentagon.
The British newspaper "Guardian" believes that the recruitment of new agents will create an unprecedented spy network in the world. Among the new agents of the DIA will be military attachés and other such individuals working openly, as well as many spies working in secret. The Guardian writes that this agency
"Is increasingly employing civilians among university professors or businessmen in militarily strategically important regions."
At the same time, the newspaper reminds that the CIA itself has also dramatically increased its staff: over the past 11 years, the CIA's counterterrorism department has expanded from 300 employees to two thousand people. However, the CIA is … tired. They believe that the scouts have to carry out too many tasks, and therefore, with the help of the new plan, they hope to transfer purely military operations to an expanded DIA. For example, the CIA would not want to simultaneously search for surface-to-air missiles in Libya and, in parallel, assess the forces of the Syrian opposition. It's too tiring.
The newspaper also points out that in Washington, many progressive comrades oppose the expansion of the arena of the DIA's activities. Indeed, unlike the CIA, the activities of military intelligence are not controlled by Congress.
As for the savings and cuts in the Pentagon's military budget, it seems that other carriers of the legislative branch of government are implementing Mitt Romney's pre-election messages rather than Barack Obama's program. Recall that the House of Representatives is controlled by the Democrats, and the Republicans retain the majority in the Senate.
Recently, the Senate unanimously adopted the budget of the "defense" department for 2013 in the amount of $ 631 billion. (Obama has not signed it yet and may well block). The Pentagon previously requested $ 614 billion. 526 billion from here will go to "general military spending": the creation of new types of weapons, the development of modern equipment, the production of weapons, aircraft and ships, an increase in the salaries of military personnel - by 1.7% (according to the last point, additional expenditures amount to 17 billion, hence a noticeable increase in the budget). The money for the expansion of the RUMO is included in the "general expenses".
In addition to the officially declared goals - about the weapons of North Korea, an unfriendly Iran, the growing Islamists in Africa and non-brotherly China with its rapidly modernizing army - there are those that the CIA and the Pentagon do not advertise. In particular, the increase in the number of spies and the division of tasks between the CIA and the DIA - despite the fact that the Rumans will be trained by the CER, - is due, among other things, to the poor training of the former, because of which they often failed operations or performed only on paper. The bad habits of military intelligence workers also became a talk of the town: the guys were constantly getting drunk, did not know languages well, and did not really know how to recruit agents. Even to analyze documents - and they did it very badly. Actually, it is still not clear what they can do?
The current US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta, analyst Neil Nikandrov points out, was previously the head of the CIA, and therefore is better than anyone else aware of the weaknesses of the DIA. He probably decided that there was nowhere to postpone intelligence reform.
Now, at the CIA training base in Virginia, operatives are already being trained for a new division of the DIA - the Defense Clandestine Service (DCS). After graduation, American intelligence officers will be sent to "practice" in Afghanistan, Iraq, in the "crisis countries" in Africa and Latin America. Over the next five years, DCS will become the DIA's lead department for military intelligence.
China is a separate line in the alarming American intelligence plans. In this regard, General Michael Flynn, the current chief of US military intelligence, said that "this is not a cosmetic change in the DIA, but a major change in national security strategy."
For almost a year, the United States has had a document called Sustaining U. S. Global Leadership: Priorities for 21 Century Defense. This strategy, dated January 2012, states that the strengthening of the PRC in the long term can affect the economy and security of the United States. Key points in the adopted US military strategy boil down to reducing the size of the American armed forces while concentrating budgetary resources on the development of satellites and unmanned aircraft. The strategy also assumes a reorientation of resources to the Asia-Pacific region.
Obama starts and wins - this is the White House's plan. The strategy that strengthens the US presence in the Asia-Pacific region and the reform of the DIA are links in the same American chain. Today, the PRC is the central enemy of the United States.
In the latest report of the OECD "Outlook to 2060: Long-term growth prospects" it was noted, among other things, that by 2060 the share of China and India in world GDP will surpass all 34 countries that are members of the OECD (the combined weight of the two named countries is now just over a third). China will overtake the European Union at the end of this year, and 4 years later will become the largest economy in the world.
The United States is in the first place in the world economy, China is in second. Washington is not going to give up its positions, and China is not going to stop its "locomotive" rushing at full steam. Who will be the hegemon in the coming years - that is the question. Economics often determines policy, and China and the US have swapped places in the trade rankings over the past six years. Today, the PRC is the leading trading partner of 127 countries (for comparison: the United States is the main partner of 76 countries). China has also outstripped the United States in the markets of its strong allies such as Australia and South Korea. Where the US is retreating, China is pushing hard. Therefore, the trained Rumans can soon go to the Celestial Empire.
It is also no secret that the United States is also rapidly losing its credibility in geopolitics. If after the Cold War the authority of Washington was almost indisputable, then in the last decade, against the background of failures in the Middle East, tightening of the "democratic" screws in their own country, suffering from recession, unemployment and growth of national debt (more than 16 trillion dollars), The White House began to shrink.
