Ihor PELESHCHUK, PhD candidate^*

Key words: early warning system, political system, intelligence system, security, conflict, threat

The first and main security level of every country, every political system is the intelligence service. The main role of that system is to predict, analyse and prevent all threats that can appear and have destructive influence on political system. To be able to work out all threats and prevent appearance of conflicts, the intelligence system should consist of different departments that can study all sides of threats. One of the most important is the analytical department, which collects all information about conflicts and threats and create the image that helps to understand the potential of threats and risk regarding their transformation.

Last events in Middle East and Eastern Europe showed that modern intelligence systems can give full and effective image of threats. And as a result it is quite hard to make prognoses for the future and adjust decisions making process.

Islamic State is a bright example of that problem. US intelligence system (CSI) couldn’t predict that ISIS can become a strong military power in Middle East which can destabilize the situation in the region. In 2014 Barack Obama announced that US intelligence system underestimated possibilities of IS.

Syrian civil war also create favorable conditions for transformation of IS from organization into state. As USA is the main opponent to Bashar al-Assad it is obvious that US intelligence had expected threats that could appear after the destabilization of the situation in Syria.

And as a result US military actions provoked activation of the Kurdish groups, in the North of Syria, against Bashar al-Assad militants, but created a threat for Turkish security.

Situation in Middle East shows that US intelligence system worked situationally.

Activation of the Kurdish groups in the Middle East makes us return to Eastern Europe, to the Ukrainian conflict in Donbas and annexation of Crimea. There is a small thing that unites all these conflicts, Russian influence.

The last few years showed that Russia is a big threat for international peace, and not just by its military powers, but mostly by influence on different radical organizations all over the world. Roman Istrati, the Romanian journalist, identified that the main threats for European security are different pro Russian conclaves.

And Ukrainian war showed what can do these conclaves. There are a lot of similar conclaves all around the Europe. In Romania we have RMDSZ which speaks about territorial autonomy and special rights for the Romanian Magyars.

In Ukraine we have the same organization, “Jobbyk” party, that creates the same threat for Ukrainian national security.

In Lithuania is a big Russian ethnic group, there are facts that Catalans in Spain also are funded by Russia. And starting from USSR there are some relations between Kurds and the Russian intelligence.

All this conclaves and organizations were created not yesterday or a year ago. These relations were developed during years behind the back of the world and no one drew attention that this “international” relation can be a real threat for world peace. So as a result modern intelligence system should be transformed and include Early Warning System of conflict, which can and should work as a strong analytical center.

The main task of that system is to track social climate and detect potential situations that can transform into conflict. That means that Early Warning System should find “latent conflicts” that in future can become a conflict or crisis that will have destructive influence on political system.

So during tracking, the system collects information and creates databases. All that information go across analytics filters that helps to find only important information. After that there is a long analytical process where specialists create models and analytical prognoses about how that different situation can affect in future. And as a result the system creates list of decisions that can help to solve the problems or prevent appearance of problems and get the necessary result.

Early Warning System also can work with conflicts which are now on going. System works in the same way creating list of decisions.

The 21st century shows that we are quite far from the world peace, and all modern intelligence systems can’t fight all conflicts and prevent their appearance. And that’s why we should develop the intelligence systems, and they could give necessary answer for all today’s and future threats.

* Ihor Peleshchuk has graduated Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, specialized  in Political Science and now he is doctoral candidate in Political Science.