EXTORTING PEACE:
ROMANIA AND THE END
OF THE COLD WAR, 1978-1989, VOL. 2
Larry L. Watts.
Bucharest: Editura RAO, 2013.
765 pages.
WITH FRIENDS LIKE THESE:
THE SOVIET BLOC’S
CLANDESTINE WAR AGAINST ROMANIA, VOL. 1
Larry L. Watts
Bucharest: Military Publishing House, 2010.
733 pages
Mr. Larry Watts has authored the second in a series of three “must
have” volumes for national security professionals, especially for practitioners
with an interest in Eastern Europe since World War II. His
initial volume, With Friends Like These:
The Soviet Bloc’s Clandestine War Against Romania (2010), covering the
period 1878-1978, examined Romania’s historic relations with its neighbors; its
strategic position as a member of the Warsaw Pact, to include its relations
with Moscow and its other erstwhile allies, the motivations behind its independent
foreign policy position in defiance of Moscow during the Cold War; and the
responses by Moscow and its partners in their relations with Bucharest. His
recently published second volume, Extorting
Peace: Romania and the End of the Cold
War, 1978-1989, extends
the study of Moscow’s clandestine war against Romania, while the third and yet
to be published volume will cover Romania’s December 1989 revolution and its entry
into Europe after 1989. The first two
volumes, both extremely well researched using former Warsaw Pact and U.S. government
archives, offer meticulous analysis regarding Romania’s strategic
situation, how the United States saw (or often misapprehended) Romania’s
position in the former Warsaw Pact, and how the Soviet Union conducted denial
and deception activities against the West about what was really going on in
Bucharest. Indeed, the first two volumes
make liberal use of many recently declassified documents. We will not likely see the third volume until
2016.
Mr.
Watts is uniquely qualified to discuss Romanian security issues both during and
after the Cold War. Watts is an
associate professor at the National School for Political Studies and Public
Administration in Bucharest, Romania. During 2011-2013 he was a visiting
professor for Security Studies and Intelligence Analysis in a master’s program
run jointly by the University of Bucharest and the Romanian Intelligence
Service (SRI). Most notably, he served an advisor to General Ioan Talpeş, a
former director of the Romanian foreign intelligence services and national
security advisor to President Ion Iliescu. Talpeş penned the foreword to the first
volume. Watts served as a security sector reform advisor to Romania’s Defense
Oversight Committee, Presidential Counselor for National Security, Defense
Ministry; to the Foreign Intelligence Service (SIE), and with the Police
General Inspectorate during the period 1991-2009. This work earned him awards
for promoting military reform and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)
integration, implementing democratic oversight, promoting ethnic
reconciliation, and fostering Romanian-American relations. He served
concurrently as a senior consultant and Bucharest office director to the
Princeton-based Project on Ethnic Relations during 1991-1997, engaging in
mediation efforts throughout the former Warsaw Pact. His earlier publications include
a 1993 biography of Romania’s controversial World War II leader Marshal Ion
Antonescu and 1998 work entitled Incompatible
Allies: Neorealism and Small State
Alliance Behavior in Wartime, which examines German relations with its Romanian,
Hungarian and Finnish allies during World War II.[1] In 2003 he made a model contribution to
Romanian security through NATO: Partners
and Players in Central and Eastern European Security, a multi-authored work
edited by Charles Krupnick of the U.S. Army War College.[2]
In
both With Friends Like These and Extorting Peace, Mr. Watts challenges the prevailing
conventional views on Romanian foreign policy and security during the Cold
War. He argues that Bucharest pursued an
independent foreign policy, often challenging Moscow’s claim to leadership in
the Warsaw Pact. For example, he examines the 1980 Warsaw Pact statute,
designed to provide for Soviet wartime command and control over its East
European allies; he shows how Bucharest opposed Soviet leadership and sought
greater national autonomy over its armed forces. Bucharest even encouraged the other Bloc
members to act more independently as well, abeit with marginal success (except
for Czechoslovakia during the mid-1960s). Watts further argues that, in
response to Romanian actions, the Soviet Union conducted a maskirovka (i.e., imitation, camouflage or disinformation) campaign
in an effort to convince Western observers that Moscow had, in fact,
orchestrated the entire range of Romanian actions. He takes the readers on a Romanian journey
through the Cold War, offering important information for intelligence
practitioners about the impact of mindsets upon prevailing views, how Western
intelligence analysts grappled with difficult problems in interpreting the
evidence, and how the Soviet Union worked through its allies to mislead the
West.