At the same time, Washington is not going to abandon its former strategy of total domination. It is the military aspect of strengthening China's world positions, according to N. Nikandrov, that prompts the Pentagon to create "deeply echeloned" DIA structures on the territory of this country and in the APR states:
“It should be noted that the ridicule of American experts about the secondary nature (“bad copies from the originals”) of Chinese weapons is heard less and less. The Chinese test of an anti-satellite missile in 2007 came as a shocking surprise to the Pentagon. In the analytical reports of the DIA on this matter, it was reasonably noted: China, in the event of a conflict with the United States, will be able to disable the satellite tracking and communication system. The Pentagon has no doubts about the "authorship" of hacker penetrations into computer databases of US government and financial institutions, military-industrial complex facilities, etc. The conclusions are alarming: China is working out methods of conducting electronic warfare. After the successful testing of the newest Dongfeng-41 intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting targets in the United States, Washington's concern about the "unpredictable plans" of the Celestial Empire became especially noticeable."
The RUMO also does not like the fact that in recent years, China-Latin American cooperation has been actively strengthening - precisely along the military-technical line. Arms supplies from China to the named region are growing. We are talking about planes, landing ships, tanks, artillery installations and billions of dollars. Therefore, the destabilization of the PRC is extremely important for the United States. And who should be entrusted with destabilization, if not spies who have completed special courses of the CIA and "practice" in already destabilized regions?
As for Iran, another target of the updated DIA, Washington, together with Tel Aviv, is still worried that Tehran is engaged not in peaceful nuclear energy, but in the implementation of a program for the creation and production of nuclear weapons. However, Frank Kearney, a retired US Army lieutenant general, recently said in a speech that a war with Iran will solve little. In his opinion, even a tactical strike on the nuclear facilities of the Islamic Republic will not be beneficial: such a measure will temporarily suspend Iran's activities in the field of nuclear research, and nothing more. A strike will not destroy the country's nuclear forces: after all, it is unthinkable to try to destroy the intellectual reserve by tactical measures. An attack on Iran will only weaken the existing regime. And one more thing: research in the field of nuclear technology may be set back several years ago, but in return the Iranians will receive an incentive to complete the development of nuclear weapons, and then even test them … in the United States. To this we can add the following: if the Iranians have not yet developed nuclear weapons, then after tactical strikes by the Americans or Israelis, they will certainly develop them. This topic - amid protests against everything American - will become extremely popular in the country. If we add to this the frequent protests against the United States in the Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa, then the pieces of the geopolitical mosaic will clearly not be in favor of “Big Brother”.
That is why they plan to take over Iran by the DIA, whose task is to sow the seeds of destabilization openly and covertly, through military representatives, through spies and people recruited by them. And the final result (since the DIA's tasks are still performed by the military) may be a war with the seizure of territories or "carpet bombing" - but already a war with a weakened state, undermined by internal sabotage and terrorist attacks. Here we must see the true "international" goals of the reformed DIA.
And it seems that some mistrustful American senators have heard about these global goals in recent days. There is a movement in the Senate to block the Pentagon's plan to fund hundreds of additional foreign spies. For today the plan has the status "temporarily blocked".
On December 11, Greg Miller (The Washington Post) revealed that, first, the Senators talked about the big problems with new spending that will inevitably arise when funding the covert exploits of additional spies abroad. Second, senators believe that RUMO spies are constantly haunted by failures. And all the intelligence efforts of the Ministry of Defense regularly go down the drain.
The Pentagon, heavily criticized for its unsuccessful espionage activities, is invited
"Demonstrate that it can improve intelligent espionage management before embarking on further expansion."
It is likely that the Senate, which expresses deep skepticism about the Pentagon's implementation of the announced plan, will soon completely block the expansion of the DIA's staffing table. As a result, the number of intelligence officers will remain at the level of the previous year. The Pentagon is now required to provide an "independent cost estimate" for new espionage services, as well as a plan for where and when newly recruited spies will work for democracy.
The Senate submission lists a rather long list of problems faced by existing Pentagon intelligence services, including that previously trained operatives were "unproductive" on missions overseas.
In simple terms, Mr. Senators not only doubted the high intelligence of the Pentagon workers, but also made it clear that the military department is artificially inflating the states, not intending to report what the newly-made spies will do.
The Senate submission also said that the Armed Services Committee instructs the Department of Defense to reverse any agreements previously reached with other agencies, including the CIA, that were supposedly involved in creating a new secret service.
Moreover, the Senate expressed the opinion that the Pentagon
“We need to do business by reducing costs, and not leaving them at the same level or allowing an increase.”
Independent columnist Max Booth ("Commentary"), also skeptical of RUMO, believes that
“We already have enough intelligence officers and we need to focus on improving their quality.”
The US Department of Defense has many problems with "human intelligence." Here are special means, equipment - there is, but human intelligence - no. Max Booth is even critical of the ability of DIA agents and other spies to influence the Arab Spring.
The author of the note recommends that the RUMO carry out a completely different reform: cut off the thick layer of bureaucracy in the department, change the leadership and hire talented and intelligent people into the ranks of the intelligence - primarily those who are familiar with foreign cultures and know languages. In the meantime, it is obvious that the RUMO only intends to expand the existing bureaucracy, and this, the journalist notes, is unacceptable.
Thus, the Senate and the press remembered something that was somehow not accepted in America to talk about. Previously, Washington taught the whole planet to wisdom, but now, you see, the time has come to realize the correctness of the Russian proverb - the one that Anton Pavlovich Chekhov liked to repeat: the clever loves to learn, and the fool loves to teach. While the perpetually drunk and stoned American spies flooded operations in Afghanistan and searched for biological weapons in Iraq, Russia ceased to reckon with the will of the White House, and China has become stronger economically and militarily so that no new strategy will scare it. Moreover, one in which the most important component is completely absent: intelligence.
