Intel to unite

Europe needs to unite spy forces

The value of catastrophic events is that they can help people face up to problems that are otherwise impossible to address. Maybe this will be the case with Tuesday’s horrific attacks in Brussels.

Europe is facing a security threat that’s unprecedented in its modern history, at a time when its common currency, border security and intelligence-sharing are all under severe stress. If Europe were a stock, a pragmatic investor would sell it, despite the sunk cost and sentimental attachment. Without radical restructuring, it’s an enterprise that’s headed for failure.

The European Union needs to reinvent its security system. It needs to break the stovepipes that prevent sharing information, enforcing borders and protecting citizens. In the months before Tuesday’s terror attacks in Brussels, “the system was blinking red,” as George Tenet, the former CIA director, famously described the period before Sept. 11, 2001. Yet Belgium (like pre-9/11 America) couldn’t connect the dots.