The
first two volumes provide detailed – if not brilliant – analysis for intelligence
practitioners with an interest in denial and deception issues, to include how
adversary efforts can impact both intelligence collection and analysis. According to Mark Lowenthal, former Vice
Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, a targeted nation (here, the
Soviet Union) can use knowledge about foreign intelligence capabilities to
avoid collection (denial) or it can use the same knowledge to transmit false information
to a collector (deception).[3] In fact, deception can occur by either
increasing or decreasing ambiguity for the adversary. On one hand, the “ambiguity increasing”
variant is designed to create general confusion and to distract an adversary
through blanket noise that makes it more difficult for collectors and analysts
to discern the true story. On the other
hand, the “ambiguity decreasing” variant is designed to mislead an enemy into
believing a specific story. One good
example of this would be the Allied effort in World War II to convince German
leader Adolf Hitler that the allies would invade France at Pas de Calais
instead of Normandy.
Here,
with regard to Romania during the late Cold War, the Soviet Union likely
employed both deception variants, taking advantage of the overall strategic
situation in Southeastern Europe. Indeed, Moscow was motivated to act in the
face of Romanian defiance. First, in
1947-48, the rather overt Soviet response to Yugoslavia’s split from the communist
bloc quickly gained Belgrade massive financial and military assistance from the
West.. This meant that an assertion of independence on the part of Romanian
leader Nicolae Ceaușescu would be plausible to Western observers, and equally
troubling to Soviet leaders. Second, the
Soviet Union had been confronted with earlier popular uprisings in East Germany
(1953), Hungary (1956) and Poland (1956). Thus, any acknowledgement of Romanian
independence could only have rekindled earlier feelings against Soviet
rule. Third, the Soviet Union had
withdrawn its ground forces from Romania in 1958. From this move, combined with Western focus
on the remaining large Soviet forces deployed in East Germany, Hungary, and
Poland, Western observers could infer that Romanian foreign policy was under
Moscow’s control (a mindset commonly held by many during the Cold War). By all
appearances, for many western observers who could not possibly have known about
many mid-level intra-Warsaw Pact machinations, Romania remained a committed
member of the Warsaw Pact. In fact,
Moscow was able to use its loyal ally in Budapest to fan hard-to-verify
concerns about the human rights abuses against ethnic Hungarians living in
Romania. Hence, Soviet leaders had
important reasons, both in terms of Warsaw Pact and Western audiences, for
obscuring the motives behind Romanian foreign policy moves. Romania presented the Soviet Union with a
complex foreign policy/security problem and Moscow’s deception story was likely
worked out over time with adaptation as the circumstances required.
For
the purposes of intelligence collection and analysis, an adversary’s use of
denial and deception practices can greatly complicate matters – especially if
that adversary is an experienced practitioner. Here, the Soviet Union, with
longstanding experience in deception dating back to the Tsars, held many
advantages, while Western nations, with increasing reliance on technical
collection systems during the late Cold War, were at a disadvantage. From the
Soviet perspective, Romania was still an ally, albeit not necessarily a reliable
one, and much of the “evidence” about Romanian views could be kept from public
view or explained away. For example, without a well-placed human source the
Western intelligence agencies could not know what was actually said during high
level Warsaw Pact or bilateral Soviet-Hungarian meetings, much less be able to investigate
claims about alleged abuses against ethnic Hungarians. Indeed, given the U.S.
interest in human rights issues beginning in the late 1970’s, the Soviet Union
and its allies could paint Bucharest in an unfavorable light. From the U.S.
perspective, the Soviet Union was the main adversary in Central Europe; the
United States and its NATO allies were focused on the threat of a Soviet
invasion through the Fulda Gap, plus the threat posed by Soviet mobile SS-20
ballistic missiles that could be aimed at Western Europe. This was also a
threat well-suited to the technical collection capabilities of Western
intelligence agencies. The United States and its allies could probably count
tanks, armored vehicles and ballistic missiles using imagery satellites, and
also likely intercept communications to/from such units. In short, without a
Soviet threat aimed at Central Europe from
Romania, there simply was not the same level of interest in that country as
compared to East Germany or Poland.
