Luck, Skill, or Something Else?

At Foreign Policy Douglas London wonders whether the unrest observed in Russia, China, and Iran is due to luck or skill?

In recent weeks, there have been major street protests in China and Iran, two of the United States’ main adversaries, and a mass exodus of fighting-age men amid an economic and military meltdown in Russia. Is it luck? Coincidence? Is CIA Director William Burns a total genius? Or is it the result of painstaking preparations to bring about a moment like this to bolster U.S. policy preferences? The answer is complicated—as are the options for U.S. officials when it comes to exploiting the circumstances.

I do not believe that we should be meddling in the internal affairs of other countries at all, whether they’re rivals, adversaries, or allies. Destabilization has a way of coming back to bite you in the butt.

For my part, although I’m sure that Mr. Burns would be delighted to take the credit for it (if that’s the right word), I strongly suspect that the correct answer is that neither luck nor skill but something else is the primary culprit and I would point to COVID-19. Stressors have ways of causing events to turn in peculiar and unpredictable ways.

BTW IMO the CIA should be abolished, its covert operations turned over to the military. Today it’s redundant. There are plenty of other agencies analyzing intelligence.

6 comments… add one
  • Andy Link

    “BTW IMO the CIA should be abolished, its covert operations turned over to the military. Today it’s redundant. There are plenty of other agencies analyzing intelligence.”

    It’s important to remember that leadership of the intelligence community generally was taken away from the CIA after 9/11, and they became primarily a HUMINT and analysis agency. Many people still think the CIA is basically what it was during the Cold War, but it isn’t.

    A lot of the covert kinetic action stuff was turned over to the military long ago. That brings up a different set of problems, however, in terms of military forces operating under Title 50 command and authority instead of the regular military Title 10 authority.

    But more fundamentally, the primary role of the CIA is not covert action, it’s human intelligence. They are the lead agency for HUMINT in the intelligence community. Abolishing the CIA would require another organization to take on that role and manage all the existing assets and capabilities. There’s no obvious candidate.

  • And we do a pretty lousy job with human intelligence. When we can keep our resources alive, that is.

  • steve Link

    Luck and coincidence, plus we overrate those places. Authoritarian governments/leaders are replaced by revolts, protests or means other than an election. Those leaders always need to balance force applied to keep people in line vs accommodation to what the protesters want. Its a fine balancing act that usually fails eventually. China is really having to cut back on its zero covid policy but I think once they do that and if economic growth keeps up Xi is safe again. Less sure about Iran. Putin is still safe though Russia is hurt in the long term.

    Steve

  • Grey Shambler Link

    “once they do that”

    Isn’t it likely China will suffer millions of Covid deaths once lockdowns end?
    They don’t really have any good options re Covid policy, nor did we, only trade offs.

  • I’ve mentioned it before but I don’t think I’ve ever actually devoted a post to it. Why do American commentators assume that Putin’s successor will be an improvement? Putin is a moderate. He’s more likely to be succeeded by someone who’s more of a hardliner than someone who is more liberal.

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    @Grey.

    We will see, I believe the existing modeling during the summer suggested 500K-1M deaths based on the vaccination rate and vaccine efficiency. Again, this was mostly due to the low percentage of >75 who got vaccinated, not because of any lack of effectiveness of Chinese vaccines.

    The total number of deaths may be significantly under that, because over the past week Chinese vaccination numbers have increased from 150K / day to 800K / day. There is speculation a lot of people held off on vaccination until it became clear the risk of catching COVID is imminent. Also, medicine to treat COVID is a lot more available then even the summer.

    Just to put in context through, even a million deaths is about 1/4 the death rate per capita of the US. And if this last vaccination push works, China’s death toll would be significantly better then any developed country.

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