Policing Uncertainty: Intelligence, Security and Risk

Abstract

Today, the idea of risk is ubiquitous, a presence in debates across a range of fields, from investment banking to politics, from anthropology and sociology to health, environmental and cultural studies. While this ubiquity attests to the importance of the concept it is at the same time a potential weakness in that it injects the term into a wide range of debates in each of which its meaning can be subject to different emphases and meanings. The notion of risk is of obvious importance to security intelligence, but here too its ubiquity has had an impact on specificity of meaning. While the term is widely used in both the profession and study of intelligence, its usage can carry different meanings and it can be used interchangeably with linked terms. Given the importance of the idea of risk to intelligence, clarity of meaning is essential. This article sets out to consider the meaning of, and relationship between, uncertainty and risk in a security intelligence context, propose a framework on which a common understanding can be built, and illustrate how this can help in thinking about the nature and role of security intelligence.

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was given at the annual conference of the International Studies Association, Montréal, March 2011. I would like to thank Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin, David Strachan-Morris and Michael Warner for their helpful comments on an earlier version.

Notes

*Email: [email protected]¹Frank H. Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin 1921) p.199.

²Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (London: Penguin 1985 [1651]), p.186.

³Peter L. Bernstein, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk (New York: John Wiley & Sons 1996), p.1.

⁴Ulrich Beck, World Risk Society (Cambridge: Polity Press 1999) p.4. See also Ulrich Beck, Risk Society (London: Sage 1992).

⁵Jakob Arnoldi, Risk (Cambridge: Polity Press 2009) p.47.

⁶Ulrich Beck, ‘The Terrorist Threat: World Risk Society Revisited’, Theory, Culture and Society 19/4 (2002) pp.39–55.

⁷Ulrich Beck, ‘The Silence of Words and Political Dynamics in the World Risk Society’, Logos 1/4 (2002) pp.1–18. Quote at p.14.

⁸Arnoldi, Risk, p.166. See also Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate, ‘Terrorism, Risk and International Society: The Perils of Asking “What If?”, Security Dialogue 39/2–3 (2008) pp.221–42.

⁹Mikkel Vedby Rasmussen, ‘Reflexive Security: NATO and International Risk Society’, Millennium: Journal of International Studies 30/2 (2001) pp.285–309.

¹⁰Beck, World Risk Society, p.137.

¹²Tony Blair, Evidence to Chilcot Inquiry, 29 January 2010, <http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/43909/100129-blair.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

¹¹Tony Blair, ‘Statement to the Iraq Inquiry’, 14 January 2011, <http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/50743/Blair-statement.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

¹³This omnipresence provides a powerful argument for the bureaucratic interests of intelligence agencies, as well as a source of temptation for politicians to resort to a politics of fear. See Corey Robin, Fear: The History of a Political Idea (New York: Oxford University Press 2004).

¹⁴Joost van Loon, Risk and Technological Culture: Towards a Sociology of Virulence (London: Routledge 2002) p.2. Cited in M.J. Williams, ‘(In)Security Studies, Reflexive Modernization and the Risk Society’, Cooperation and Conflict 43/1 (2008) p.66.

¹⁵Rasmussen, ‘Reflexive Security’, p.294.

¹⁶Tony Blair, ‘Statement to the Iraq Inquiry’. See also the testimony of Sir David Omand, theformer Cabinet Office Security Intelligence Co-ordinator, to the Inquiry, 20 January 2010, <http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/44187/20100120pm-omand-final.pdf> pp.40–2 (accessed 15 December 2011).

¹⁷Michael G. Fry and Miles Hochstein, ‘Epistemic Communities: Intelligence Studies and International Relations’, Intelligence and National Security 8/3 (1993) p.25.

¹⁸Michael Warner, ‘Intelligence as Risk Shifting’ in Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin and Mark Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory: Key Questions and Debates (London: Routledge 2009) p.19.

¹⁹Ibid., p.23.

²⁰For example, see the characterization of Beck's understanding of ‘risk’ by Arnoldi, referenced in footnote 5 and the quote from Beck referenced in footnote 4, above – in both cases what is being described is, technically, uncertainty. The reasons for this are outlined below.

²¹Discussion of risk and threat are often imprecise, with the terms used interchangeably or otherwise incorrectly. For an example, see Tania Branigan, ‘North Korea is Direct Threat to US, Says Defence Secretary’, The Guardian, 12 January 2011.

²²Knight, Risk, Uncertainty and Profit, p.233.

²³Ibid., p.20.

²⁴Ibid.

²⁵<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0021.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

²⁷<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0027.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

²⁶<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0023to0024.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

²⁸<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0069.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

²⁹In evidence submitted to the Iraq Inquiry, Major General Michael Laurie, at the time of the dossier drafting process Director General Intelligence Collection in the Defence Intelligence Staff, wrote that: ‘Alistair Campbell said to the Inquiry that the purpose of the Dossier was not “to make a case for war”. I had no doubt at that time this was exactly its purpose and these very words were used … we knew at the time that the purpose of the Dossier was precisely to make a case for war, rather than setting out the available intelligence, and that to make the best out of sparse and inconclusive intelligence the wording was developed with care’. <http://www.iraqinquiry.org.uk/media/52051/Laurie-statement-FINAL.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

³⁰<http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/cab/cab_11_0047to0048.pdf> (accessed 15 December 2011).

³¹‘A Failure of Intelligence’, Panorama, BBC1, 11 July 2004.

