The Relevance of Intelligence Cycle in the Modern Era - Article Example

Name Tutor Course Institution Date The relevance of Intelligence Cycle in the Modern Era Introduction The world has experienced distinctly new types of security challenges in the 21st century, which includes terrorism attacks and threats, natural disasters and health hazards. Governments and communities are thus dealing with different security issues than those of past centuries. These new security challenges have certain information components, for example crucial private sector information structures or cyberattacks. Most of these security challenges needs a blending of delicate intelligence collected by state satellites or human managers, with sophisticated information accessible in the community but not always integrated with top-secret information. This has called for governments to adapt their security practices to fit this world of higher interdependence and interaction. The intelligence cycle is said to be one of the effective ways the governments can achieve success when it comes to dealing with security issues (Dupont, 2003). This paper will take the stand that the intelligence cycle is not relevant in the modern era mainly because it ignores two key functions of intelligence: counter-intelligence and covert action. There is no one agreed upon definition of the term intelligence as every scholar has endeavored to define the term based on his/her individual experience (Warner, 2009: 6). Generally, the phrase intelligence cycle can be defined as the process of gathering, analyzing and circulating intelligence to consumers who include operational commanders and policy makers (Lowenthal, 2002). The essence of this intelligence cycle is still a controversial issue in today’s world (Hulnick, 2006). Some scholars hold the view that intelligence cycle is relevant in the modern era while other feel that it is irrelevant. Some scholars argue that the relevance of intelligence in war has been overrated (Keegan, 2003: 384). Others claim that maintenance and actions of the United States intelligence services was merely a highly rated secret trick (Gill and Phythian, 2006:16). Opponents of intelligence cycle asserts that the Soviet Union’s fall leads to questioning of the importance of intelligence services (Hughes, 2011). Here, the intelligence agencies failed to identify threats and hence are seen as less important. Moreover, the most prominent intelligence agency in the world, the CIA, failed to predict the coming of critical events and major catastrophes, such as the Berlin Wall’s construction, the Soviet Union’s fall, Kuwait and Iraq invasion despite having access to large financial resources. This leads to the questioning of whether the intelligence cycle really makes a difference in this modern era (Hulnick, 2006). Collaboration and coordination are critical issues in modern intelligence activities. Collaboration allows for important security information to be collected from communities or agencies for analysis (Barnett, 2001: 36). Intelligence communities and intelligence services are regarded as institutions which often provide security information to the government (Lowernthal, 2002: 8). Moreover, the intelligence cycle provides the best way to comprehend the pertinent intelligence activities. The analysis component of the intelligence cycle is the strategic step for the collaboration and coordination of intelligence organizations. Although governments depend on internal as well as external intelligence for their welfare, they tend to concentrate more on external security when dealing with international relations. Moreover, it has been questioned whether it is really possible to organize security at the international level. Despite establishing international sharing agreements, the 9/11 events led to questioning of whether intelligence can support bilateral peacekeeping with the participation of organizations like the United Nations (Herman, 2001: 21). The success of collaboration and coordination of intelligence actions depend on the willingness and readiness of all the communities, institutions and agencies involved to provide material and political assistance. But then we find that some countries have not yet submitted their own intelligence structures for the protection of internal security despite the fact that international War on Terror was confirmed in Washington (Lowenthal, 2002). The intelligence cycle model holds that policy makers must wait for security information to be provided before making decisions. According to this model, intelligence collection is supposed to trigger intelligence analysis. However, this has hardly been the case in this modern era. The electronic era in this modern has made it possible for information collected to reach policy makers and intelligence analysts at the same time. As a result, policy makers are beginning to act on the raw data before it is analyzed. Thus, this tend to contradict the role of intelligence analysts (Warner, 2009). The dependence on intelligence cycle model over several generations has discouraged analysts as they are trained to expect policy makers to wait for analyzed security data before making decisions. Intelligence analysts are forced to analyze raw data from the current database rather than from the collecting structure due to time constrains. Moreover, time pressure has hindered intelligence analysts from packaging the data analyzed into helpful products for users (Betts, 2007). When the analysts finally deliver their intelligence products, they are directed to the staffs instead of the principals. If the intelligence agree with the conclusion of the staffs, then it is considered of no use. But when the intelligence differs, then the staffs can suppress the product or deliver it to the policy makers to show them