Show us nature’s story,
red in tooth and claw
Laura Freeman
Page 31
In this crisis, the West has
necessarily reached for new tactics,
particularly in the field of sanctions.
Yet it has also demonstrated afresh
that one of the most powerful
weapons in the defence of freedom is
the revelation of the truth, provided
it is done with reliability and
integrity. Given that the coming
decades are shaping up to be a
struggle between autocracy and
democracy, the dissemination of
truth about dictatorial regimes —
their hypocrisy, corruption,
nepotism and tyranny — needs to be
part of a sustained and more
aggressive strategy.
Western agencies have already
been doing more to highlight the
extent of Chinese cyberattacks and
theft of intellectual property. New
units are tracking and countering
Russian disinformation being spread
across the digital world. Much more,
however, remains to be done. Most
Americans are not aware of the
colossal scale of Russian messaging
fed into their social media. Many
businesses do not understand the
ruthlessness of Chinese espionage.
European nations committed to
higher defence spending have not yet
realised they need to build far more
capable intelligence networks as well.
The enhanced role of published
intelligence is a vital feature of this
conflict. More people around the
world will begin to believe what it
says. It points the way to a more
robust approach, of revealing the
truth about tyrants, long before they
start another war.Good intelligence can help to tame tyrants
Revealing the truth about Russia’s actions and intentions is proving to be a powerful weapon in the Ukraine conflict
have produced what he absolutely
did not want — a western-oriented
remainder of Ukraine that is his
sworn enemy — but he could save
face with Russians at the usual May
9 victory parade in Moscow.
It seems likely that his generals
will be telling him they can do this,
even if they are not sure. More
offensives and continued brutalities
are therefore on the way. That is why
the transfer to Ukraine of heavier
weapons, agreed by some allies last
week, is so important. But it also
means we are in a long struggle with
a regime that does not believe in a
permanent peace, commits horrific
war crimes and lies even to itself.
While we should not expect our
intelligence agencies to predict all
events, their role in revealing the
reality of Putin’s rule has probably
only just begun.Sergey Beseda, head of the FSB foreign
service, is said to be under house arrestsucceed. The excellence of the work
in Washington and London helps to
explain why these capitals so often
see things the same way and makes
it well worth listening to what they
say next.
Second, British pre-eminence in
this field is an important national
asset in a world of multiplying
threats of disruption and
cyberattack. For obvious reasons it is
difficult to explain the extent to
which lives are saved, foreign spying
prevented and British companies
protected on a daily basis, but those
of us who have seen this work from
the inside know that the successes
far outweigh the failures. Investing in
our intelligence agencies should
always be a top priority. So should
nurturing the reputation they are
now securing, by resisting the misuse
or exaggeration of their findings by
political leaders that caused so much
damage after the war in Iraq.
Third, their latest warnings add
crucially to our understanding of
how the war might develop. The
director of GCHQ, Sir Jeremy
Fleming, said last week that “we
believe Putin’s advisers are afraid to
tell him the truth”. He would not
have said that without specific
reasons for believing it. If Putin is
not being told the truth, and being
lied to is an occupational hazard of
being a dictator, it is more likely he
will make a further miscalculation
and continue on a course that has
already proved more difficult than
he was led to expect.
Putin’s remaining hope of claiming
a military victory is to conquer a
significant part of the Donbas and
more of Ukraine’s coast. He can then
offer a ceasefire, dig in to defend
those areas, and spin out fruitless
peace conferences for years while
having dismembered Ukraine and
refusing to budge. Of course, he willW
hen intelligence is
used to warn
another country of
an impending attack,
it is common for
them to refuse to believe it. The
classic instance of this is Stalin’s
adamant refusal to accept that Hitler
was planning to invade Russia in
1941, despite abundant evidence and
repeated warnings from London.
As foreign secretary, responsible
for Britain’s GCHQ and MI6, I more
than once had to phone other
governments to alert them to a
planned terrorist attack, only to
find them unwelcoming of the
tip-off. One foreign minister said I
must be trying to undermine their
tourist trade. They showed little
contrition when such warnings
proved to be correct.
There are several reasons for this
apparently irrational behaviour:
suspicion of the motives of those
passing on information, disbelief that
anyone knows more about the
threats to that country than its own
leaders do, and a reluctance to cause
alarm among their own people.
The latter reason seemed to be
foremost in the minds of Ukraine’s
leaders in February, as they tried to
calm the civilian population even as
stark warnings of a full-on invasion
were given. It was a mistake in an
otherwise extraordinary and
inspirational response to the horrors
Putin has unleashed upon them.
For decades it has been the
orthodoxy that secret intelligence
cannot be published for fear of
revealing how it is obtained. Think of
how the cracking of the Enigma code
in the Second World War was kept
secret until the 1970s. For most
intelligence this will remain the case,
but the US and UK have rightly
decided that the revelation of Putin’s
plans for war, for staging false
provocations at its outset, and for
committing crimes against civilians
has been vital — both to warn
Ukrainians and to wreck the
narrative of lies that the Kremlin was
planning to employ.
As a result, the publication of
secretly obtained information is
playing a bigger role in this war than
in any previous conflict. Along with
a huge amount of open-source
material and high-quality journalism,
it is revealing the true picture of the
war more rapidly than ever before. It
is being used to influence events, not
just to report them; for instance to
deter Putin from using chemical
weapons by alerting the world in
advance that he might do so. This isan important development, and it is
worth noting some of its lessons and
implications.
First, the US and UK, working
closely together, have vastly greater
intelligence capabilities than our
European allies. Their briefings have
proved highly accurate, while the
head of French intelligence was
sacked last week for having given a
contrary and poorly informed
assessment of Putin’s plans. He is in
good company — one of the top
officials in Russia’s FSB intelligence
service is under house arrest after
giving a much too rosy picture of
how likely an invasion would be toWe are in for a long
struggle with a regime
that lies even to itself
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Haguethe times | Tuesday April 5 2022 29