Intelligence
officers face complex analytical problems when confronted with adversarial
denial and deception activities. Scott Hatch, writing for the Central
Intelligence Agency’s journal, offers a useful taxonomy of intelligence
failure.[4] Hatch posits that intelligence officers face
cognitive, organizational and policy environmental challenges; Watts
illustrates each of these types of challenge in his analysis of Romanian
security policy vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during the late Cold War. The
Western cognitive challenge included problems with analyst mindsets and biases,
the complexity of change processes in Eastern Europe during the Soviet period, the
lack of Western human sources with placement and access who could collect
against discrete targets, and problems differentiating between signals and
noise. Western organizational challenges included problems with group mindsets
about the nature of the Soviet threat, the emphasis on technical collection
systems focused on the Soviet Union, and the unwillingness to collect in high-risk
situations. Western policy environmental challenges included consumer mindsets
and needs (e.g., human rights concerns and the need to address priority issues
involving the Soviet Union at the expense of long-term systemic issues with its
allies). Here, Watts argues that U.S. Presidents
Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter often preferred to
dismiss intelligence assessments to engage in their own discussions with senior
Romanian officials. Nonetheless, while intelligence officers are typically
trained to use rigorous analytical methods and guard against deception, it can
be difficult to prevent intelligence failure in the face of such broad
challenges.
As
intelligence officers pull together a wide range of sources – some ambiguous,
some conflicting, and some incomplete – it can be difficult to assess the true
state of affairs from several plausible explanations, much less see that the
real story is the one not on the table (e.g. Sherlock Holmes’ point about spotting
the curious dog that isn’t barking). How does the intelligence officer identify
that null hypothesis and then ascertain the evidence that must be collected to
confirm/deny its existence? Intelligence officers must question the reliability
and weight of the evidence, to include an examination of its diagnostic value
(the extent to which evidence supports/negates one hypothesis to the exclusion
of alternatives); assess the adversary’s deception motives, opportunities and
means; evaluate one’s own vulnerabilities; and consider any past opposition (here,
Soviet) practices. In short, did Western intelligence officers miss the true
state of affairs in Bucharest during the late Cold War? If so, what brought
about that intelligence failure?
The
author provides the reader with a tour de
force regarding Romania’s struggle for national autonomy against both the
Soviet Union and its irredentist neighbor Hungary. This is a well-researched, well-written book
that deserves the attention of serious scholars. The book certainly offers a much-nuanced
view of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu, arguing that, following his
predecessor, he established Romania as a more or less responsible international
actor, even while leading the country down the road to economic ruin in the
1980’s. Nonetheless, many will still argue whether Bucharest truly sought to
make the Warsaw Pact more democratic and consultative in its processes, and over
the extent to which the Soviet Union conducted a maskirovka campaign against the West. I believe that Watts has provided well-supported and persuasive
analysis, amply arguing his case regarding Bucharest’s campaign for
democratizing the alliance as a means of encumbering Soviet militarism and
increasing its own autonomy.
Editor’s Note: A shorter, more critical
review of Mr. Watts’ first book discussed above, by Dr. Joseph L. Gordon of
NIU, appeared in AIJ, Vol. 29, No. 2,
2011. Mr. Bailey feels that the record needs to be set straight. This book
review would probably have fit better in the next issue of AIJ, which will focus on the theme “Denial and Deception.” However,
I did not want to hold it up any longer and Mr. Bailey will review another book
for that issue. Readers should consider the review above a foretaste of more
D&D delights to come.
The opinions expressed in this review
are the author’s personal ones and do not imply endorsement by the National
Intelligence University or the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Notes
[1] Larry L. Watts, Romanian Cassandra: Ion Antonescu and the
Struggle for Reform, 1916-1941 (East European Monographs, 1993); Larry L.
Watts, Incompatible Allies: Neorealism
and Small State Behavior in Wartime (Umeå,
Sweden, University of Umeå, 1998).
[2] Charles Krupnick et al., NATO: Partners and Players in Central and
Eastern European Security (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003).
[3] Mark Lowenthal, Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy, 5th
ed. (Washington, DC: Sage, 2012), 82.
[4] Scott Hatch, “Managing the
‘Reliability Cycle’: An Alternative Approach to Thinking About Intelligence
Failure,” Studies in Intelligence 57,
no. 2 (June 2013): 29-37.
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