Confronting the Colonies (37 page)

It can be explained by three factors. The first is the marginalisation of local agency, conscious or otherwise. Significantly, this allowed policymakers to dodge difficult questions about the legitimate grievances of colonial populations and the efficacy of the British imperial model. It is telling that local agency was most recognised during the Omani insurgency—which of course was not in a colony. Indeed, the British were convinced of the moral righteousness of their imperial mission. They therefore found it difficult to accept that their opponents had a legitimate political programme of their own.
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As part of this, intelligence perceived these opponents as being controlled by external forces.

Secondly, the Cold War threat dominated the mindset and agendas of the intelligence community as well as military and civilian planners. It was therefore natural that it would influence conceptualisations of unrest to an extent. A further by-product of this framework however, was the habit of looking at non-state actors through a state-centric prism. This also served to marginalise local agency. Thirdly, intelligence analysts lacked a deductive framework for counterinsurgency—particularly in the earlier insurgencies of Malaya and Cyprus. Without an awareness of insurgents' goals and strategy, assessments fell back on the Cold War framework which emphasised international factors, states (particularly the Soviet Union) and conventional warfare. Perhaps then an approach combining induction with deduction based on a counter-insurgency model is useful. It would go some way to preventing assessment from regressing to redundant deductive frameworks.

This constant desire to place colonial insurgencies into an international framework of Sino-Soviet subversion did not only impede accurate
intelligence assessment. It also severely strained relations between the JIC and the Colonial Office, where officials bluntly accused the JIC of failing to understand the complexities of colonial matters by blindly propagating a military and Foreign Office obsession with international communism.

By the mid-1960s, the JIC had acquired a broader remit and Cold War fears began to settle. However, focus on the international at the expense of local agency still created some problems in intelligence assessment. By the end of the insurgency in Aden, overemphasis of external factors, this time the Egyptian role, again marginalised the role of local ideological motivations. Britain was obsessed with Nasser and was once more unwilling to look at non-state actors. Instead, the insurgent groups were perceived through state-centric eyes. This was a mistake, for the local actors ultimately went on to form the new leftist government of South Yemen.
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Intelligence assessments need to have exposure to alternative mind-sets. It is important that analysts feel secure enough to deviate from the established orthodoxy.
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It could be argued that strategic intelligence is intrinsically broad by nature and will therefore always be prone to bend local intricacies into an overarching threat framework or narrative. Such assessments are not necessarily the best vehicle for policymakers to receive in-depth analysis of detailed local issues, but there is no reason why they should not better reflect the nuances of the real world. Success however depends not simply on the JIC, but on the political and security system within which it operates. The committee's performance, then as now, must therefore be understood within the context of the intelligence received and the environment within which it works. Moreover, an accurate balance between the internal and external is difficult for even the most integrated and sophisticated intelligence assessment to achieve.

Similarly, an all-source interdepartmental approach helps to ensure that the intelligence agenda, requirements and priorities are objectively set. By giving more departments input into how issues are framed, developments become less likely to be assessed through the mindset of the most dominant department. Before being moved to the Cabinet Office, the JIC's agenda was shaped by military interests. As a result, assessments focused predominantly on conventional warfare and the Soviet threat, thereby neglecting other types of threats such as insurgencies. The structure in which the intelligence assessment body is housed is thus
central and can artificially shape the agenda and constrain potentially relevant assessments. An interdepartmental approach, therefore, helps counter the ubiquity of one narrative by allowing awareness of various trends. Intelligence analysts today, ever sensitive to overarching threats and policy priorities, should be wary of exhibiting cognitive closure by oversimplifying complex issues into the dominant cognitive framework. In an era in which nationalism remains and current non-state actors feed off the legacies of imperialism and decolonisation, it could perhaps be all too tempting to swap the Cold War prishowever zeitgeist: ‘the War on Terror'.

Intelligence assessments also elevated colonial insurgencies to the international and regional policy contexts. Ever aware of external forces encroaching upon British strategic management of its imperial interests, the committee placed the threat to Aden not only in the broader threat context of Egyptian and Yemeni intentions, but also in the policy context of a stable withdrawal. Similarly, the JIC assessed the Dhofari violence within the broader policy context of British military withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. Whilst the internationalisation of colonial security into a threat framework proved problematic, contextualisation within the policy framework of decolonisation was particularly useful. It ensured timeliness and relevance of information. It also allowed an interdepartmental audience to understand the implications of local developments regarding broader British interests and strategy.

JIC threat assessments often served as a moderating influence within Whitehall. They prudently countered the more subjective or inflammatory rhetoric of various political players. Academics have already noted how confidence in all-source intelligence assessment provided stability in Cold War management,
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and evidence now suggests that this can be extended to counterinsurgency and decolonisation. Given the tension and debates beneath the JIC level, intelligence assessment created calm from chaos.

This remains the case today. Regarding Iraq, JIC assessments have been praised by former senior officials. According to Gus O'Donnell, for example, they were able to offer a more balanced picture of the violence than either diplomatic or military reporting. This was no surprise. As a strategic actor, the JIC had time to stand back and ‘see the different assessments made by these different bodies plus the body of open information […] and what other countries are saying'. Therefore, JIC assessments
often carried more weight than the independent views of single departments.
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Building on its historical experience and growth, the JIC is clearly now at the very centre of the Whitehall security machinery.

