ABSTRACT
This chapter examines general principles of intelligence to the emerging security environment of ungovernability in which non-state actors play expanded roles in world politics. Although the global environment is experiencing rapid change, the intelligence community can rely on fundamental precepts about politics and intelligence to better shape its mission, orientation, and organization. The nation-state has long been the basic unit of activities that define or threaten the interests of political communities. Throughout the ensuing centuries, strong nation-states demonstrated their vigor by consistently triumphing against peoples organized into other associations such as tribes or ethno-religious groups. Commentators of world politics have continued to rely on a state-centric model. The international system has been based primarily on the assumptions that nation states cover virtually all territory, and that within their respective territories their authority is sovereign. This sovereignty is defined most importantly by monopolies on violence, taxes, and border controls, and by a high degree of primacy for emotional affiliation.
