(BLOOMINGTON, Ind.) — President Trump’s former director of national intelligence says President-elect Joe Biden’s administration will need to rebuild the intelligence community.
Former Indiana Senator Dan Coats says the U.S. has traditionally sought to be a role model of
democracy as the preferable alternative to dictatorship. With authoritarianism on the rise even in U.S.-allied countries such as Turkey and Hungary, Coats told IU’s annual “America’s Role in the
World” foreign policy conference that position has been undermined by increasing polarization at
home during Trump’s presidency.
“Going back several years, but starting in 2016 from the election standpoint, [authoritarian
governments] see a very divided America,” Coats says. “They see challenges to rights given to us in
the Constitution, and they see a nation that does not point the way to the future.”
Coats avoided any explicit comment on the Trump administration. But he says the intelligence
community has been through what he calls “a rough patch,” and says it’s essential for Congress and
the White House to cooperate with each other. Democrats have complained Coats’ successors have
ignored legal requirements to brief the so-called “Gang of Eight” of both parties’ leaders in the House
and Senate and the parties’ leaders on the two chambers’ intelligence committees.
Last month’s election, Coats says, “pointed us in a direction that the American people don’t want to
continue down a certain path, that they want to have strong institutions and strong principles of
democracy.”
Former Indiana Congressman Tim Roemer, who served on the 9/11 Commission, praises Coats for
not politicizing information in his three years overseeing intelligence agencies. He says the
commission thought it was important for the intel director to hold the job long enough to create
stability. There have been two acting directors and one permanent one since Coats stepped down 16
months ago.
James Clapper, Coats’ predecessor as intelligence director under President Obama, joined Coats and Roemer on the IU panel. Clapper says the new administration will face what he calls the “hardy perennials” of international adversaries: China, Russia, North Korea and Iran. But he and Coats both draw a distinction between the geopolitical threats posed by Russia and China. China, Coats says, is primarily an economic rival, and predicts Biden will change approach from the trade war Trump has pursued.
In contrast, Clapper says Russian president Vladimir Putin holds “animus” toward the U.S., and is seeking exactly the division Coats describes, in hopes of undermining democracy and driving a wedge between the U.S. and its European allies. But Clapper says Russia’s anemic economy makes it less of a long-term threat than China.
And Clapper and Roemer say the Biden administation needs to be conscious of the national security implications of climate change. Roemer says water shortages have intensified simmering hostilities between Pakistan and India, where he served as U.S. ambassador under Obama. Clapper says climate change threatens similar shortages of energy and tillable soil, which could trigger clashes in other parts of the world.
