International Cooperation of Intelligence Agencies against Transnational Terrorist Targets

Abstract

In the post-9/11 world, the role of intelligence agencies has continued to evolve. The most notable change from the Cold War environment, which was characterized by a lack of information sharing, has been the new emphasis on cooperation between intelligence agencies. It has become critical in this new environment for the intelligence community to change its ways, but this has not necessarily come easily. This essay will examine how the structure of threats has changed in today’s world, and will address the shift in attitudes toward cooperation throughout the international intelligence community. The ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu wrote over two thousand years ago that if you “know the enemy and know yourself, in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal.” The need for intelligence activities developed along with the evolution of human society and military activity. The desire to overtake and conquer an opponent and protect one’s own interests created an environment where one always needed to have more knowledge about one’s opponent, in order to discover his weaknesses and strengths. Even though we can not identify precisely the exact moment of the birth of intelligence activity, we can find in various historical sources that powerful rulers in Africa and Asia were sending delegates to neighboring countries to collect information as early as the seventh century B.C. Rodger Hillman reminds us that the first written data on intelligence activities can be found in the Old Testament, when Moses sent spies to gather information about the land of Canaan. Many authors would agree that the competing interests at work—economic, social, political, military, etc.—in the process of building a state were the main reasons for creating a notion of secrecy that became an integral part of international relations. Different groups had different interests that were opposed to each other. The main task was to protect each group’s “secrets” in order to maintain position and disguise intentions; through discovering somebody else’s secrets, it was hoped that you would be