In January 2023, a year and a month after Robert Jervis passed away, the advisory board of the International Security Studies Forum (ISSF), under the aegis of Keren Yarhi-Milo, Arnold A. Saltzman Professor of War and Peace Studies and Dean of the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, along with its senior…
Tag: intelligence
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 14-24 on Cormac, How to Stage a Coup
Whether by design or default, or perhaps a little of both, Rory Cormac has written a book on ‘covert action’ that captures, in ways one might not imagine, the Zeitgeist, or perhaps more aptly, the Daemon, of our times. Whether we like it or not, all [hi]stories do this; some just do it better than…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Review Essay 69: Bolsinger on Sims, Decision Advantage
In Decision Advantage, political scientist and former intelligence practitioner Jennifer E. Sims argues that intelligence activities have played a greater role in history than is generally acknowledged. Rather than adopting standard definitions of intelligence as stealing secrets or simply “what intelligence agencies do,” Sims defines it as competitive purposeful learning and an outgrowth of normal…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Article Review 160: Maguire on Cormac, “British ‘Black’ Productions”
Rory Cormac’s study of covert influence, propaganda, and the United Kingdom (UK)’s Cold War operations was researched and published during a period of renewed scholarly and practitioner attention on Russian, Chinese, and many other autocratic governments’ deployment of similar methods for so-called ‘hostile foreign influence/interference.’[1] Cormac’s study also arrives concurrent to a groundswell of new…
H-Diplo|RJISSF Roundtable 14-20 on Reynolds, Need to Know
I must confess I love anniversaries. Particularly, I should add, the historical kind. And 2022 was a banner year, in this regard. Not only was it the 50th anniversary of the Watergate burglary, the 60th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the 75th anniversary of the passage of the National Security Act and the formation…
Forum (38) on the Importance of the Scholarship of John Prados
My first memory of John Prados is in the mid-1980s at my then-boss Scott Armstrong’s house in Washington, DC. I was just starting out at the National Security Archive, an organization Scott had taken the lead in founding, and then becoming its first director. I had previously been Scott’s researcher at the Washington Post on a project…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Review Essay 67: Perlman on Bauer, Marianne is Watching
When General Georges Boulanger committed suicide on his lover’s grave in 1891, it was an ignominious end for “General Revanche,” an enigmatic, if ambitious man who had threatened the republic he once served to protect. Much has been made of Boulanger’s rise, the movement he inspired, his ultimate disgrace amid accusations of treason, and, recently,…
H-Diplo | ISSF Roundtable 14-5: Zegart, Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
Amy Zegart’s book Spies, Lies and Algorithms: The History of Future of American Intelligence, provides a well-written and easy to read overview of the multiplicities of American intelligence; everything from what intelligence is, to intelligence in classrooms and the effects of “spytainment,” and of course, intelligence of the digital age. Zegart describes the initial concept…
Article Review 119 on “Proof of the Bomb: The Influence of Previous Failure on Intelligence Judgments of Nuclear Programs.”
At the heart of effective statecraft lies the burden of ascertaining the best available truth about the capabilities and intentions of a state’s allies and adversaries. Equal to the high stakes of intelligence performance is the difficulty of the tasks involved. The importance of knowing one’s enemies confronts the enemies of intelligence in a contest…
Roundtable 10-15 on Intelligence Success and Failure: The Human Factor
For decades, political scientists have been taught that it is dangerous if not forbidden to search on the dependent variable. By looking only at cases in which the effect of interest occurs, we cannot infer causation because the factors that we think are powerful may be only necessary conditions, which means that they can be…