This study is to examine causes of intelligence failures caused by security culture - security elites' belief system, attitudes and tradition. Security culture which defines identity and concept of security in israel has great effect on relation with ...
This study is to examine causes of intelligence failures caused by security culture - security elites' belief system, attitudes and tradition. Security culture which defines identity and concept of security in israel has great effect on relation with Arab countries.
It consists of three factors- collective identity, attitudes of threat assessment, military tradition. Based on this definition, the purpose of this paper is summarized as follows;
First, to look at the mechanism between security and intelligence failure in various circumstances. Second, to reveal security culture as universal cause of intelligence failure. Third, to analyze in the context of structure-agency-strategy. Fourth, to derive lessons from Israel's cases and to enhance grade of academism.
To accomplish these aims, I first reviewed previous findings on intelligence failure in various academic fields and developed the framework of analysis.
However, existing analysis model such as rational-actor model, organizational-process moeel, and bureaucratic politics model have their own limits.
To overcome those theoretic shortcoming, new concept, methodology and contents should be established, which is quietly different from the existing approaches. In this vein, 'intelligence' and 'intelligence policy' , which has instrumental meanings in U.S., have constitutive property to transform the state relation and social identity.
This paradigm can be applied to methodology. Occasionally, decision-making approach is being used to examine the cases, which have been limited to single actor' psychological aspects. However, this micro approach shows it's theoretic limitation to explain the diverse phenomena. In stead of meaningless juxtaposition of cases, this paper tries to analyze those cases in the context of interaction of environmental structure and agency.
Through this theoretic framework, five cases would be analysed in this paper. Lavon Affairs and the failure of summit talk with Egyptian president which happened in Sharett Government were suggested in failure of covert action. And, the failure of analysis in Yom Kippur War was dealt as the failure of intelligence collection.
The findings and lessons of this study can be summarized as follows;
First, Because intelligence policy deals with foreign countries-with political systems, cultural traditions, and mental attitudes quite different from one's own, intelligence failure is inevitable and even natural.
Second, Intelligence failure can be caused by intelligence user rather than producer with superior collective identity, who tends to overestimate their threats from the outside.
Third, this tendency was accelerated by the supreme decision maker and intelligence user such as prime-minister. Ultimately, those attitudes are prone to combine with militarism and intransigent hard line. As a result, intelligence distortion and failure might be accompanied by group-think and mirror image in decision making process. In addition, as mentioned in cases of Sharret Government, an intelligence politicization might be also important source of intelligence disaster.
Fourth, to avoid intelligence fiasco, an efficient controling system should be established. Fifth, the intervention of intelligence agency into political arena can not be found, so intelligence elites have earned support from its people.
Finally, the point that this paper is to make is that intelligence policy should pursue the security goals. In democratic state, if possible, intelligence policy should harmonious with democratic values, in order to avoid and remedy intelligence failures.