The history of failed efforts by major powers to win wars without good intel
Thursday, August 21, 2008 Free Headline Alerts
Before the 20th century, all countries were divided into "advanced" and "backward," and the former were expected to defeat the latter as a matter of course. Thus, in the British Empire, the territory of England itself accounted for less than 10%, the rest being the territories conquered by England. China was never a British colony, but England waged two wars against China, both victorious. The cause of these two wars is worth mentioning.
Narcotics were widely spread in the 19th century, and the Emperor of China forbade the nonmedical sale of opium, as it is today forbidden in the United States (see "USP Dictionary," 1996, p. 506). As a result, the British opium merchants sustained financial losses, and there occurred two "opium wars" (in 1840 and 1858), both of which were won by Gr. Britain, and the Chinese Emperor had to permit the English opium merchants to drug the Chinese with opium.
However, in the 20th century there appeared countries like Stalin's Russia, Hitler's Germany, and Maoist China, which combined premedieval slavery and modern weapons.
On June 22, 1941, Hitler's Germany invaded Stalin's Russia. In 1940, Hitler's Germany had routed France within about a month, and the British troops fled from France with special alacrity. From June to September 1941, Hitler's troops were advancing no less successfully to Moscow.
Moscow was the brain of the country and the hub of railroads and highways of the European part of Russia. In September, Hitler's troops approached Moscow. So Hitler won the war?
At his secret meeting in Moscow, Stalin told his subordinates that Moscow could be defended only by the Siberian and Far-Eastern troops, which were already on their way to Moscow. Since the Soviet European troops had been routed, Stalin suggested that meanwhile everyone who could should leave Moscow (as for Stalin himself he could leave Moscow any second by his personal underground train, safer than aircraft).
The result of Stalin's suggestion was "The Big Skedaddle." Moscow was fleeing. Those in charge of a food store loaded whatever their store had and skedaddled as though the food were their own.
In the summer, I had been evacuated to Kazan, and was living with a family we knew. What about my winter clothes? My mother in Moscow collected the winter clothes for me. But how to skedaddle out of Moscow? She caught the last train, evacuating writers and their families. My father was a writer who had volunteered for the defense of Moscow and was killed. When I entered the room in Kazan, I saw my mother safely back from Moscow, with my winter clothes.
Hitler could enter the skedaddling Moscow without difficulty. That is, he won the war in October 1941?
But Hitler did not have a single intelligence/espionage agent in Moscow-he regarded intelligence/espionage as treachery, and surely he had routed France in 1940 in about a month without it.
So in 1941, in October and November, his troops loitered at Moscow without invading it. Meanwhile, the Russian Siberian and Far-Eastern troops did arrive-fresh, excellently armed, exceeding numerically the German troops at Moscow-and turned them to disorderly flight. Hitler arrived in person, fearless as always under enemy bullets, and turned the disorderly flight of his troops into an orderly retreat.
But he had lost the war despite more than three years still ahead, for had he occupied the entire Volga, the Volga could not substitute for Moscow. Besides, 80,000 German troops were surrounded, captured with their commanders, and marched through Moscow. Hitler finally committed suicide.
Now, the attitude of Hitler to intelligence/espionage has been characteristic of the "advanced countries," expecting to defeat the "backward countries" due to the latter's militarily-industrial inferiority.
In the 1970s, when we emigrated to New York from Soviet Russia, the CIA arranged for a public review of its intelligence/espionage data, submitted to the Congress and the Government. Everyone could receive copies of those once top secret materials. In September 1978, I published in "Commentary" magazine an article which demonstrated that the U.S. intelligence/espionage did not exist, for the texts the CIA passed for intelligence/espionage data had been the Soviet propaganda, copied by the CIA from Soviet periodicals, as every Russian could see.
My article was reprinted or retold by over 500 periodicals in the West. But I wanted it reprinted or retold by the New York Times, to draw the attention of the U.S. Government and Congress.
I wondered what the New York Times was thinking. That I was insane? But my book "The Education of Lev Navrozov" was published in 1975, and the review of it in the New York Times by its favorite Harrison Salisburgy was quite favorable.
Besides, if I was insane, what about more than 500 Western periodicals that reprinted or retold my article? Were they also insane?
In short, the United States did not have intelligence/espionage. But this was of no concern to the New York Times. In the 1920s and the 1930s, the key Moscow correspondent of the New York Times was Walter Duranty, an inspired Stalinist, who had to withdraw into his private life when Stalin became a curse after WW2.
Iraq is a tiny Third-World country, and compared with it, the United States is a giant military superpower. George W. Bush began planning the invasion of Iraq since the beginning of his presidency. With its allies like Britain, the U.S. invaded Iraq. But five years have not been enough to win the war! For the goal of the CIA and the British Intelligence Service was not to conduct intelligence/espionage, but to convince the public that Iraq posed a mortal danger to the West unless Iraq was attacked first.