Ebook: Intelligence Cooperation Practices in the 21st Century: Towards a Culture of Sharing

This edited volume is the product of a NATO funded workshop that was held in December 2007 in Ankara, Turkey on the topic of transnational security cooperation and intelligence sharing. Nearly two years in the planning, the Ankara workshop was particularly designed to bring together leading international scholars, who presented papers offering different theoretical perspectives on security cooperation, and practicing intelligence, military, and police officers, who spoke about their practice-based observations and experiences with international cooperation. The workshop provided a unique opportunity for both groups to exchange ideas, reflect on the various perspectives represented, and all join together in roundtables in which particular issues and themes running throughout the theoretical and experiential accounts could be highlighted and discussed.

The premise of the workshop was designed in recognition of the increasingly accepted idea that intelligence cooperation—domestically between agencies, internationally between states, and transnationally among states, sub-state and non-state actors—is essential in order to successfully counter the evolving transnational nature of security threats. Assuming that the most effective response to transnational threats should be equally transnational, the workshop focused specifically on the question of whether there is evidence of a transnationalization in states’ responses to a transnational security threat like ‘global’ terror.

I would like to thank NATO and Kent University for providing the funds that supported the workshop and this volume. I would also like to thank Dr. Ersel Aydinli, Chair of the International Relations Department at Bilkent University for his academic advising, Dr. Julie Mathews, Director of the MATEFL program at Bilkent University for her editorial support, and my wife Zehra for her lifelong support.

Musa Tuzuner, Ph.D.

Founding Director of Intelligence Studies Research Center

Turkish National Police Academy

Ankara, Turkey

A former diplomat and intelligence director reflects on the changing characteristics of global terrorism, and considers the effectiveness of countering new security threats with existing intelligence practices.

Former intelligence director reflects on the need to build up transnational responses to effectively counter transnational security threats. The chapter emphasizes the lessons that can be learned from experiences in sharing information among domestic agencies and draws implications from those for international exchanges.

Former head of military intelligence reflects on current understandings of terrorism and, drawing on personal experiences from the case of Israel, outlines the features of effective intelligence agencies and their counterterrorism responses.

From both academic and practitioner-based perspectives, this piece outlines the history and characteristics of the intelligence relationship between the United States and England. It then draws on this past to outline lessons for effective future counter-terrorism practices.

This chapter first offers an overview of the Greek Intelligence Community, and then explores specific problems among the Southeastern Mediterranean states--human trafficking, illegal immigration, and terrorist financing of Islamic networks. It proposes addressing such security challenges through organizations operating based on Open Sources Intelligence (OSINT).

This chapter explores India’s experiences with intelligence and defence cooperation, focusing in particular on the country’s relations both pre- and post-9/11 with the United States, Israel, and Russia. It considers major reforms that have occurred in India’s intelligence practices and institutions, and traces their origins to regional causes rather than to global terrorism in the last decade.

To achieve effective international and intranational cooperation on sensitive matters of intelligence requires, among other things, common understandings of basic principles. To this end, this chapter provides a broad background on intelligence definitions and approaches, characteristics of intelligence, and existing organizations for building up intelligence cooperation.

This chapter draws on experiences and scholarship surrounding two forms of local, cooperative-based counter-terrorism practices—community policing and problem-oriented policing—in order to explore their implications for broader level cooperation on international counter-terrorism practices.

This chapter explores the emerging dynamics of a global counterterrorism regime and the role of “pivotal Muslim nations” in that security regime. The list of pivotal Muslim nations may be long; however, for conceptual rigor and brevity, this chapter investigates the role of five major Muslim nations: Egypt, Indonesia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. In particular, it looks at the roles of both non-state and state actors in the formation of such a counter-terrorism effort.

This chapter reports on a study carried out to compare the effect of cultural differences—both ethnic-based and professional ‘cultures’—on perspectives of international cooperation against terrorism. In doing so, it explores potential opportunities for international cooperation by measuring subjective interpretations of professionals from different organizations in charge of counter-terrorism practices.

This chapter provides the wrap-up discussion from the workshop that inspired the chapters in this volume. The discussion addressed the primary issues of whether or not there is an emerging transnational cooperation regime, and whether—and if so, how—states are adapting to meet transnational security challenges. Highlighted are issues such as informal alliances and the idea of informality in general as a characteristic of new intelligence cooperation practices.