Ukraine: Painting the Black Swan?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine at the end of February was previewed in remarkably specific terms by a series of revelations from the U.S. intelligence community. For much of January and February, U.S. and international media outlets ran stories highlighting U.S. officials’ increasingly urgent warnings of imminent military action by the Russian troops amassed near the Ukraine border.

Of course, these leaks did not prevent the Russian invasion, which started February 24 and continues unabated as I write this. But it did have a number of important effects. First, it blunted the impact of Russian attempts to manufacture a false flag justification for the war. It put public pressure on U.S. allies to rush military aid to Ukraine in advance of the invasion. And – along with other, less visible, diplomatic efforts – it helped lay the stage for the rapid rollout of economic sanctions and widespread diplomatic condemnation of Russia’s actions.

So is the publicizing of information known to the U.S. intelligence community a new strategy? Is it effective? And if so, could it be replicated?

The first thing to say is that the strategic use of intelligence products was clearly intentional. The stories based on intelligence findings, which dominated the headlines of U.S. news sources (and some international ones), were accompanied and reinforced by public statements from President Joe Biden and his administration to the effect that Russia was moving toward an invasion of its neighbor. The intelligence community is perfectly capable of signaling its discontent with a course of action or covering its bases by means of strategic leaks, but the alignment between the administration’s statements and the intelligence community’s revelations – carefully framed to avoid revealing sources and methods – leaves little doubt that in this case it was an intentional, considered approach.

The public use of intelligence for political ends is, of course, not a new phenomenon. At the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Adlai Stevenson famously confronted his Soviet opposite number, Valentin Zorin, at the United Nations with photos proving the existence of Soviet ballistic missile installations in Cuba. But there is a less glorious history, too – 40 years later, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell presented intelligence on the existence of a secretive WMD program in Iraq, which later proved to be utterly fantastical.

Powell’s speech failed on two key counts: The world did not rally to the U.S. cause and – once the invasion revealed that Iraq’s WMD arsenal consisted of nothing more than a few expired chemical artillery shells rusting away in forgotten corners – it became an instant watchword for the damaged credibility of the United States government, its intelligence community, and Powell personally.

There is an all-too-simple conclusion that could be drawn from this narrative: A government’s ability to use an intelligence product strategically depends on whether the intelligence is accurate or not.

The reality, of course, is more complex. There are elements of intelligence analysis that are factually provable or disprovable. The movement of Russian forces from military districts far from Ukraine’s borders, the presence of materiel not normally used in exercises like bridging gear and blood supplies – these can be proven, checked, falsified, assessed, and considered or disseminated accordingly. Indeed, as we have seen in the course of this conflict, it is increasingly possible to do so from open source information as well.

But the more crucial element – in this instance, the views, states of mind, and dispositions of Putin and his inner circle – are harder, perhaps impossible, to know. An intelligence analyst can make a guess based on psychological assessments, communications intercepts, or interviews with expert observers, and deliver a synthesis to a policymaker, but that assessment is still a model, and a model is inherently different from reality.

In this instance, the model was right, and the policymakers in question used it wisely. That does not guarantee it will be the same the next time around. There are many failure points in this approach.

There is, more fundamentally, a potential issue where this strategy can fall victim to its own success. All of the moving parts in this dynamic that can see each other can also affect each other. It is doubtful that the Biden administration thought that it could persuade Russia not to invade by leaking its plans in advance, but since the disclosures were public Russia would inevitably be among the audiences – and, it is reasonable to assume, would have some kind of response, even if only by tightening up its internal security measures to try to identify and close vulnerabilities.

So a strategy of intentional disclosure can be effective, but only when the intelligence is of sufficiently high quality, the assumptions made in collating it are broadly correct, and realistic expectations exist of what can be accomplished by public disclosure (and the risk of compromising sources or otherwise prompting unwanted adversarial adaptation is considered manageable).

Ultimately, even though its plans had been splashed on the front pages of the New York Times, Russia still decided to invade Ukraine. Despite the economic damage Moscow has suffered from sanctions and the strategic and reputational damage its military missteps have caused it, Russia’s war grinds on, causing inordinate amounts of human suffering and creating openings for even greater dangers. Perhaps Moscow is pursuing this course because of inertia, or sunk costs; perhaps the real cause is a sense of historical revanchism or aggrieved nationalism. Without trying to determine which of those holds the place of primacy in the Kremlin – let alone what Xi Jinping or others might be learning from watching Putin’s war play out – we should certainly be aware that a war planned and executed in the open can be just as destabilizing and devastating as one that comes as a bolt from the blue.