How can intelligence services contribute to security sector reform? This research, by the British Government’s Security Sector Defence Advisory Team, argues that intelligence services are in an ideal position to both contribute to the rejection of outdated risks as well as identify emerging threats. However, intelligence services require careful management. Dividing security organisations according to whether they deal with foreign or domestic issues is no longer useful. But it is important to distinguish between intelligence and security functions because they require different styles of management and a different relationship with policy makers.
Well-managed security is increasingly seen as a fundamental objective of human development as well as a necessary precursor to economic growth. Development agencies now see security services as an important provider of legitimate security. Security agencies, such as the military, aim to offer comprehensive defence against clear and present dangers, but they are subject to political influence and institutional inertia. Intelligence agencies cannot offer comprehensive protection but can identify new threats. Furthermore, intelligences agencies can remove the bias that is introduced into information either by the sender or by the receiver. In doing this, they help overcome institutional inertia in understanding threats to the nation.
Holding on to declining threats is caused by the inability of a previously untrustworthy enemy to prove that it has become trustworthy. The unbiased, secret nature of intelligence can prove that the subject is not lying. Furthermore, it can:
- enable parties to make credible promises and commit to peace;
- play a role in negotiating peace agreements through ‘back channel’ diplomacy;
- make overtures to former enemies who are not yet trusted by the wider population;
- add credibility to what is already being said publicly;
- monitor and respond more effectively than security services to emerging or incoherent threats; and
- allow savings to be made in military equipment and personnel through its capacity to identify genuine threats and discard illusory ones.
Intelligence agencies have to be structured and resourced in the right way to ensure that they act as a useful corrective to security sector inertia.
- Intelligence services can benefit from being small, and beyond the control of the most senior managers.
- Individual officers should investigate the issues that they believe will be important over the long-term, before they are of concern to their management, politicians and public opinion.
- Relatively little evidence is required for a threat to be taken seriously.
- Intelligence services should be innovative.
- Intelligence officers need time to develop language and other skills to operate against different targets and within different cultures.
- Although an intelligence service should not be over-coordinated with the rest of the security sector there needs to political and legal oversight.
