Quinta Jurecic on Lawfare surveys the Web to see how the various American political factions are reacting to the ongoing attempts to discredit the American intelligence community, which is prima facie odd given that traditionally the intelligence community has been trusted by the right wing and distrusted by the left – but now Comey and Mueller are attracting admiration from at least some on the left. But what does it all mean for the future?
Alternately, perhaps the center-left’s realignment will hold through the rest of the Trump administration as the Russia investigation continues and as the left and center-left dig in on their newly different approaches to opposing the president. Policy concerns may play second fiddle to “resistance” understood more broadly; in fact, that’s exactly what concerns those on the left who criticize the center-left’s new bedfellows. After the Trump presidency draws to a close, those closer to the center may drift back closer to those on the further left in terms of their distaste for the language of patriotism and the county’s hard-power agencies.
The final possibility, however, is that this is a more lasting shift with implications beyond Trump and his presidency: a sea change in how the center-left relates to the intelligence community and a deeper cleavage between the hard left and center-left on national security. This strikes me as the least likely scenario but also the most interesting. It would, of course, be one of the great ironies of Trump’s tenure if one of its lasting intellectual impacts were a rediscovery on the part of the mainstream left of the dangers posed byRussia and the need for strong and capable intelligence agencies.
But there is something troubling to this possibility as well. Several times, Lawfare’s own “handmaiden of power” Benjamin Wittes has cautioned his newfound admirers on the left that they will find plenty to dislike about him for once the sturm und drang of the Trump administration has passed. There’s solace in this idea: the notion that this, too, shall pass and we’ll return to the world we knew before, when our main disagreements were about things like the appropriate scope of surveillance authorities and the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. On the other hand, if this shift in alignment of the center-left endures and those disageements fail to reemerge, then our previous world—whatever its irrationalities and failures—will be gone, in some small way, for good. Whatever the merits of a permanent change in the center-left’s attitude toward the intelligence community, it is also discomfiting to think that Trump’s most egregious excesses might have such lasting power over the intellectual life of the nation.
Sure wish I knew – or knew of – a historian specializing in security matters. Lacking that, I’ll have to take a ham-handed swing at it myself. If you start giggling, at least I’ll have been entertaining.
Briefly, I think Quinta needs to consider that things change, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly – but they do. Historically, my impression is that intelligence communities have sprung from the ruling elites as instruments for securing their positions atop the hill. Dating from the days of kings, kaisers, and czars, they were the embodiment of partisan instruments, fashioned for the blunt and old fashioned grab for power. This was from the time when the putative excuse for holding onto that position was the blessing of God.
But with the rise of the democracies of the West, there has come a slow change in the nature of government, and a slow reverberation through the government services to the intelligence community. Democracy is, among other things, about treating the citizens of the democracy justly, which means fairly and without regard to partisanship. This may not have been clear at the beginning – not being a historian or even a reader of that area, I don’t know – but I think intelligence communities sprang up as ad hoc agencies created by the exigencies of the moment, with little thought to the broader implications. Thus, we have the existence of that execrable creature, J. Edgar Hoover, who abused his knowledge to keep his position for 37 years, and who was well known to pursue anyone he even suspected might be harbor political inclinations of which he disapproved.
But as the ideas of fair and just dealing seeped into the intelligence communities, the leftists, ever out of power in America, have developed a not-unearned distaste for the intelligence communities. After all, the latter are just one instrument of those seeking stasis – that is, retaining power and a static culture. The leftists, on the other hand, are the agents of change, and as convinced as they are of the goodness of that change, the right wingers are convinced they are the footsteps of doom.
But, at least for some lefties, as Quinta documents, the modern notion of a non-partisan intelligence community, preoccupied with preserving the nation as a whole, and the government system which has proven relatively successful, will suddenly have an appeal when faced with a right wing threat. The left would like to think it exists in a sea of objective facts and reasoning, and while this is inevitably a bit of a delusion, it will explain the outrage that occurs when the very instruments of objective observation are suddenly under threat of discreditation and even an existential threat.
Assuming the threat recedes as Trump is either removed or reaches the end of his term, I think the left will also recede a little bit in their trust level, but retain a certain gain with respect to the intelligence community. A modicum of knowledge will be retained, because the intelligence communities have changed slowly over time from being mere instruments of the partisan status quo to the more prestigious, useful, and trustworthy instruments of the non-partisan status quo.
And if the right-wing, deprived of a long held tool, doesn’t like it, they can eat bricks.
