Donald Trump can win his war on intelligence, but it won't make America smarter

The purpose of Trump’s frontal assault on an essential element of the government he will soon lead is bewildering.  Maybe he is trying to distract the country from the controversy over his ties with Russia, maybe he has some genius secret plan for reforming the intelligence community, or maybe he is just a thin-skinned narcissist with impulse control issues.

As with so many of America’s wars we may never really know why it was fought.  But we can assess the damage. So how will Trump’s war on intelligence affect his presidency?

It is already clear that the intelligence agencies are willing to fight back. They are extremely powerful actors within the Washington system and they have many weapons. They do not appreciate being slagged off in public by someone who clearly has no idea what they are capable of.

First amongst their weapons is the time-honoured Washington technique of leaking. Someone within the intelligence community leaked to CNN that Trump’s intelligence briefing last week contained an unverified dossier claiming that the Russian government had compromising information on Trump. A political crisis ensued. When President Trump inevitably faces a security crisis in some far flung part of the world, we can be certain that leaks will surface in the press that he ignored this or that intelligence report, causing the deaths of American soldiers or citizens.

Second, they can simply refuse to do their jobs or at least refuse to do them well. The intelligence agencies are central to the functioning of the U.S. government. If Trump needs, say, options to de-stabilize the North Korean regime, he will need various intelligence agencies to give them to him. If he, say, wants to attack Iran, he will need to cite intelligence assessments that the Iranians are cheating on the nuclear deal.  When annoyed, these agencies are extremely effective at dragging their feet or presenting a menu of only unpalatable options or undesirable results. 

Finally, they might even try their own frontal assault. In 2004, after the George W. Bush administration blamed the CIA for the failure of intelligence in the Iraq War, the CIA embarked on what the Wall Street Journal termed an insurgency, working against his re-election. That particular CIA regime change policy did not work, but it certainly presented a challenge to a president seeking a second term.

Of course, President Trump will have a lot of advantages in this struggle. After all, he will soon be the boss. He will appoint the leaders of these organizations. He can promote loyal officials to the heights of professional success or he can send them to off to be reporting officers in some geopolitical backwater.

Even more importantly, he seems a lot less interested in receiving hard facts from experts than previous presidents. He acts on instinct, distrusts expert evidence, and simply denies failure or contradictions. So far this has worked well for him. He may feel he does not need the intelligence community as much as previous presidents.

So, in the end, Donald Trump will likely win his war on intelligence. But neither he nor America as a whole will be any smarter as a result.

Jeremy Shapiro is Research Director at at the European Council on Foreign Relations. He was previously a member of the U.S. State Department’s policy planning staff, and senior advisor to Barack Obama's Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon.