What is the use of the study of Intelligence in international relations - Essay Example

He points out that American and British intelligence efforts tended to focus upon Asian intelligence primarily as they related to Soviet targets, as a result, the rush to improve intelligence efforts in Asia after 1950 did not yield immediate results, while human intelligence operations, especially in China, North Korea and Soviet Asia were particularly dangerous. Additionally, the shock of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 in particular played a role in driving home the extent of vulnerability of Western societies and the need for reliable intelligence on imminent terrorist threats3.

The 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center wreaked an unprecedented level of destruction and the attention of the world was drawn sharply to the dangers posed by the terrorist threat. According to Jessica Sterne, terrorism is not the kind of enemy that can be combated on an all out open combat basis4. She defines terrorism as “a kind of virus, which spreads as a result of risk factors at various levels: global, interstate, national and personal."5 Increasing globalization has seen Internet use widening to encompass a new sphere of activities facilitated through the electronic medium.

6 Information and communication technology (ICT) is used by unscrupulous individuals to distort or modify information or to spread terrorist propaganda in a manner that is likely to disrupt the normal functioning of a Government/country and create terror and panic through the weapon of threat. Such cyber crimes involve combat with an unseen enemy, anonymous in the e-maze of the Internet, who is at an unspecific geographic location that cannot be determined and may not be organized in the traditional hierarchical framework which law enforcement agencies are familiar with, so that the focus of the attack becomes indeterminate.

It’s now possible to achieve individually, using