Security Challenges Journal

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Intelligence and Policy in the New Strategic Environment

Author: Sandy Gordon

Volume 3, Number 3 (August 2007), pp. 55-66.

Abstract

Western intelligence services face a significant broadening in the nature of threat. Previously, intelligence was predominantly focused on state-on-state threat, and to a lesser extent human generated threats such as terrorism and transnational crime. Now new types of threats are emerging, such as pandemic disease and global warming. In parallel, new technologies and doctrines have re-shaped the contribution of intelligence to strategic decision-making. The revolution in military affairs has given rise to powerful strategic tools such as effects based operations (EBO), mirrored by the concept of intelligence-led policing in law enforcement. Some advocates of intelligence change argue that the role of intelligence be expanded to provide the analytical power-house for ‘whole of government’ decision-making in relation not just to traditional threats, but also to this new range of threats—a kind of EBO for the whole of government. This article argues for a more limited view of intelligence and its role—one that recognises the inherently human, and hence secretive, quality of intelligence as a means for dealing with human-generated competition.

About the Author

Sandy Gordon joined the Australian Public Service in 1977, subsequently working in the Office of National Assessments, AusAID and as Executive Director of the Asian Studies Council and Australian Literacy Council. In 1990 he became a Fellow at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, where he worked on South Asia and the Indian Ocean. In 1997 he was appointed head of intelligence in the AFP, a position he held until 2000. He then became Co-Chair of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific Transnational Crime Working Group and a member of the National Expert Advisory Committee on Illicit Drugs. Between 2003 and 2005, he lectured on terrorism and transnational crime at the Australian Defence Force Academy, University of New South Wales. He is currently Associate Professor, Centre for Transnational Crime Prevention, University of Wollongong. thegordons@homemail.com.au.