Subordinating Intelligence

In the late eighties and early nineties, driven by the post–Cold War environment and lessons learned during military operations, United States policy makers made intelligence support to the military the Intelligence Community's top priority. In response to this demand, the CIA and DoD instituted policy and organizational changes that altered their relationship with one another. While debates over the future of the Intelligence Community were occurring on Capitol Hill, the CIA and DoD were expanding their relationship in peacekeeping and nation-building operations in Somalia and the Balkans. By the late 1990s, some policy makers and national security professionals became concerned that intelligence support to military operations had gone too far. In Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post–Cold War Relationship, David P. Oakley reveals that, despite these concerns, no major changes to national intelligence or its priorities were implemented. These concerns were forgotten after 9/11, as the United States fought two wars and policy makers increasingly focused on tactical and operational actions. As policy makers became fixated with terrorism and the United States fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA directed a significant amount of its resources toward global counterterrorism efforts and in support of military operations.

In the late eighties and early nineties, driven by the post–Cold War environment and lessons learned during military operations, United States policy makers made intelligence support to the military the Intelligence Community's top priority. In response to this demand, the CIA and DoD instituted policy and organizational changes that altered their relationship with one another. While debates over the future of the Intelligence Community were occurring on Capitol Hill, the CIA and DoD were expanding their relationship in peacekeeping and nation-building operations in Somalia and the Balkans. By the late 1990s, some policy makers and national security professionals became concerned that intelligence support to military operations had gone too far. In Subordinating Intelligence: The DoD/CIA Post–Cold War Relationship, David P. Oakley reveals that, despite these concerns, no major changes to national intelligence or its priorities were implemented. These concerns were forgotten after 9/11, as the United States fought two wars and policy makers increasingly focused on tactical and operational actions. As policy makers became fixated with terrorism and the United States fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, the CIA directed a significant amount of its resources toward global counterterrorism efforts and in support of military operations.

In the eighty years since Pearl Harbor, the United States has developed a professional intelligence community that is far more effective than most people acknowledge--in part because only intelligence failures see the light of day, while successful collection and analysis remain secret for decades. Intelligence and the State explores the relationship between the community tasked to research and assess intelligence and the national decision makers it serves. The book argues that in order to accept intelligence as a profession, it must be viewed as a non-partisan resource to assist key players in understanding foreign societies and leaders. Those who review these classified findings are sometimes so invested in their preferred policy outcomes that they refuse to accept information that conflicts with preconceived notions. Rather than demanding that intelligence evaluations conform to administration policies, a wise executive should welcome a source of information that has not "drunk the Kool-Aid" by supporting a specific policy decision. Jonathan M. House offers a brief overview of the nature of national intelligence, and especially of the potential for misperception and misunderstanding on the part of executives and analysts. Furthermore, House examines the rise of intelligence organizations first in Europe and then in the United States. In those regions fear of domestic subversion and radicalism drove the need for foreign surveillance. This perception of a domestic threat tempted policy makers and intelligence officers alike to engage in covert action and other policy-based, partisan activities that colored their understanding of their adversaries. Such biases go far to explain the inability of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union to predict and deal effectively with their opponents. The development of American agencies and their efforts differed to some degree from these European precedents but experienced some of the same problems as the Europeans, especially during the early decades of the Cold War. By now, however, the intelligence community has become a stable and effective part of the national security structure. House concludes with a historical examination of familiar instances in which intelligence allegedly failed to warn national leaders of looming attacks, ranging from the 1941 German invasion of the USSR to the Arab surprise attack on Israel in 1973.

This book provides an institutional costs framework for intelligence and security communities to examine the factors that can encourage or obstruct cooperation. The governmental functions of security and intelligence require various organisations to interact in a symbiotic way. These organisations must constantly negotiate with each other to establish who should address which issue and with what resources. By coupling adapted versions of transaction costs theories with socio-political perspectives, this book provides a model to explain why some cooperative endeavours are successful, whilst others fail. This framework is applied to counterterrorism and defence intelligence in the UK and the US to demonstrate that the view of good cooperation in the former and poor cooperation in the latter is overly simplistic. Neither is necessarily more disposed to behave cooperatively than the other; rather, the institutional costs created by their respective organisational architectures incentivise different cooperative behaviour in different circumstances. This book will be of much interest to students of intelligence studies, organisational studies, politics and security studies.

This is the first in a projected series of volumes of essays selected from World Politics, a journal of international relations sponsored by the Center of International Studies at Princeton University. The articles touch on several related subjects: the nature of national power and power balances and their perception; strategic studies; strategic surprise; the utility of military force; and national security decision making. Originally published in 1983. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses national security threats and strategic opportunities for the United States and its allies in the Middle East and Central Asia following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Recognizing that integrated deterrence is not constrained by geography or domain, this book focuses on the complex threats and challenges confronting U.S. national security and foreign policy in a post-Ukraine invasion environment. That is to say, what happens in Ukraine does not stay in Ukraine. It affects everyone from the region to the cyberspace domain to people on the other side of the world, due to changes in commodity prices. Specifically, this volume explores how revised analyses of Russia may alter U.S. and allied strategies in a shifting international system and within the framing of strategic competition. Experts in this volume examine how the war in Ukraine will influence Russian strategy and foreign policy in the Middle East, Central Asia, and globally; what effect the Ukraine invasion could have on global and regional geopolitics and geoeconomics; and the United States’ ability to protect national interests in the Central Region. The reasons for this are multiple and complex. In this volume, we explore many issues that have confounded security experts by asking questions such as: What happens after the Russian invasion? What lessons did the U.S., Ukraine, NATO, and the European Union learn about Russia? What lessons did Russia learn about itself and its military after the Ukraine invasion? What lessons did the U.S. learn in Afghanistan that apply to Ukraine? Why was the initial analysis of the Russian invasion so wrong? How has power shifted in the international system since the Ukraine invasion? How has the security environment shifted since the Ukraine invasion? For the U.S. to continue supporting its partners in the Middle East and Central Asia, it must anticipate what new opportunities will arise from Russia’s missteps in Ukraine. The Russian Invasion of Ukraine and Implications for the Central Region addresses these challenges and opportunities and informs policymakers on the changing contours of the Great Power Competition.

The Legacy of 9/11 is a retrospective about how policing, intelligence, and counter-terrorism have changed in the more than twenty years since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. Bringing together scholars and practitioners, the book takes an interdisciplinary approach with fields including history, international relations, intelligence studies, law, and political science. It highlights how some challenges in policing, intelligence, and counter-terrorism brought about by the attacks have been resolved, how some persist and how others have been transformed. The chapters explore state and non-state actors’ actions, reactions, and overreactions that shape contemporary aspects of policing, intelligence, and terrorism. In all three worlds, intelligence, policing, and counter-terrorism, the 9/11 attacks changed how the threat of terrorism is perceived, approached, and effectively countered by learning from the mistakes that led to the success of the attacks and initiating a process on the national and international levels of integrating security structures and implementing changes that have made 9/11 the last large scale terrorist strike on U.S. soil. To illustrate these accomplishments and to highlight future challenges, the volume examines the inextricably connected elements of policing and intelligence in counter-terrorism as well as how counter-terrorism practitioners and jihadists were transformed by one day of attacks, more than twenty years ago. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism.