Journeys in Shadows: Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-first Century

Intelligence at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth

Journeys in Shadows: Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-first Century is a major new project in the field of intelligence studies within international relations and international history.  The project is based in the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  This department is an internationally renowned centre of research (a 5A grading in the 1996 Research Assessment Exercise) and teaching (the highest possible grading from the National Funding Council in 1996) excellence.   The Department of International Politics is now established as one of the leading centres in the UK (and Western Europe) for teaching and research into intelligence studies. It runs the only undergraduate degree programme in the UK in intelligence studies and has two masters’ programmes, one of which has received ESRC recognition. Two members of the department (Dr Len Scott lvs@aber.ac.uk and Dr Peter Jackson ptj@aber.ac.uk) are members of the Editorial Board of Intelligence and National Security, the leading international journal in the field. A third, Professor Martin Alexander (saa@aber.ac.uk), has been guest editor of a special issue of this journal in 1998.

The Project: Journeys in Shadows: Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-first Century  

It is now several decades since intelligence was first described as 'the missing dimension' of international politics. The development of intelligence studies as a sub-field of international relations has since gathered apace, and study of the subject is firmly established in centres of teaching and research in both Europe and North America. Over recent decades the study of international history and security has been significantly influenced by greater understanding of the role of intelligence in national security and foreign policy making. In Britain much of the work has developed in the sub-discipline of international history, with its methodological predisposition toward archive-based research. Advances in archival disclosure, accelerated by the end of the Cold War, as well as by changing attitudes to official secrecy and to the work of the security and intelligence services themselves, have further facilitated research, understanding and debate. Recent controversies, including claims about the politicisation of intelligence historiography, have added additional public saliency to long-standing academic disputes. Newly emerging documents and other sources provide an opportunity to explore the value and the limits of understanding intelligence in the twenty first century.  

Programme

The main aim is to examine critically the development of intelligence studies, and assess its emerging contribution to the study of international relations.  Our approach will be to explore not only the way subject is studied, but also what is studied, for what purpose and with what consequences. The methodology of the project is to create a network of participants able and willing to reflect critically on the state of the field as well as each other's perspectives in the study of intelligence. These participants will be drawn from various backgrounds and include academic historians, political scientists, journalists, novelists as well as former ‘practitioners’. 

There are three inter-related elements to our project: i) a series of seminars in the Department of International Politics at Aberystwyth, ii) the collection and critical evaluation of recently released intelligence documents iii) a review conference at the University of Wales conference centre at Greygynog in Powys.

(i) The seminar series will involve a series of six seminars to be completed by the spring of 2002.  A preliminary event in involving Michael Herman (now a Visiting Fellow of the Department) and Andrew Linklater has already been held (and attracted an audience of nearly a hundred). Each speaker will be invited to address a Department of International Politics research group meeting on a specified theme representing a particular approach to the study and understanding of intelligence in international politics. They will outline and reflect upon their particular methodological and epistemological approach to intelligence and will also be subject to a critical response from another participant with a different perspective (for example, a practitioner/analyst will comment upon the reflections of the academic historian).  Participants will be selected in the light of their expertise, and in some cases, personal experience.

(ii) The participants in the seminar series will constitute a network. The second element to the project will be a collection of documents, each of which will be analysed and interpreted from several different perspectives by this network.  Such an undertaking is now possible because recent changes in British government declassification policy have resulted in the release of a considerable quantity of hitherto unavailable documents pertaining to the history of British intelligence.  A selection of these documents will be circulated to the network and participants will then be asked to offer their perspectives on the meaning and significance of these sources.  The aims of this exercise are threefold: a) to introduce important new intelligence material into public domain b) by subjecting these archival sources to critical scrutiny from different perspectives to illuminate the intelligence process, including the interface between political leaders and the intelligence community c) to consider whether intelligence materials present different problems of historical and textual interpretation to other archival sources.  This pedagogical aim will be of considerable use to the growing number of historians and political scientists who teach intelligence or intelligence-related subjects at universities both in the United States and the United Kingdom.

(iii) The seminar series and the document network are designed for completion by spring 2002. In the summer of 2002 we will then hold a review conference. Both edited works are intended for completion by October 2002 with publication in 2003.

Hosting the seminar series ahead of the conference will provide preliminary exposure of the speaker's views, identify specific themes and issues for further development, and clarify areas of debate. The review conference will focus on the themes/perspectives explored in the seminar series. Each session will involve an invited reviewer to critically evaluate, and engage with, the views of the presenter. This structure is designed to facilitate a more tightly focused series of presentations at the review conference and lend greater coherence to the organisation of the event and the resulting books.

A number of formal and informal contacts have been made with prospective participants. Among those who have so far indicated their willingness to participate are: Professor Christopher Andrew (University of Cambridge), Michael Herman (Nuffield College, Oxford and formerly of GCHQ and the Cabinet Office) Professor Peter Hennessy (formerly of The Times and the Independent), Professor Wesley Wark (University of Toronto), Professor Andrew Linklater (University of Wales, Aberystwyth - UWA), Professor Richard Aldrich (University of Nottingham), Professor Eunan O' Halpin (Trinty College, Dublin), Professor Michael Cox (UWA) and Michael Smith (defence correspondent of the Daily Telegraph). In the light of comments and suggestions from the appraisers appointed by the AHRB we have also approaching French and German figures (Professor Maurice Vaïsse of the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris and Professor Wolfgang Krieger of the University of Marburg) who have agreed in principle to participate in the project to provide an additional international/comparative dimension.

Publications

The intended research outcome of the project is two edited collections, although we would also anticipate various spin-off articles. The first book will comprise the six papers and associated critical commentaries, with an introduction by the project directors. The second is the collection of documents and associated commentaries. We hope these will both include forwards written by appropriate and eminent scholars or former practitioners.  Our intention is to produce both works as special editions of the journal Intelligence and National Security. These editions are also published as books by Frank Cass. The editors of the journal (a number of whom are involved in the project) are strongly interested in publication of the project.  The intended publication date is spring 2003.

Journeys in Shadows: Understanding Intelligence in the Twenty-First Century

 Notes on project staff

Dr. Len Scott.  Reader and Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences.  University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  Telephone: 01970 622697.  E-mail: lvs@aber.ac.uk. 

Dr. Scott is author  [with Stephen Twigge] of Planning Armageddon: Britain, the United States and the Command of Nuclear Forces, 1945-1964  (Harwood Academic Press, 2000), published in the Studies in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine series; Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis: Political, Military and Intelligence Aspects (Macmillan, 1999) published in the Contemporary History in Context series; and Conscription and the Attlee Governments: The Politics and Policy of National Service 1945-51 (Oxford University Press, 1993), published in the Oxford Historical Monographs series.  Dr. Scott has also published inter alia in Intelligence and National Security, Political Quarterly, Contemporary Record, International Affairs, Arms Control and the Journal of Strategic Studies.

Dr. Peter Jackson.  Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  Telephone: 01970 621771.  E-mail: ptj@aber.ac.uk. 

Dr. Jackson is author of France and the Nazi Menace: Intelligence and Policy-making 1933-1939 (Oxford University Press, 2000), published in the Oxford Historical Monographs series, and has published inter alia in Intelligence and National Security, Historical Journal, Journal of Strategic Studies, Diplomacy and Statecraft and Guerres Mondiales et Conflits Contemporaines

Professor Martin Alexander.  Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth.  E-mail: saa@aber.ac.uk.  

Professor Alexander is author of a number of monographs and edited collections, including The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of French Defence 1933-1939 (Cambridge University Press, 1993) and Knowing Your Friends: Intelligence Inside Alliances and Coalitions from 1914 to the Cold War, a Special Edition of  Intelligence and National Security (Frank Cass, 1998). He was also Guest Editor for a special issue of the Journal of Strategic Studies on New Research on France's war in Algeria, published in March 2001. 

Research Assistant: Dr. R. Gerald Hughes.  E-mail: rbh@aber.ac.uk.