ABSTRACT
Two fundamental responsibilities of every government are to provide security for its people and control its territory. While it is simple to identify these core responsibilities, the ways of achieving them have changed as there has been a shift in focus from traditional state threats to transnational threats posed by terrorists and organized-crime organizations. This shift has called into question national security structures created and honed since the end of World War II, which were designed to counter state threats, and has specifically addressed the ways in which intelligence to counter these threats is gathered and used. When states were primarily concerned about another country invading, launching preventive missile attacks, or enforcing blockades, intelligence problems were calculated in a relatively straightforward manner: characterize an adversary’s intentions and assess its military capabilities. With these intelligence assessments, diplomats could head off crises that could lead to war, militaries could prepare appropriate defenses, and force planners could create a sufficient offensive capability to deter adversary action or successfully achieve national objectives in war. In short, intelligence was consumed and charged with preventing strategic surprise from other states. While some surprises did occur during the Cold War (North Korea’s invasion of the South, various Arab attacks against Israel, or the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan), the overall success of intelligence structures around the world during the Cold War gave rise to a heady confidence across national security structures.2 What can we say now about those intelligence structures in an age of transnational threats? Are these structures – and the states they are bound to – adapting to meet the new challenges? Are developments in international cooperation and intelligence-sharing between states and sub-state entities evidence of these states themselves going transnational, in other words, signs of an emerging statist-transnationalism?3
