“The worst pain a man can suffer is to have insight into much and power over nothing”.
Herodotus
To be an analyst
June 17. I am an analyst. I am also a
hard-line analyst. Sometimes I do not even like my own analysis. Often in fact.
If the unpalatable is where the evidence points, then my analysis will and must
reflect that.
To be an analyst one cannot be an activist.
One can act on the evidence of one’s analysis but one cannot make evidence fit
one’s activism. That is the hard truth
too many analysts today refuse to embrace. The constant temptation good
analysts face is to put career before analysis and to be seduced by the prizes
on offer for telling power what it wants to hear. At times in my career, I have
faced precisely that choice and each time I have refused because I am not
Faustus willing to sell his soul to the devil that is being an insider.
Saying no to power
At times, such has been the pressure on me
to compromise with power that when I have refused, I have suffered the
consequences. My work has never nor will ever be given awards or recognised
because recognition is politics. One reason I have never been considered to
lead major institutions is because frustrated and angry bosses of the
international institutions for which I have worked have put it around that I am
not dependable. I am dependable but only if I believe my analysis is correct. Simply,
I will not nor will I ever sacrifice my analytical integrity to tell power what
it wants to hear. On one occasion a senior European Commission official even
suggested my refusal to ‘tow the official line’ was down to my mental health. I
may well have mental health issues, we all do, but not of that kind.
One problem is the growing tribalism of
contemporary security policy and the institutions that serve it. Institutions, even ones that claim to be
academic, are too often activists for something and little more than echo
chambers. Their real purpose is to support an ideology or a cause, such as ever
closer European union, or the worldview of this leader or that. They only invite people to join them who will
not only reinforce their prejudices but actively promote them. It is one reason
why European security and defence is in such a mess.
Stand by your analysis
It is for that reason I was disappointed
recently when a Researcher at one of my Alma Maters, the European University
Institute in Florence where I gained my doctorate, complained about my
criticism of a short video he had posted about his research. The video struck
me as activism looking for analysis. My
reaction was robust. My real disappointment was that he did not defend his
argument, own his research and tell me why I was wrong. Rather, he simply
complained that I had dared to criticise his research. Amusingly, his friends also piled on in the
hope I would be deterred from criticising his work for fear of being
cancelled. Talk about the elephant and the
flea.
Such snowflakery/naivety can also lead into
extremely dangerous places. Years ago, I
was invited to a major conference in Moscow.
It was an extremely high-level event, and I was treated to the whole
VVIP schtick, with a room on the floor of the Hotel Ukraina (ironically) reserved
for the most senior guests. On the way
back a senior Russian official told me how impressed they were, and would I like
to work with them in future? My response? “No problem”, I said, “but I will
have to clear it with London first”. I
was not invited again. Sadly, I know of analysts who have taken that Faustian deal
and paid with their careers.
My advice to those entering this business,
be they in Florence or elsewhere, is do not sell your analytical soul however
tempting the offer. If you do, the price
you will pay will be great. And as for Herodotus, it is true I have power over
nothing, but I have been right about a lot because I have stuck to my
principles as an analyst.
Shifting the Overton Window
Critically, the Overton Window of policy reality
is finally shifting as the appeasement of a danger is slowly giving way to the
return of political and strategic Realism in Western Europe (apart from in the
heads of the soon to be gone Sir Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves). Proof? I now
listen daily to senior officials (usually retired – careerism is a dangerous
drug) in my country and beyond who for years told me my analysis was wrong now
parroting the very arguments they dismissed. One very senior former British
official even had the temerity to claim this week that he had always wanted the
UK armed forces to become an integrated force (rather than a balanced force) much
like the US Marine Corps. When I first made that suggestion in an article (and
I was the first) he and other senior officials dismissed it.
To paraphrase Herodotus, the father of
history, the greatest hope an analyst can have is to have power over nothing
but the power to shift the debate power itself is having.
One can either be an activist or an analyst…but
not both!
JULIAN LINDLEY-FRENCH
