Coercive disclosure: The weaponization of public intelligence revelation in international relations

ABSTRACT

Can intelligence serve as a coercive instrument in international relations? While coercion literature mostly addresses military and economic means, this article argues that coercion can also include the deliberate public disclosure of intelligence. Intelligence can be employed to threaten adversaries, reduce their latitude, and force them to adjust their plans and operations. Additionally, intelligence disclosure can be used to mobilize domestic and international audiences and make others align with a certain narrative and alter their policies accordingly. Still, coercive disclosure can fail or succeed only partially against a determined opponent or a target that is resilient to public and international pressure. To demonstrate the workings of coercive disclosure, we analyze Israel's campaign, beginning in 2017, against the Lebanese Hezbollah’s missile manufacturing program and Turkey's coercive campaign vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia and the United States following Jamal Khashoggi's assassination in 2018.

KEYWORDS:

• Coercion
• intelligence
• secrecy
• non-state actors
• Hezbollah
• Khashoggi

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Oren Barak, Devorah Manekin, Amir Lupovici, Ryan Evans, the three anonymous reviewers, and CSP editors for their helpful comments and suggestions that highly benefited this article. Earlier versions of the article were presented at the ISA Annual Convention (April, 2021), at the Queen’s University Conference on New Perspectives on Non-State Political Violence (November, 2019), and to the Hebrew University’s Department of International Relation, where we received useful and insightful comments from the audience.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 For instance, Hastedt (1987) discussed nearly four decades ago “the trend toward the widespread publicizing of intelligence. The shroud of secrecy surrounding the intelligence community has been replaced by the glare of publicity.”

2 Authors' interview with retired Lt. Gen. Gadi Eisenkot, Tel Aviv, June 4, 2020.

3 On December 10, 2018, CNN published segments of the translated transcript of the operation, which had been prepared by the Turkish intelligence and shared with other intelligence services. However, the report relied on a non-Turkish source who had seen the translated version, rather than on Turkish officials. To date, Ankara has not published the audio recording.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ofek Riemer

Ofek Riemer is a postdoctoral research fellow with the Chaikin Chair for Geostrategy at the University of Haifa, and an adjunct lecturer at the Department of International Relations, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He is also the coordinator of the Israeli Forum for Intelligence Studies.

Daniel Sobelman

Daniel Sobelman is Assistant Professor of International Relations at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s Department of International Relations and a research fellow with the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.