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Challenges in Intelligence Analysis, Lessons from 1300 BC to the Present

In contrast to this ‘see and strike’ approach, Britain has long taken a ‘wait and watch’ stance, with a heavy emphasis on protracted surveillance of terrorist suspects (p.61). According to Svendsen, this reflects an underlying conception of terrorism as a longterm, perhaps permanent condition to be managed rather than defeated. Contemporary British counterterrorism, it might be added, is informed by the decades-long campaign against the Provisional Irish Republican Army and subsequent ‘dissident’ Irish republican terrorists, where patience, persistence, and the long-term cultivation of informants appeared to have been most effective. As Svendsen notes, in the aftermath of 9/11, UK intelligence officers were eager to share lessons learned from that campaign, but their American counterparts were sometimes unreceptive, dismissing Irish republican violence as mere ‘retro-terrorism’ when compared with the supposedly ‘new terrorism’ carried about by jihadist networks (p.46). The book concludes on a relatively optimistic note. American and British approaches to counterterrorism differ, although there is evidence of growing convergence. London has adopted a more ‘see and strike’ approach with respect to terrorists operating in the United Kingdom. At the same time, Washington has jettisoned its alarmist and polarizing ‘Global War on Terrorism’ rhetoric. Despite periodic hand-wringing over the decline of Anglo-American intelligence sharing, and the special relationship more generally (a phenomenon Svendsen labels ‘termin­ alism’), the liaison relationship seems likely to endure. But while Anglo-American cooperation appears sound, US liaison relationships with intelligence services in the Arab world may become far cooler. The uprisings in Libya, Egypt, and Bahrain have drawn public attention to the long-standing patterns of cooperation between US intelligence agencies and the security services of authoritarian regimes. Supporters of cooperation argue that these services possess invaluable local knowledge – knowledge that it would be too difficult for the United States to gain on its own – and are therefore a critical asset in the international campaign against Al Qaeda and its affiliates. Critics charge that such relationships have compromised American democratic ideals. Moreover, US overreliance on these foreign services, opponents say, have kept the United States from developing an independent and perhaps more accurate understanding of regime dynamics and the factors that contributed to the so-called ‘Arab Spring’.