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Postmodern Intelligence: Strategic Warning in an Age of Reflexive Intelligence

Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, dunn{at}sipo.gess.ethz.ch

Victor Mauer

Center for Security Studies, ETH Zurich, Switzerland, mauer{at}sipo.gess.ethz.ch

Providing strategic warning to policymakers is a key function of governmental intelligence organizations. Today, globally networked challenges increasingly overshadow their historical state-centric counterparts so that warning has become considerably more difficult. It is recognized in parts of the intelligence community that many of the current problems for warning arise from continued reliance on analytic tools, methodologies and processes that were appropriate to the static and hierarchical nature of the threat during the Cold War. However, even though alternative analysis techniques have begun to be applied, this article argues that the intelligence community could benefit from the understanding that more than just the ontology of threats has changed, that in fact it is in the epistemological area that the most meaningful changes have taken place: Society has seen the replacement of the previous means—end rationality by a reflexive rationality. The notion of reflexive security can provide a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the current changes, and it could be instrumental in adapting intelligence sources and methods to a new era. In particular, an awareness of both complexity sciences and postmodernism might increase understanding of the limitations of knowledge and lead to the establishment of a political discourse of uncertainty.

Key Words: strategic warning • intelligence community • reflexive security • risk society • new threat environment

Security Dialogue, Vol. 40, No. 2, 123-144 (2009)
DOI: 10.1177/0967010609103071


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