how it disagrees with what they wanted (Gill and Phythian, 2006). This is the reason why civilian policy makers often regards intelligence as not useful, ill-timed and even insubordinate. A perfect example is the recent testimony of James Clapper, the US Director of National Intelligence, before the Senate. His opinion was that Ghaddafi of Libya would likely outsmart the rebel opposition, a view which was in contrast to the one shared by the White House and as a result of this he was ordered to resign (David, 2011). It is interesting that the intelligence cycle model functions effectively in the private sector. Managers in the private sector wait for intelligence analysts to analyze collected information so as they can make their decisions based on the final products (Herman, 2001). The close relationship between policy makers and intelligence analysts has also led to criticism of the intelligence cycle model. Traditionally, intelligence analysts are supposed to deliver their products to users without recommending alternative courses of action. Moreover, analysts are not expected to develop close relationships with policy makers. However, we find that intelligence analysts in the 21st century are created within decision-making units or else are independent units within the government rather than in collection agencies. Moreover, intelligence analysts are not prohibited from giving policy suggestions or participating in policy discussions (Herman, 2001). This may result to intelligence analysts getting involved in partisan debates, rendering them irrelevant. Therefore, for the intelligence cycle to remain relevant in the 21st century governments need to make some reforms to the intelligence analysts-decision-makers relationships (Dupont, 2003). The intelligence cycle model does not take into account two very critical functions of intelligence: counter-intelligence and covert action. First, it does not prevent adversaries including intelligence agencies and intelligence services from working to counter the government. Counter-intelligence is commonly known as CI and has turned out to be broader in contemporary intelligence as it now include counter-terrorism, organized crime, subversion as well as other threats to the country (Taylor, 2007). It can involve preventing the secret processes of an external intelligence service or stopping adversaries and competitors in the private sector from pilfering proprietary information. The best technique to stop antagonistic intelligence services or any other aggressive group is by penetrating them through employing a detective on the inside. However, this does not work out as when we look into the recent history disseminations of intelligence services have frequently resulted in defection or walk-ins. For example, the Soviet system as well as the United States and its supporters suffered from detectives agreeing to spy for the antagonistic intelligence services during the Cold War. In this modern era, the division in the world order has led to the shift of counter-espionage to the private sector (Gill and Phythian, 2006). Intelligence services are stealing proprietary data to benefit their local businesses. A large number of this privately sponsored spies are turning to cyber space, generating new barriers for counter-intelligence units as well as law enforcement. Despite the fact that the best technique to counter-intelligence is by penetrating an antagonistic intelligence services, this method has hardly been effective. As a result, counter-intelligence services have been forced to shift to surveillance of antagonists with the aim of arresting them during their actions (Russel, 2007). Preventing terrorism has been a major challenge for intelligence services in many countries. Terrorist groups work in small cell and hence it is difficult to locate, penetrate or even place them under surveillance (Betts, 2007). Moreover, terrorists can be individual actors making it more difficult to target. However, terrorists often require support networks to fund their operations. Therefore, it can be more effective to penetrate or place under surveillance these support networks. The best way to address this issue is by collecting forensic evidence following a terrorist attack in order to try to pinpoint the support network. Surveillance is the best method to locate individual terrorist actors. For example, electronic and physical surveillance made it possible to find the location of Osama Bin Laden and kill him. Since identifying terrorist have proved rather very difficult, most countries have resorted to extreme and hostile defensive measures in their efforts to prevent terrorists attacks (Johnson, 2007). One of these measures involves identifying physical qualities or detectable behaviors to pinpoint terrorists. This process has been commonly been referred to as profiling. At airports, security officers have espoused the practice of handling every passenger as a potential terrorist and hence have endeavored to serve even small children, the elderly and even the sick before allowing them to fly. Those who objects these practices are taken as suspects and can even be penalized. However, these practices have not yielded any meaningful result as no single terrorist have been identified to date and hence should be abolished as they only waste resources and inconvenience passengers. Moreover, this measures apparently focus on the air travel while other types of transportations receives little scrutiny and hence terrorists may take advantage of this deficiency (Dupont, 2003). Many countries that have suffered from subversion in the 21st century devote intelligence funds to locating subversive groups so as to prevent rebellious groups from disrupting the government. In undemocratic countries, the fight against rebellion often becomes the key