Awash In Unmanaged Crises And Distractions
Kirsty Wigglesworth/ Getty Images, with thanks to Politico
Among the many wise leadership councils of the Western world, there is one foreign intelligence chief who has stepped out onto the global stage and shaken the remains of the now defunct American-European-Asian axis, a strategic grouping that stood for decades in opposition to the threatening, shifting alliances of China and Russia and their irredentist obsessions. That standalone figure today, one for whom I am filled with professional admiration, would be Blaise Metreweli, the relatively new chief and the first woman at the top of the UK’s storied Secret Intelligence service, MI6.
Commonly referred to as “C”, the head of MI6 has boldly taken the lead in calling the world’s attention to a host of profound and interwoven threats from China through the Hermit Kingdom of North Korea, the invariably fractured Middle East, theocratic Iran and, most alarming of all, the ugly bellicosity of Russia. Metreweli’s recent public statement appears to be a British version of a National-Security-Strategy-Lite. It may not necessarily be a full strategy, as it lacks solutions, but it is a compellingly somber and realistic description of today’s real world. It stands in humiliating contrast to the anemic hologram of a national security plan passed off by the USG a week ago, an anti-immigration, cowardly inward looking, solipsistic testament to national greed that virtually ignores manifest strategic threats. It makes no sense as a strategic document.
As gathering storms have seized the attention of many former US allies and very substantial national communities of worried Americans, Washington engaged in theatrics instead of a serious search for compromise through credible strength and a willingness to use it.
Consequential stirrings by China in its own sphere of influence have been visible for years. A historic military expansion, powered by fresh streams of technological advances have worried the US intelligence and policy communities, but China has been met with pointless tariffs and, as regards their aggressive regional policies, little more than halcyon oblivion. Because of Washington’s weak-kneed, amateurish negotiating and our president’s eagerness to please Putin has been emboldened unlike any preceding Russian leader, and that’s saying something. And while there are adversarial forces plainly at work to re-engineer relationships and alliances that span the globe, the US seems on the precipice of war against Venezuela, citing spurious and unachievable anti-narcotics goals, likely concealing a search for oil.
In short, Great Britain has stood by for the better part of a decade and watched the US as the puerile amateur it has become and, its patience run thin and at the geographic locus of a great menace, decided to say what is on its mind. There must be cheers throughout most of Europe for Ms. Metreweli’s words, words they almost certainly were hoping to hear from us.
Economically the Trump administration is blind to everything but trade, mineral exploitation from foreign lands, domestic aggrandizement of wealth and the means of production in limited oligarchic hands, concentration of entertainment and information outlets friendly to MAGA, and the misuse of the military as a reinforcing hand in achieving these ignoble goals. What America has not done is encourage the critically strategic imperatives that a powerful and durable democracy must situate to survive and attract allied support.
The role Metreweli has assumed is very welcome, but is one the American Director of National Intelligence should be filling. Under the American Governments I remember, administrations far better equipped to dispose that leadership than this one, it would have been the DNI, flanked by other leaders of the Intelligence Community, sketching a coordinated, agreed upon portrait of a hostile world, identification of malignant currents evolving and reassembling before our eyes, and would have empowered policy formulation of courses of action to be taken.
These days demand more than mere stewardship. What is needed is personal, imposing, wise and authentic leadership that enables American policies and alliances, and then shapes the skills to sell those packages. Our DNI is a vacuous, inexperienced and uninformed marionette, unmistakable in her lack of qualifications. Our intelligence leadership can seize the substance of what is happening, but communicates its findings to an executive unwilling to act. Our distressed national helmsman cares not that the global vacancy be filled by others, while he wrestles with his hydra-headed distractions, but we can be thankful for Blaise Metreweli.
Bill Piekney served 4 years in the US Navy, 30 years with the CIA retiring as Senior Operations Executive, and 5 years as a Senior Consultant at ODNI, International Consultant in Intelligence and National Security. He is a member of The Steady State.
Founded in 2016, The Steady State is a nonprofit 501(c)(4) organization of more than 360 former senior national security professionals. Our membership includes former officials from the CIA, FBI, Department of State, Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security. Drawing on deep expertise across national security disciplines including intelligence, diplomacy, military affairs and law, we advocate for constitutional democracy, the rule of law and the preservation of America’s national security institutions.