CIA torture report: Obama under pressure as anti-US sentiment grows

US President Barack Obama has welcomed the release on Tuesday of the hard-hitting US Senate Intelligence Committee summary report on the CIA.  While he noted that the country owed the agency “a profound debt”, he asserted that some of its actions in the post 9/11 era “were not only inconsistent with our values as a nation...they did not serve our broader counter-terrorism efforts or our national security interests”.

The US Senate publication focuses on so-called ”enhanced interrogation techniques”, from sleep deprivation to “water boarding”, that were used against suspected terrorists during the Bush era.  The approximately 500-page document (a condensed version of a still-classified 6,000 page study), has provoked a domestic furore, but its biggest impact could yet be outside of US shores.

The ramifications are already rippling out internationally, and are likely to inflame anti-Americanism in several Muslim-majority countries whose support is potentially key for US success in the campaign against terrorism.  This will only add to the massive public diplomacy challenge now confronting Obama.

The report makes several new claims.  Firstly, that enhanced interrogation techniques, some of which Obama previously asserted amounted to torture, were more extensively and aggressively utilised than previously claimed.

Secondly, that the public and policymakers were given inaccurate information about the programmes whilst the CIA’s own management of them was flawed.  And thirdly, that the techniques were ineffective and did not deliver major new intelligence breakthroughs.

While the full report has taken years to compile by the Democratic-led Intelligence committee, the Republican members do not endorse it and are expected to issue their own separate study.  Despite this, and other criticisms of the report, including from former president George W. Bush, it will nonetheless have key ramifications.

Within the United States, for instance, there will be erosion of political trust and confidence in the CIA—Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Diane Feinstein has even called the agency’s actions “morally, legally and administratively misguided”.  The likelihood of tension between the CIA and Congress, especially some Democrats, is fuelled by the fact that this latest furore closely follows CIA Director John Brennan’s apology to Feinstein and the Intelligence committee in July following the CIA Inspector General’s finding that agency officials had improperly monitored the computers of the committee’s staff.

Important as these domestic consequences might be, the international ramifications could potentially be bigger. Secretary of State John Kerry asked Feinstein, unsuccessfully, in recent days to again delay publication.

Firstly, publication will embarrass those foreign states, in Europe and beyond, which aided the Bush administration and CIA, even though specific country names are redacted in the report.  Secondly, although the findings are disputed by many ex-Bush officials, it is likely that publication of the summary report will inflame anti-Americanism in numerous countries.  This is despite the fact that the techniques are now a historical relic—Obama ruled almost six years ago that the CIA could no longer employ them.

In the immediate-term, there are concerns that the disclosures could lead to attacks against US facilities and personnel abroad.  According to Congressman Mike Rogers, the Republican Chair of the House of Representatives Intelligence Committee, warnings to this effect have already come from foreign governments about potential “violence and deaths” in their countries, and additional US security measures have been introduced as a result.

Beyond this threat, this latest controversy will only intensify the huge international public diplomacy challenge that President Barack Obama still faces.  Coming into office in 2009, the Obama team confronted a situation in which anti-US sentiment was at about its highest levels since at least the Vietnam War.

Probably the key factor driving this was the unpopularity of the Bush administration’s foreign, security and military policies in the so-called “war on terror”, including so-called “extraordinary rendition”, the practice of apprehension and extrajudicial transfer of persons from one state to another.  While the Obama team has made efforts to turn around this climate of international perception, its progress has been uneven, as witnessed by the failure to close Guantanamo Bay.

While Obama is generally more admired internationally than was his predecessor, his administration has also encountered sizeable international opposition, for instance, toward increased US use of drone strikes since Bush left office.  The scale of the public diplomacy task which Obama still faces is regularly highlighted in international surveys.

For instance, the annual Pew Global Attitudes Survey shows that in key countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Jordan and Turkey, exceptionally low numbers of the population (between 10-19 per cent in 2014) have favourable perceptions of the United States.  This public diplomacy problem, however, is not just restricted to Muslim-majority states, although here it is deepest and most widespread.

Obama and his team know it is important to try to change this.  This is because, in common with the Cold War, the challenges posed by the campaign against terror cannot be overcome by drone strikes and military might alone.

As Obama recognised in his well-received Cairo speech in 2009, the United States must also redouble its efforts to win the battle for “hearts and minds”, especially in Muslim-majority countries.  In turn, this will help create an enabling (rather than disabling) environment facilitating both covert and overt cooperation and information sharing with US officials.

Taken overall, the publication of the Senate report will only intensify the public diplomacy issues facing the president.  To increase the prospects of meeting this challenge, one key requirement will be significant new emphasis on international public diplomacy, especially in Muslim-majority countries, which will necessitate new resources and possibly a new strategy too.