Content area
Full Text
World politics and intelligence have evolved throughout human history. Perhaps the sharpest breaks in the evolution are between premodern and modern societies and the way intelligence has been used in them. As we enter the late-modern or post-modern era, with all three types of societies coexisting, there will be a complex mix of intelligence practices and challenges.
Before addressing these contemporary intelligence challenges, the major characteristics of the values, institutional actors, and intelligence practices in each of these types of societies will be distinguished from one another. I will suggest that significant similarities exist but also that significant differences remain between the intelligence practices of pre-modern, modern, and late-modern societies. Americans, and others, need to understand and anticipate the characteristics of the players or actors in each society, and the resulting intelligence environment that they face. I conclude by drawing major implications of these challenges for US intelligence, and particularly US counterintelligence and covert action. To preempt the conclusion, just as these clandestine arts were and remain useful to pre-modern actors, and, at times, to states in the modern era, there will be ample opportunities and challenges for the effective use of these instruments in the early twenty first century.
Premodern Societies
Sharp differences can be found in the paramount values, institutions, and strategies employed to achieve the objectives of each of these societies. Pre-modern people have been most characteristic of humankind-from the appearance of primitive man and local groups about 500,000 years ago (of which little is known), to the more established agricultural societies of about 10,000 years ago, to the great multi-ethnic civilizations that began to emerge, often in river valleys, approximately 5,000 years ago. The primitive and traditional prevailed almost everywhere until the dramatic changes associated with the Reformation, Renaissance, and later the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution-the period we call early modern. Modern society in turn spawned a mainstream of liberal as well as quasi-liberal and deviant, totalitarian, systems in the 20th century.
The spread of the modern and the clash with the traditional-the acute conflicts amongst moderns in the 20th century and their appeals for allies in traditional societies-has been the dominant political struggle in recent world history. These struggles in turn have played a large role in shaping (and in...