During the Iraqi violence, the JIC continued to issue strategic intelligence assessments in order to aid ministerial policymaking. Subjects included the role and nature of Al Qaeda in Iraq. Revisiting a theme that plagued assessment of insurgencies between 1948 and 1975, the JIC looked at the interplay between local and international spheres. What impact did Iraq have on international terrorism?
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To what extent was the insurgency driven by local agency? Again however, globalisation has increased challenges to intelligence assessment by creating extra levels of external support. Achieving the right balance between internal agency, external support and external instigation within a regional (or global) security sphere is now perhaps more difficult than ever.

The British system is characterised by an integrated approach underpinned by relatively close relations between intelligence producers and consumers. Consisting of representatives from the intelligence agencies and from policymaking departments, the JIC system represents a ‘dramatic erasing of the line' between intelligence and policy.
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This helped to ensure that JIC output was relevant, timely, focused and useful. Under the British system, to quote Gregory Treverton, ‘at each stage, the process is animated by a sharper sense of what the real issues are and what information or analysis might be helpful when they come up for discussion […] Such participation improves the chances that intelligence will be useful when alternative courses of action are debated'.
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Alan Crick, a former JIC report drafter, has noted that intelligence must not strive for perfection at the expense of timeliness: ‘The imperfect interim report can be the most effective alerting device'.
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This is perhaps more the case now after membership of the JIC expanded to include more policy representatives from departments such as the Treasury, the Department for International Development and the Home Office. Similarly, the regular weekly meetings of the National Security Council, chaired by the prime minister, have recently further increased and institutionalised cooperation between intelligence and policy. JIC papers are now increasingly commissioned to inform NSC
discussions and the JIC's agenda is tasked with following that of the NSC ‘as closely as possible'.
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Yet with earlier representatives from the Foreign Office, Colonial Office, military and Commonwealth Relations Office and with increasing links to bodies such as the Defence and Oversea Policy Committee, the important intelligence-policy relationship has long existed.

The JIC's strengths lay, and still lie, in all-source intelligence assessment as a valuable input to aid policy debates. The committee's biggest success was therefore its ability to bring together intelligence that crossed traditional departmental boundaries and jurisdictions—which is of course exactly what intelligence relating to insurgency did. Yet insurgencies pose specific challenges to traditional all-source intelligence analysis and evaluation. As we have seen, insurgencies breaking out during the Cold War presented a highly complex situation and too much separation from the policymakers would have left analysts flailing in the dark, unsure about exactly what to assess. Given the amorphous threat, high levels of uncertainty and proliferating sources, intelligence assessments had to be focused, relevant and aware of which questions policymakers needed answering.

Axiomatically, it was not (and is still not) the role of the JIC to make policy recommendations. However, the committee evolved to acquire an important place within the policymaking system. The JIC lacked policy input immediately after the Second World War. Whilst it aided defence planning, intelligence assessments of insurgencies rarely directly influenced strategic foreign and colonial policy. Despite this, it is important not to overlook the JIC's more cumulative influence even at this early stage. Regular assessments gradually and passively helped build up policymaker knowledge of the issues involved, even if they initially lacked any direct impact. This was, and remains, a key role of the committee in peacetime. The JIC demonstrated a more tangible policy impact after 1957.

As the JIC gained greater prestige and policy relevance, it developed a more active input into policy formulation. This study has revealed that the JIC's relationship to policy differed depending on the type of policy. On the one hand was the broader regional and strategic policy. This essentially involved the projection of British power in an era of decline. It had to take counterinsurgency developments into account, for ongoing insurgencies affected regional stability. On the other hand was
the more counterinsurgency-specific policy. This related to defeating insurgents in a particular theatre. Regarding the former, JIC assessments of local developments as part of a broader regional policy context were directly used by policy practitioners, although the committee rightly steered clear of making policy recommendations. They allowed policymakers to consider longer-term strategic imperial and decolonisation policy accordingly, be it the importance of Cyprus, relations with Nasser or withdrawal from the Persian Gulf. Accordingly, the JIC helped guide policy practitioners through the external and international pressures encroaching on policy formulation during the ‘end of empire' years.

Interestingly, the JIC enjoyed a more direct input into policies that impacted more directly on a specific counterinsurgency. During the violence in Aden for example, the committee and its chairman appeared willing to veer into the realm of policy advice on issues such as photoreconnaissance, retaliatory air strikes and the delegation of authority to local commanders. Committee members were also involved in scrutinising, coordinating and staffing covert action policies under the auspices of the shadowy Joint Action Committee. Specific counterinsurgency policy could thus be said to further erode any producer-consumer divide. This was most likely because it requires a particular amount of intelligence input and because any action usually falls within the domain of the intelligence community.

The JIC worked best when it was aware of the policy context and of key questions the government wanted answering. Such a system, however, suffers the potential for politicisation. Intelligence can be subtly manipulated for political use, whilst analysts can be oversensitive to the pre-conceived desires of policymakers. Accordingly, the JIC's dramatic ascent carried with it an increased susceptibility to such political influence. Every step the committee took towards greater prestige, relevance and influence brought with it an increased vulnerability to manipulation. The committee could not operate hermetically in a political vacuum. It gradually grew susceptible to pre-conceived cognitive frameworks, interdepartmental rivalries, the buffetings of external political pressures and the occasional misuse of its output. These issues remain relevant today. Intelligence should not be manipulated to provide seemingly authoritative support for a particular policy. Moreover, the quality of intelligence is at risk when the JIC is specifically commissioned to produce an assessment for public use and to support a particular
mindset. Certain parallels exist between JIC assessments of Egyptian violence to be used at the United Nations in the 1960s and the ‘dodgy' dossier released in the build up to the invasion of Iraq.