³²Steven Yearly, Making Sense of Science: Understanding the Social Study of Science (London: Sage 2004) p.137.

³³This is a variation of the definition offered in Peter Gill and Mark Phythian, Intelligence in an Insecure World (Cambridge: Polity Press 2006) p.7.

³⁴Michael Warner reminds us that intelligence can be both defensive and offensive. See Warner, ‘Intelligence as Risk Shifting’, p.19. While this model does emphasize the preventive, and hence defensive, role of intelligence, as the drone example given below well illustrates, attack can be the best form of defence. Indeed, this is the premise of much offensive realist thinking, an influence on Western intelligence professionals. On this, see Mark Phythian, ‘Intelligence Theory and Theories of International Relations: Shared World or Separate Worlds?’ in Gill, Marrin and Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory, pp.54–72. See also Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, ‘Power Politics and the Balance of Risk: Hypotheses on Great Power Intervention in the Periphery’, Political Psychology 25/2 (2004) pp.177–211.

³⁵Warner, ‘Intelligence as Risk Shifting’, p.20.

³⁶Ibid.

³⁷Doyle McManus, ‘US Drone Attacks in Pakistan “Backfiring”, Congress Told’, Los Angeles Times, 3 May 2009.

³⁸David Ignatius, ‘US, Pakistan Could Use a Muslim Ritual to Resolve Raymond Davis Case’, Washington Post, 2 March 2011.

³⁹Zahid Hussein, Tom Wright and Keith Johnson, ‘Suspect's Ties to Pakistan Taliban Probed’, Wall Street Journal, 6 May 2010. Ironically, perhaps, Qari Hussain Mehsud was reportedly killed in a drone attack in October 2010, only for the US State Department to add him to its list of global terrorists in January 2011. See ‘Terrorist Designation of Tehrik-E Taliban (TTP) Leader Qari Hussain’, US Department of State, 20 January 2011, <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2011/01/155030.htm> (accessed 15 December 2011).

⁴⁰Martin Shaw, The New Western Way of War: Risk Transfer and Its Crisis in Iraq (Cambridge: Polity Press 2005).

⁴¹That policymakers base judgements on formative experiences and types of decision that served them well in those contexts is argued by Richard E. Neustadt and Ernest R. May, Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision Makers (New York: Free Press 1988).

⁴²Brian Wynne, ‘Uncertainty and Environmental Learning: Reconceiving Science and Policy in the Preventive Paradigm’, Global Environmental Change 2/2 (1992) pp.111–27. Quote at p.112.

⁴³Ibid., p.117.

⁴⁵Bruce Bimber, The Politics of Expertise in Congress: The Rise and Fall of the Office of Technology Assessment (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press 1996) p.12. Cited in Marrin, ‘Intelligence Analysis and Decision-Making’, p.135.

⁴⁴Stephen Marrin, ‘Intelligence Analysis and Decision-Making: Methodological Challenges’, in Peter Gill, Stephen Marrin and Mark Phythian (eds.) Intelligence Theory, pp.131–50. See p.135.

⁴⁷Ibid., p.745.

⁴⁶Silvio O. Funtowicz and Jerome R. Ravetz, ‘Science for the Post-Normal Age’, Futures 25/7 (1993) pp.739–55.

⁴⁸Ibid., pp.750–1.

⁴⁹See, for example, Mike Hulme, Why We Disagree About Climate Change: Understanding Controversy, Inaction and Opportunity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009).

⁵⁰Funtowicz and Ravel, ‘Science for the Post-Modern Age’, pp.753–4.

⁵¹For an excellent insider account, see Brian Jones, Failing Intelligence: The True Story of How We Were Fooled into Going to War in Iraq (London: Biteback 2010) esp. Ch. 5–6.

⁵²A word of caution here; in making this argument there is a clear risk of invoking a golden past where the public was in awe of intelligence that I am not sure ever existed outside of war time.

⁵³This echoes the argument of Helga Nowotny, Peter Scott and Michael Gibbons in their Re-Thinking Science: Knowledge and the Public in an Age of Uncertainty (Cambridge: Polity Press 2001), that we are all scientists – see Ch.2.

⁵⁴I use ‘ideology’ in Michael Freeden's sense of the term, as a collection ‘of symbolic signposts through which a collective national identity is forged’. Michael Freeden, Ideology: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press 2003) p.42.

⁵⁵The classic statement is Mary Douglas and Aaron Wildavsky, Risk and Culture (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press 1983).

⁵⁶Wynne, ‘Uncertainty and Environmental Learning’, p.120.

⁵⁷For an overview, see Dan Gardner, Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear (London: Virgin Books 2008) esp. Ch.4.

⁵⁸Yearly, Making Sense of Science, p.131.

⁵⁹Joseph S. Nye, Jr. ‘Peering Into the Future’, Foreign Affairs 73/4 (1994) pp.82–93. Quote at p.88.

⁶⁰Gregory F. Treverton and C. Bryan Gabbard, Assessing the Tradecraft of Intelligence Analysis (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation 2008) p.4.

⁶¹Ted Honderich, After the Terror, revised ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press 2003) p.1.

⁶²See, Gabe Mythen and Sandra Walklate, ‘Criminology and Terrorism: Which Thesis? Risk Society or Governmentality?’ British Journal of Criminology 46/3 (2006) pp.379–98.

⁶³John Kampfner, Freedom for Sale: Why the World is Trading Democracy for Security (New York: Basic Books 2010) p.15.

⁶⁴Arnoldi, Risk, p.34.