Eternal vigilance is reputed to be the price of liberty, but we’ve mostly gotten by without it. And when we look at our efforts to maintain that vigilance, we find that we mostly just spent money to buy friends, while still missing out on the object of vigilance. Now consider that our at-the-time eternal enemy, the Soviet Union, did in fact have an effective intelligence operation, fielded thousands of effective spies, suborned many of our allies’ staff as well as our own, and still collapsed ignominiously. Fittingly, as East Germans in 1989 flooded into Stasi offices, they showered the street with secret files, and we were forced to bid on them in an intelligence free market.

We had a few types of success---the coup against a populist or socialist leader, a sabotage campaign against the Soviet Union invited by their technology-acquisition ambitions, and the arming of the mujahideen in Afghanistan. But since we acted essentially without any knowledge of Russia or its intentions those successes are meaningless. We can’t today say whether they mattered a damn. It’s equally likely that President Carter’s endorsement of human rights as a foreign-policy principle undercut the remaining legitimacy of the communist government, and set it up for eventual collapse.

One modest success was in uncovering a nuclear-weapons program being run by our ally, Taiwan. (If you can’t spy on your friends successfully, there’s no hope whatsoever.) But every major development in the world since Hitler was a total surprise, and nearly every covert operation we launched was an utter fiasco, from the ridiculous and heavy-handed effort to defeat the Sandinistas, (elections eventually gave them short shrift), to the excruciating embarrassment of Iran-contra, with the US doing deals with slimeballs like Manucher Gorbanifar, leading to Reagan apologizing for both dealing with "terrorists" and for breaking US law.

Russia had the cards, the deep moles in Britain, the sympathizers in the US, the connection with popular movements worldwide against entrenched money interests and dictators, and no worries about pleasing Congress. Nonetheless, they are now History and we remain. Is there a lesson?

Many lessons are found in history, from being generous in victory (Versaille) avoiding appeasement (Munich), and making sure the public is with you (Vietnam), to staying with the mission and not escalating without need (Korea), knowing enough about the culture of the area of operations (Vietnam) and making sure to go in heavy enough to establish superiority and control (Somalia). Do we use these lessons? Versaille was ignored after Gulf I, Munich was ignored when we encouraged more hostage-taking in Iran-contra, and both Vietnam and Somalia were ignored when we went into Iraq.

Still we remain, albeit not without problems. The problems, though, are self-inflicted. Our current poor standing in the world is of our own making, our economic fragility is also due entirely to internal politics, and any terrorist threat is likely not reduced by recent action, if only because of new recruits to the cause. If Osama’s aura was greatly enhanced when Clinton just missed him in 98, he must be nearly God by now.

I would argue that all our success, as a nation, has been accidental, or perhaps a better way of putting it is that it has been a result of our acting humanely and humbly, as just some folks that want to do business without coercion, between free peoples. In Daniel Dennett’s words, it’s easier to be good than to seem good. Calvin Coolidge might not have realized how it might affect foreign policy, but he is famous for saying "The business of America is business". How about we just go about our business honestly, instead of trying to steal elections in other countries, or sabotage their infrastructure, or support despicable dictators in order to make things hard for somebody else we don’t like?

Given our track record in the effort to anticipate trouble from a large and almost-European state, Russia, the even greater difficulty of penetrating Islamic groups seems not worth it. Most of the blame for over-ambitious CIA operations can be assigned to presidents asking for the impossible, but often the CIA felt it knew better than the President or Congress and continued operations that the government had asked to be stopped. It is understandable that, without the existential worry of nuclear-armed Communists or evil Nazis, it is difficult to recruit for the CIA. Another problem is too much emphasis on FBI-like sameness and unimpeachable bona fides in new hires, leaving CIA without the independent thinking and wordly experience it could benefit from.

But I feel the desperate presidential demands for intelligence, and for action of some sort, only asks for new trouble without preventing other trouble. This is the lesson I have taken from reading Tim Weiner’s "Legacy of Ashes" about the CIA. I would argue that presidents should simply never task the CIA with anything, except for a general assignment to find more friends and agents. Leave off the coup plotting, the disinformation campaigns, the arming of dangerous militias and criminals, and just be America.