International Intelligence Cooperation and Accountability by Hans Born Ian Leigh Aidan Wills

Author:Hans Born, Ian Leigh, Aidan Wills [Hans Born, Ian Leigh, Aidan Wills]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Nonfiction, Social & Cultural Studies, Political Science, International, International Security, History, Military
ISBN: 9781136831393
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
Published: 2011-01-17T05:00:00+00:00

Conclusion

Images and stories of ‘extraordinary renditions’ have inevitably led to emotional reactions. They represent a real moral challenge, as noted by James Olson52 in one of his case studies, ‘Kidnapping and torture by surrogates’. For most of the intelligence and security services, however, these dire situations are fortunately marginally representative of their activities. Nevertheless, if there is no doubt that intelligence cooperation brings a net benefit for democratic countries, the marginal costs fall on specific human beings. International cooperation pathologies have to be fought with determination and, as Jennifer Sims recalls, government oversight of complex intelligence liaison needs to be improved, not only in the United States.

As in most areas of intelligence policy, searching for both greater efficiency and for greater legitimacy of international cooperation is not as contradictory as it seems. To ensure better accountability, a set of principles, more than a magic formula, could help, on the condition that they are adapted to the specificity of each government, state and society.

Significant improvements should come from devising functional national intelligence systems. For instance, before addressing the cooperation issue, one has to ascertain that there is a statutory legal basis for each intelligence and security service, describing precisely its scope of activity and its way of discharging its duties; that there are mechanisms ensuring an effective dialogue between the executive and intelligence and security agencies; and that the different actors of the intelligence accountability system, whatever they are, fully cooperate between themselves. Intelligence accountability is only a subset of the intelligence system.

Moreover, intelligence cooperation should probably be a better mastered practice inside the services themselves: explicit cooperation strategies have to be internally devised, in accordance with the general legal and political framework, and approved by the governments; initiatives to propose new operations or continue existing ones have also to be left to the heads of the intelligence and security services, but not to them alone; cooperative operations must be inserted in formal operations carried out with proper procedures and justified by requirements for optimal performance; and there should be effective working coordination of international cooperation at the national level. To be effective, intelligence farmers should remember how deep the ploughshare has to dig to keep the fertile ground of international intelligence cooperation devoid of its bad weeds.

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