issue for local intelligence services (Betts, 2007). In dictatorships governments, the main role of intelligence services is to protect the regime. In this modern era, rebellious groups are making use of social media to attract followers. The recent case where this happened is the coup of the Egyptian government. To counter threats from terrorism, espionage and international organized crime requires the intelligence and law enforcement to collaborate and coordinate (Scott & Jackson, 2004). Second, the intelligence cycle does not take into consideration the secret operations or covert action (Johnson, 2007). Conventionally, covert action was used to assist allies and friend or implement intelligence policy in a manner that the sponsoring nation’s hand is hidden. For example, during the Cold War, the KGB and the CIA used covert action to help allies as well as disrupt the enemy. Although military forces can also use covert action, the civilian intelligence services are the best suited to carry out such operations since they have accessible clandestine agents as well as resources. Covert action did not disappear after the Cold War. During the fight in Afghanistan to counter the Taliban, covert operatives formed the basis for the inclusion of regular armed forces. Covert action also appeared in other areas of United States intelligence policy in the battle against terrorism. However, has been greatly criticized, particularly for using extreme means to kidnap and transfer terrorist suspects to ally nations for interrogation as this has resulted to abuse and errors (Taylor, 2007). The course of action established through the process of intelligence forms a reversed knowledge relationships. Apart from engaging in passive activity of collecting security information, intelligence agencies also intervene secretly to influence events. Covert actions are critical to security (Russel, 2007: 281). Covert action may also involve the recruitment of someone meant not to steal security data but to help friends and disrupt the opponent. This may result to dissemination of false information and hence it requires intelligence services to establish a special unit of experts who are well qualified for such operations. This can be quite challenging for smaller intelligence services (Betts, 2007). The intelligence cycle model has its roots in the development of intelligence systems during the World War II and has not been modified to take into account the rapidly changing nature of security in the world. This outdated intelligence cycle model is taught in many countries making it very challenging for trained intelligence officers to successfully function in the field because nothing seem to work the way they are trained (Russel, 2007). The intelligence cycle model has been a total failure in the intelligence systems of the civilian government sector. It only seems to work effectively in the intelligence systems of the private sector. In the civilian government sector, decision-makers hardly give proper direction to intelligence officials and they surely do not provide specific requirements for information collection. As a result, intelligence officers are forced to translate the little direction they get into more precise requirements, normally grounded on gaps in the current intelligence database (Scott & Jackson, 2004). Conclusion The intelligence cycle only seems successful in theory in but not in reality and hence its relevance in the modern era is highly questionable. Although the intelligence cycle model meets the needs of the government and private sectors as evident in the above discussions, it is not a good theory. It fails to take into account the key functions of intelligence: counter-intelligence and covert action. An ideal theoretical intelligence cycle model is the one which covers all the major functions of intelligence, including collection and analyzes of intelligence as well covert action and counter-intelligence. Instead of depicting these functions in a cyclic fashion, an intelligence model should depict these functions as parallel to one another and always function in that fashion. It is critical for intelligence model to consider every function separately because each function operates independently of the other. The intelligence cycle is not an ideal model of the security process. Political leaders in democracy or dictatorship regimes expect their security services will manage their major functions so as to support their policy. Taking this into consideration, it is important for teachers of intelligence to do away with the misleading and inaccurate intelligence cycle model and adapt a model which more closely resembles real-life experience. This is because most intelligence professional are misled by the inaccuracies of the intelligence cycle model during training. A lot has been written as regard the several components of the intelligence cycle in the past centuries and many universities and colleges have tended to design their intelligence courses according to what was rather than what is relevant in terms of intelligence in this modern era. It is time educators update their intelligence courses to match up with the circumstance of intelligence training in our rapidly changing world so as to come up with an ideal model on how intelligence cycle is supposed to work. References Barnett, P. (2001). Ethics in Forensic science, Washington DC: CRC Press. Betts, R.K. (2007). Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security. New York: Columbia University Press. David, E.S. (2011). U.S. Escalates Pressure on Libya amid mixed signals, New York Times, 11 march 2011. Dupont, A. (2003). Intelligence for the Twenty-First Century. Intelligence and National Security, 18 (4), 15-39. Gill, P., & Phythian, M. (2006). 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