Connecting Intelligence and Theory: Intelligence Liaison and International Relations
Abstract
 Intelligence liaison increased exponentially during the so-called ‘War on Terror’. Today it continues as the most significant dimension of intelligence, including impacting on accountability and oversight considerations. Nevertheless, the intelligence liaison phenomenon remains largely under-studied and substantially under-theorized. In this article, preliminary suggestions are offered concerning how this dearth of theory can be addressed. Firstly, the relevance of international relations theory and other bodies of theory, together with significant approaches concerning how international relations – extending to how intelligence and intelligence-related phenomena (such as, in this article, intelligence co-operation) – can be studied, are explored. These theories, and equally, approaches, are arguably most appropriate when deployed in an arrangement of ‘complex co-existence plurality’ across the different interrelated levels of experience and analysis, and they offer more effective explanations when intelligence liaison is disaggregated into at least eight systemic attributes or variables. More broadly, the suggestion that international relations theory, and indeed theory generally, is ‘irrelevant’ to intelligence studies is simultaneously challenged.
Quantifying intelligence cooperation: The United States International Intelligence Behavior (USIIB) dataset
This report describes the creation of the United States International Intelligence Behavior dataset (USIIB). The USIIB represents the first collection of event data specifically intended for exploring in a quantifiable manner the international intelligence cooperation behaviors of the United States. A total of 293,615 events are recorded in the USIIB, covering the years 2000–09. The report first provides a detailed description of the steps involved in building such a dataset, including the development of search terms, the use of a machine coding program (TABARI – Text Analysis by Augmenting Replacement Instructions) to extract data from wire news releases, and the extension of an existing coding scheme (CAMEO) to include intelligence behaviors. Following a discussion of issues related to the reliability and validity of event datasets in general and the USIIB in particular, the report then includes suggestions and examples for how the data in the current USIIB dataset may be used in order to add to our understandings of patterns and anomalies in international intelligence cooperation behavior. As a specific example, it offers results from an empirical test exploring variation in intelligence cooperation behaviors among democracies and non-democracies, asking specifically whether the United States has been more likely in the early 21st century to cooperate on intelligence matters with democratic states, and finding this not to have been the case. Finally, it aims to provide a guide for others who would like to extend this dataset to explore intelligence cooperation activity of other countries or regions.
Does the UN have intelligence?
Is collective security possible when evaluating and responding to threats depend on access to intelligence that, by its nature, cannot be shared openly? Debates over whether the United States should share intelligence with and through the United Nations have arisen in every administration and have been won each time by those who showed that it was in the US interest to do so. The question is no longer whether intelligence should be shared, but rather how and to what effect.