Revisiting Intelligence Successes and Failures Twenty Years after 9/11 – AthenaLab
It was a great privilege being invited by our Chilean partner, AthenaLab, to a webinar with special guest Lt. Gen. James Clapper USAF (Rtd), former Director of US National Intelligence who addressed Revisiting Intelligence Successes and Failures Twenty Years after 9/11. Thanks to AthenaLab’s Dr. John Griffiths for having picked my question!
According to James Clapper long, medium and short-term issues confronting the world are as follows: climate change, disease (including COVID-19), international strategic and trade disruptions caused by the rise of China and terrorism, international and domestic.
From an Australian perspective, he acknowledged that Australia was on the front line of the contemporary global confrontation between the US and the PRC.
Regarding Pakistan (the question I posed), Gen. Clapper believed that the country’s relations with the US are complex rating Pakistan a ‘frenemy’ of the US where there are both points of policy confluence and policy divergence. He stated that Pakistan will have to be careful regarding neighbouring Afghanistan since it has a significant domestic Taliban presence in the west of the country that could cause Islamabad significant internal problems if not managed. However, he did mention that Pakistan has good insight into the Afghan Taliban which elements of its military and intelligence agencies supported over the past 20 years.